God is not an abstraction. The essence of God is not the law. The Essence is the trinity which is profoundly personal in a divinely personal way in that God is three persons, one God. We should understand that Jesus Christ represents the trinity and not the law – which can be the case of we have been raised in a scarcely Christian law-based version of Christianity. The nature of God is relevant to us in this way. The relationship of oneness in difference that is the Trinity is the relationship that God has to us in Jesus Christ. Participating in the divine nature, as some would have it, is not ours by law-keeping but ours in the ‘may they be one as we are one’ that Jesus prayed for in John 17. In Jesus we are joined to God, participating in God in a trinitarian manner. We are together with God in that kind of belonging.
MINDSET BY CHRIST “God’s unique trinitarian self-revelation created the framework of thought and speech within human existence in which alone it is to be understood and interpreted by us, the Faith once for all delivered to the saints.
TRINITARIAN EMBRACE OF HUMANITY “And it was in this way that under the creative impact of divine revelation there emerged the unique genre of literature handed down to us in the gospels and epistles of the New Testament upon which God’s self-revelation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit has imprinted itself, so that they convey to us proclamation and teaching which are implicitly trinitarian. It is as such that the gospels and epistles continue under God to mediate his revelation to us in history, and to be the canonical vehicles of the living Word of God to mankind.” (1) The point is that the nature of God is the nature of our relationship with God.
GIVEN TO US St. Catherine of Siena wrote “O Trinity, eternal Trinity! Fire, abyss of love ... Was it necessary that you should give even the Holy Trinity as food for souls? You gave us not only your Word through the Redemption and in the Eucharist, but you also gave yourself in the fullness of love for your creature.” MEAING IS LOVE Speaking of Love and its Source, “Nothing could be more relevant to your life than the doctrine of the Trinity. For life is meaningless to you unless you know life’s meaning. And the meaning of life, the ultimate purpose of life, the greatest good, the supreme value, is love. And the doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation for that, because it means that love ‘goes all the way up’ into ultimate reality, into the very essence of God. The doctrine of the Trinity means that God is love”- Peter Kreeft, Because God Is Real, (Ignatius Press, 2008), p.87. DELIGHT IN GOD’S DELIGHT OF LIFE According to Spurgeon, “The sacred Trinity think much of salvation,” therefore, he warned, “let us not neglect it.” Salvation, certainly, all of redemption showed God’s economic love for his creation. Furthermore, believers were not called to dry duty, but divine delight. A delight emanating from the overflow of God’s delight in himself, as one person glorified another. The overflow of this triune love led Spurgeon, “to see the traces of the Trinity in every act of grace.” (1) Grace is all around us. When we live the incarnation, we live in communion with the Trinity – not in a religious sense but in a celebration of the ordinary and the Everyday, in our work, the holiday and the joy of landscape, magpie and marmalade toast at breakfast.
(1)Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (pp. 34-35). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.