One Body in the Image of the Trinity
Church is not something we go to. Church is something we are. We forget this so easily, and the church becomes a social club, one more event to check off on our social calendar. But we are the Body of Christ all the time, and as the one Body with many members, we are the image of the Holy Trinity. We are an expression of the shared love, the fellowship, and the unity of the Trinity. We represent, live out, and proclaim the self-expending, self-sharing, other-regarding, other-affirming, community-forming love of the triune God so that the world will believe that God so loved the world that He gave himself to save the world.
1. In the Image of the Holy Trinity
We believe in the Holy Trinity. We believe in the one, true, and only God that existed from eternity in three distinct persons: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The many is one and the one is many. They exist and work together in perfect unity. In the triune God’s being and life there is relationship, community, and fellowship. There is giving and receiving, a mutual indwelling of love. There is a mutual indwelling in each other, a “being-in-one-another,” where the triune persons are inseparably united in love. They pervade, permeate each other but they do not cease to be distinct persons. It is a unity of each in all, and all in each. Therefore, every act of God is the act of the one triune God. The Father does not act alone in the work of creation. The Son does not act alone in the work of redemption. The Holy Spirit does not work alone in the work of sanctification.
That’s why in the gospel of John, Jesus says so many times that He and the Father are one and that He is sent by the Father to speak the Father’s words, do the Father’s will, and work with the Father’s authority. Please read John at home. “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me … I am not here on my own authority but he who sent me is true … I know him because I am from him and he sent me” (Jn 7:16, 28-29).
“If you knew me, you would know my Father also… he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world…I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me, he has not left me alone, for I always do what pease him… I know him and obey his word” (Jn 8:19,23-29,42,54-55). “I and the Father are one … I do the works of my Father … the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (Jn 10:30,37-38).
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. … Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father … The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me … And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth…he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you … you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you … Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them … These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me” (Jn 14:6-27).
God is love. The life of the triune God is a life of mutually giving and receiving love, a shared life in community and fellowship. God is self-sharing, other-regarding, community-forming love. The holy love of God has its origin in the one called Father. His love is humanly enacted for the world in the sacrificial love of the Son. His love is the power of the transforming love of the Holy Spirit that works in our lives and in the world. The story of the Bible is “the great love story of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a divine love story in which we are all involved together with heaven and earth” (Jürgen Moltmann). In the eternal life of God, there are relations. There is communion in love. There is mutual self-giving, a “society of love” (Augustine) that is the origin and wellspring of God’s history of love for the world.
The love, grace, and fellowship of the Triune God are beautifully expressed in the blessing of 2 Corinthians 13:14, with which we sometimes end our services, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The God we know in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit is God over us, God for us, and God among and in us. He, the triune God, is the loving Father, the gracious Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion-creating Spirit of God.
The Holy Trinity turns upside down and changes radically our understanding of human power and relationships. The reign of the triune God is the rule of sovereign love, not the rule of force. His power is not coercive power but creative, sacrificial, and empowering love. The glory of the triune God consists in sharing life with others. The living, triune God loves in freedom and lives in communion. He wills to share this love and life in community with us.
2. We Are the One Body of Christ
And so in Christ and through the Spirit, God creates a new humanity, a new community, the church, the body of Christ. We are the one body of Christ. Jesus commands us to make disciples of all nations and to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19). As the one body of Christ, we are the image of the Holy Trinity.
We are baptized into the one body of Christ. “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many” (1 Cor 12:12-14). “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:26-29). “So in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Rom 12:5).
We are many. The one body of Christ consists of a rich and great diversity. We have many different gifts and different personalities. The church is multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-national, and multi-language. We are people from every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev 4:10). And yet, we are the ONE Body of Christ where there is no longer Gentile or Jew, slave or free, male or female, black or white, rich or poor. Christ is all, and in all. We, the many, are now the one Body of Christ. Just look at our church and then look at the global Body of Christ.
And the one body of Christ is the image of the Holy Trinity. When we are baptized in the Name of the triune God, we are incorporated into both the church and the trinitarian community. It is precisely as the church created in and assembling in the name of Christ that the church is an image of the Trinity. In our Christian life and practice, worship, and prayer, we are united with Christ by the Spirit and are drawn into the life of the triune God. Salvation is not only the rescue of individual souls but includes reconciled and transformed relationships between God and us, and with one another. Salvation is the new life in communion, fellowship, with God, and in solidarity with others, and this new life and new community begins already now. The divine way of life that is revealed to us in the shared life and love of the Holy Trinity, forms the basis for the new kingdom community that is represented in the Body of Christ. The human life created in the image of God finds its fulfillment only in relationship and in community with God and our neighbors; in the community of the Body of Christ.
3. Love!
And so, here in this world and life, we, as a church in the image of the Holy Trinity, are an expression of the holy love, the fellowship, and the unity of the Trinity. We represent, live out, and proclaim the self-expending, self-sharing, other-regarding, other-affirming, community-forming love of the triune God.
Jesus prayed in John 17:10-23, “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. … I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
The Bible tells us the story of God’s love. His love comes to the world through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit poured God’s love into our hearts (Ro 5:5). The relations and fellowship between the many members of the one body, our life and practice, prayer and worship, ministry and missions must reflect the mutual, self-giving, other-regarding, and community-forming love of the Holy Trinity.
That is why Jesus affirmed that the greatest commandment of all is this: “‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mk 12:29-31). After Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he told them that they, and so we, should wash one another’s feet as He, our Lord and Teacher, did, that we should do as He has done for us. And then He said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:13-17, 34-35). Read at home again John 14, focus on love.
Listen to these words, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. … If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us … In this world we are like Jesus… There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear… We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister” (1 Jn 4:7-21).
When we live as the body of Christ in the image of the Holy Trinity, then the power of the resurrected life of Christ by the Holy Spirit flows through us to others. Then the loving presence of God the Father in Christ flows through us to others. We will have God’s heart for the lost, and his outgoing and ingathering love will flow through us and invite others into this community of love. [Very important; take this in, reflect on this week — in most cases, we are the first encounter of unbelievers with the one true, living, and triune God. What do they see?]
Church is not something we go to. Church is something we are. We are the body of Christ in the image of the Holy Trinity, all the time, everywhere, and in everything we do. Christ-centered and Community-concerned, we are channels so that the love, grace, peace, and life of the triune God, of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, flow through us to the world.