Trinitarian Joy: November 2010

Trinitarian Love

by Michael Lawrence in Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church pg 147

"For some of us, it is easy to think that God and his love must revolve around me and my problems, and we evaluate his love based on how we feel he's doing at loving us. But God's love was perfect before we ever arrived on the scene, and it will remain perfect long after we leave. The eternal and therefore prior love of the Father and the Son for each other reminds us that at the end of the day, life and love is not about me. Though the love of God for me is real, it is also derivative, an overflow of this most fundamental love within the Trinity itself."

What did you expect?? by Paul Tripp pg 235

Grace gives your marriage a lifetime warranty. What this means is that God will give you everything you need to be what you are supposed to be and do what he has called you to do in your marriage. But you must do it. His grace enables, reconciles, restores, and repairs. His grace teaches you and changes you. His grace gives you what you need to ask forgiveness and to forgive. His grace empowers you to overlook minor offenses and target what is truly important. His grace helps you see with greater and greater wisdom. His grace gives you strength to continue when you feel like quitting. His grace gives you strength to resist temptation and to turn and do what is right. His grace rescues you from your obsession with self-love and welcomes you to joyous wok of loving another. His grace enables you to be good and angry at the same time. When grace works a commitment of God's kingdom and righteousness in your heart, you will be angry at what sin does to you, to those you love, and to the situations in which you live, and that anger will motivate you to be a tool of change. His grace causes you to be committed to giving grace. His grace is a marriage warranty, because it gives you what you need, but what you get is grace in motion.

What Does a Healthy Marriage Look Like?

I have had the opportunity to take a marriage counseling course with Winston Smith this semester. Here is quick video that entails some of what we have been learning.

Why Trinitarian Joy?

For me the most astonishing reality that I have learned is that God takes ulitmate joy in himself. This ultimate joy is revealed in Scripture through the roles and relationships within the Triune Community. Whether we look at Creation, Fall, Redemption or Consumation, God -through the roles and relationships of the Trinity- is always orchestrating his supreme joy and exhaltation in himself.

God created us in his image so that God might see himself in us. In other words, as children of God we are tools of God's delight. This is not to say that God needs us to experience delight for he is perfectly satisfied in community with himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. However, God creates man out of the perfections of his trinitarian joy whereby man's joy is fulfilled in putting God's greatness on display. In other words, we have been created to join intimately into God's trinitarian joy wherein we are satisfied and God is glorified.

Now sin has destroyed our life with God for we have exchanged the glory God for the glory of his creation. We have neglected God as the source of all joy and have sought for intimacy elsewhere. 'But God who is rich in mercy...' lovingly glorified his Son by deploying Him to purchase up sinners unto Himself from their damnable state. And the Son lovingly glorified the Father through his obedience thereby securing a people unto His name. And in the wisdom of God the Spirit was sent to glorify the Son by tranforming these ransomed sinner into Christlikeness. Is it not evident that God's joy in himself secures our joy in him?

As God's family, it is through the cross that we have access into the holy place before God's throne. The gospel intimately joins us again into the joyful fellowship of our Triune God.

Since God is committed to making himself great, his promises of a restoration are sure. The Father will continue to make much of his Son and the Son will make much of his Father. And one day all those whom the Son has purchased will be presented holy and blameless before the Father. Not only will we be glorified but creation itself will be fully subjected to the authority of the Son who will restore all things for the glory of the Father.

When all is said and done, it is obvious that we were not created unto ourselves to bask in our frail, finite-selfworth, but rather we were created for nothing less than an infinite triune God who has rescued us from our damnable self-interest and has made us alive unto Himself.

Therefore, take joy in that which God takes joy in, God.