"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)