"Trinitarian Community (Christ is building his church)" - for Sherwood, the community group I love in Christ

God has always existed in the perfect relationship of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Jesus prays in John 17:24, "Father... YOU LOVED ME BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD."

The gods of other religions are lacking because they are not the Triune God.

The gods of other religions DEPEND upon creation and humanity for relationship.

But the Triune God has always had relationship; the Father, Son, and Spirit exist in perfect, selfless, giving relationship. Our God IS love.

God speaks man into existence, saying, "Let US make man in OUR own image."

We find that it was not good for Adam to be alone.

God makes man and woman in the image of himself. This means we reflect the relationality of the Trinity. God gave us the joy of relationship and community.

When man sinned, pride and self-exaltation occurred. We became self-seeking in relationship rather than self-giving.

In Genesis 3 man falls in pride, in Genesis 4 Cain kills Abel.

The result of our perversion of the image of God is relational death.

We truly fall short of the glory of the Triune God.

But Christ is building his church.

He is saving people into his relationship with the Father in spite of our sin and pride.

Together we are saved.

And our community is to reflect the image of God. We are being restored into relationship and community with one another that reflects the relationship within the Trinity.

Jesus prays for us in John 17. He asks that the Father would make us one as they (they Father and the Son) are one.

Jesus is building his church.

His kingdom is coming.

I see it happening in our group. As we love each other in the Gospel we learn to truly love each other unconditionally. As Christ loved us precisely when we did not love him, so we ought love each other regardless of any condition. We love each other simply because we just love each other. Loving each other is not a means to some other end; loving each other is the end for which we work. We just love each other because we love each other.

Christ is building his church.

So keep pursuing relationship with the Father and the Son in the Spirit together as a community.

"That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete." (1 John 1:3-4)

We are saved out of the world into the joy of relationship with the Triune God and with each other.

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the LIFE OF GOD because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." (Eph 4:17-2)

"Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (Eph 5:1)

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)

"Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all." (Col 3:5-11)

Mosaic

Life is like a mosaic in that everything in life can only develop and function as a multiplicity of things. No one thing is not made up of multiple things. That is fundamentally what any one thing is, namely, more than one thing grouped together and defined as one thing. Science pursues smaller and smaller parts of atoms and molecules. It would seem that the chain is infinite; we cannot find any one thing that is not made up of more than one thing. Indeed, it is not logically possible to imagine any "thing" that cannot be split into multiple things. There is nothing in the natural world that is not dependant on the function of some sort of unity of the things which make it up.

Furthermore, we can only create and develop something for a particular use and function by uniting multiple things to make one thing that is dependent on the multiple things. A car is made up of motor, wheels, windshield, frame, etc., all to make up one thing, which we define as a car. This is how human beings are subjective in their creating; we are only creative in our ability to unite multiple things to create one thing.

The mosaic is the perfect illustration of the nature of the human ability to create, namely, assembling an assortment of different parts to create and communicate one whole picture. I would suggest that there is nothing in life that does not function under these rules.

Therefore, the nature of things is infinite multiplicity and unity. A city is made up of buildings, which are made up of wood, sheetrock, windows, wires and an assortment of other things, which are in turn made up of even more things, and so forth, all to make one thing, namely, a city. This city could be said to be a part of a country, which is made up of other cities. A country, furthermore, may be a piece among other pieces to a continent, and a continent part of a planet, a planet part of a solar system, a solar system part of a galaxy, and so forth.

This is the function of Mosaic. As parts continue to unite, the picture grows and grows.

The question is, what is the big picture of everything? What is the biggest picture one can imagine - where all multiplicity unites and communicates one picture, in one chorus? To ignore this question would be against the weight of how everything in the universe works.

In Colossians 1:16 Paul says,

"For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."

If he is right, then Christ is the picture of the mosaic. Christ is the chorus of the choir of the universe.

Psalm 19,

"1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
3There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world."

In the 2nd century, Irenaeus accused the Gnostic heretics of treating the Word like a mosaic and rearranging the gems to make fox instead of a king.

Is this not what humanity has done to the universe? We are rearranging the gems of the universe to create a false image, rather than worshiping and serving the Creator, to whom all the glory of creation is pointing.

If this is our condition, then what is our remedy?

Our remedy consists in mending our greatest need - our need to see Christ.

The Bible speaks consistantly of our need for a knowledge of God.

Look at the love language of Hosea.

Hosea 2:20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know Yahweh.

And in Jeremiah God promises his people that "... no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know Yahweh,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Yahweh."

2 Peter begins the epistle by this greeting: "May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."

Paul defines his ministry by saying that Jesus sent him to the gentiles "to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me [Christ].'

He also says in 2 Corinthians 4:6 "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

This is the work of God: to open up our eyes to see and treasure Christ, whom the whole universe is pointing to and glorifying. Without the Gospel and work of God, we are blind to this, and we miss the picture that every molecule, every story in history, every tree, every rock, every galaxy, is uniting to communicate.

Don't miss the picture; it is Christ through all and in all. All things are by him and for him.