God's glory

Over the years, I've often repeated a truism I'd heard as a younger man concerning the sins typical of men during our youth, middle, and old age: we begin with sex, then move on to money; but we end with pride. The past few years this has come home to me with great intensity as I've watched men I respect suffer because of their pride. They have lost others’ respect for them. Their church or religious organization has imploded. Their leadership has become grossly attenuated. Their families have privately suffered severe conflict.

I’ve talked with my wife and closest pastor friends about this quite a few times the past couple of months and we have come to wonder whether we have not gotten things wrong with respect to what God hates? We think He hates rebellion and antinomianism—which He does, of course. His Word tells us that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.

But then this...

In part one, I wrote of the practical aspects of who God is as Trinity with a special focus on the Biblical truth that God is love with the Father as the source. This post will focus on Jesus Who conveys most clearly His Father because He is His Father's Son.

Apart from the Son, there is no Father; with no Father, there is no Son. The identity of each Person of the Trinity is tied to the others. This may be confusing but that’s because we’re not God. Nevertheless we benefit from this reality. It’s a matter of life and death.

As we saw in part one, the Trinity drives us to our knees and carries our prayers. Without the Trinity we don’t know how to pray. It shouldn’t be surprising that Jesus gave His disciples an insider’s view into what Trinitarian discourse (prayer) sounds like on the very night He was betrayed (John 17). His prayer is a dizzying revelation of the glory of the Father...