The Way God Works

Theology must speak holistically. The most essential truth about who God is must hold the universe together in a common thread without detached caveats, tangents, or exceptions. This is theology proper; it is the Truth and Word that God is a loving Father, the Truth and Word born in the person of Christ, the Beloved Son, the man who died on a cross assured of the Father's love for him by the Holy Spirit.

There is either infinite joy experienced by human beings who are in that man Jesus and experience love of the Father and Son, or infinite hell for those in the first Adam who live in resistance to the Spirit's assurance of the Father's love in Christ. Both heaven and hell relate either positively or negatively to the message of God the loving Father; this message defines them, for Christ is a fragrance of life to life and death to death. There is no human being who escapes the Word, for there is no world that is not created by the Word and Spirit.

Christian theology must explain everything as relating to the Father and Son who love each other by the Spirit. This is theology proper, namely, theology about who God is; and God is a Triune God of love. Life is beautiful because it was created by this Word. Life is ugly because of the denial of this Word by humanity. But the ugliness is only ugliness because it is not in conformity with the Father who loves his Son by the Spirit. A father who abuses his child is only ugly because the Father who loves his Son is beautiful. Furthermore, there will be a time when all things are summed up in Christ, who is this Word. At this time the wheat will be separated from the tares. And those who continually reject the Word will live away from the brilliance and beauty and love of the Word forever, while the redeemed will know fellowship of the Father and Son by the full assurance of the Spirit.

God is a God who loves and works and moves. Before the creation of the world, when there was only God in existence, he was neither alone nor stagnant and unmoved. Before the creation of the world, the Father and the Son loved each other in the Spirit. The love of God is agape. The Son glorifies the Father and the Father glorifies the Son. The Father loves the Son just because he loves the Son. This love is not selfish desire; it is not eros. God is agape love. This is the essential and fundamental truth of who he is.

There is no greater love than a man lay down his life for his friend. Therefore, the cross - the Gospel - is not just an arbitrary nice act that an unmoved holy God decided to do, but rather, the Gospel proceeds from the most essential truth of who God is.

The phrase "the way God works" is not so much a way of explaining or articulating by formula who God is and how he must work; the sense of the phrase "the way God works" is doxology. As we observe that God has worked and has defined himself as agape love, and has glorified the holiness of his love by the grace and mercy of the Son, we must respond in doxology, "the way that God works!" Or proclaim with Paul, ^"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!"