Relate

We serve a unique God. If we profess faith in the Father of grace, the risen savior Jesus Christ, and the sent Holy Spirit, then we confess this God to be uniquely Trinitarian: One God in three distinct persons. This God has always been. He has always enjoyed fellowship and has never lacked anything. He is perfect. He is love perfected within Himself. God relates eternally and internally as love. Think upon love. Hold the idea of it in your mind. Feel the touch of it upon your cheek. Look into the eyes of love and hold its gaze. Remember when you felt loved and when you loved another. Conjure up a time when you experienced true love; perfect love. Now admit to yourself that it was not perfect. Even our greatest memory of love somehow isn’t quite complete and it never quite transcends our human imperfections and limitations. Somewhere in the back of our minds and in the landscapes of our hearts we know that love could be more. It could be better. It could be perfect! Like every other aspect of the human experience, our shortcomings ultimately remind us that there is such a thing as perfection. Our imperfection exists in the light of perfection. We do not love perfectly we love imperfectly. As image bearers graciously created by the Perfect and created to love, we can somehow conceive of a perfect love. We do not know perfection yet we can conceive of something being perfect. That Perfect is God.

We hold two significant truths in our hands. First, God is perfect. God is perfectly holy. He is perfectly merciful, gracious, and true. He is perfectly patient, perfectly present, and perfectly attentive. He is perfect in anger and forgives perfectly. He is perfect in that He lacks nothing. The second truth is this: God is love. And so we understand that,

God is perfect love and,

God loves perfectly.

Or, God is perfect love and He loves perfectly.

What can we learn about a God who is perfect love? What insight might we gain about love and loving others by standing upon the precipice of that which transcends us, peering into the eternal dance of love known as Trinity? We may find that which we deeply desire: to love and to be loved.

The Father eternally loves the Son. The Son eternally loves the Father. The Spirit loves the Father and the Son. God is love. We must observe first that there is distinction in the eternal Godhead. There is the Father. He is the origin, the fount from which all things flow. There is the Son. There is only one son. He was not created, he has always been the Son. There is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit eternally proceeds from the both the Father and the Son. The Spirit delights in the Father and the Son. We might think of the Spirit delighting in the love between the Father and the Son. We learn then that there is distinction in perfect love. It does not look the same. Its peculiarity is in inherent just as its variation. It is distinctly characterized.

Perfect love expresses itself. It expresses itself distinctly. Discovering the distinct love within the Godhead defines the persons. How then does the Father distinctly love? The Father loves the Son and distinctly illustrates this by giving.

He gives to the Son,

His Name
Life itself
Words and works
Rule, the Messianic kingdom
All authority
All judgment
Honor, glory
All Things
The Disciples
All believers
The revelation

So what does this reveal to us about the Father’s distinct love? It reveals the giving nature of the Father’s love. He gives his only Son. This is love.

What about The Father’s only Son? How does the Son relate to the Father?

The Son,

Loves the Father
Delights in the father
Reveals the father
Redeems and reconciles us to the Father
Gives all things back to the father
Glorifies the father
Does all that the Father tells and shows

How does the Son distinctly love the Father? In love, He does all that the Father asks. The Son obeys the Father. This is love.

Likewise, the Holy Spirit, rather than glorify himself, delights in and glorifies the Son and the Father. He reveals the Son and the Father to humankind. He indwells us and brings us into the presence of the Father and the Son.

How does the Spirit distinctly love? He sets Himself aside putting the interest of others first. The Spirit ministers selflessly. This is love.

Because we have been forgiven in Christ, Paul calls us to a higher way of relating to each other. He calls us to strive for perfect love: ‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’ (Eph 5:1-2) Let us relate to one another with love. Let our love be distinct. May our love be expressive of the love we were first loved with: God’s perfect love.

To love is to give.
(John 3:16)

To love is to be obedient: even unto death.
(Philippians 2:8)

To love is putting the needs of others before ourselves.
(Romans 8:26-27)