Receiving the Things of Jesus
By Linda Rex
June 12, 2022, HOLY TRINITY—Last week we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit, sent by Jesus from the Father, following Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. During our journey through the days on the Christian calendar, we have come to see the love of the Father expressed to all humanity as the Word of God, the Son of the Father, took on our humanity in the incarnation, lived our life, died our death and rose again, bringing all humanity in his glorified human flesh into the presence of the Father.
There at the Father’s side Jesus reigns supreme, and death, evil, and sin have lost their power over us. We are free now, in Christ, to love God and man, to be who God designed us to be as image-bearers of the divine One who is Father, Son, and Spirit, living as unique but equal persons in unity and perichoretic love. We celebrate the ascension and the coming of the Spirit, for now we find ourselves included in the midst of the intimate union and communion of the Father and the Son in the Spirit—included by faith in God’s very life and love.
During the season following Pentecost, we begin to look at what it means that Christ and the Father are present now in human flesh in the Person and presence of the Holy Spirit. What does it mean that God dwells with man even now in and through the Spirit? What difference does this make in our lives?
For many of my younger years, I believed that God was made up of the Father and the Son but that the Spirit was merely their power and essence, that he was not a personal being. I had missed all the scriptural references that quite clearly showed that the Spirit was a Person—the other Helper like Jesus—who made decisions, who gave gifts, who spoke and who listened. The biblical evidence was that what the disciples experienced and what Jesus taught about the Spirit, indicated that the Spirit was of the same essence as the Father and the Son, and was equal with them and yet uniquely related to them in that the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father.
The unique role that the Spirit plays in our lives is to take what is Jesus’ and to reveal it to us. Jesus forged within us the capacity to be temples of the living God—the dwelling place of God himself by the Spirit. What we find in the coming of the Spirit is that we can, by faith, participate in all that Christ did for us in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. His life as the beloved Son of the Father becomes our very own as we by faith are adopted as the Father’s beloved children. The perfected humanity of Christ becomes our very own as we trust in Christ’s finished work. What we discover when we turn away from ourselves and turn to Christ in faith is that God himself dwells in us.
The beginning of the human story was in God’s heart, as he determined to share life with his creatures in a unique and special way. We, as human beings, were designed from the beginning to reflect the nature of God and were given the capacity to make choices and to reject or accept God and his love. Our true way of being is to live in loving relationship with God and others. But we human beings have so often chosen instead to turn away from God and to determine for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, and to try to run this universe in a way which so often ends in death.
God knew, though, before he ever created us our capacity to reject him and to choose the ways of death. And he planned even then to come himself and do whatever it took to bring us home to himself. And so, we see that even before he created us, God had planned through the coming of his Son to include every human being in his life and to give them his Spirit so that they could live in union and communion with him forever.
Whatever we do as human beings, we need to realize that the truth of our being is found in the person of Jesus Christ and is present within us by the Holy Spirit. God wants us to awaken to the reality of what Christ has done in offering himself freely in his life, death and resurrection—by the Spirit we participate in his loving relationship with his Father. All of our life then becomes an expression of that loving relationship—we begin by the Spirit to reflect the qualities of Christ and begin to look like our loving heavenly Father, as we trust in Christ.
The Spirit is, as Jesus said, another Helper just like himself. When you see the Spirit, you see Jesus. When you see Jesus, you see the Father. The oneness of the Triune God is evident in their relationship with you through Jesus in the Spirit. How amazing it is that we each now live swept up into the life of the Triune God! But it is by faith in Jesus that we participate in and experience this reality. It is the Spirit who makes our experience of Christ’s intimate relationship with the Father and with us, real.
The Holy Spirit in you and me speaks to us the words of Jesus. Jesus said while on earth that he spoke only what he heard the Father say. This is why the apostle Paul said that when we walk in the Spirit, we won’t walk in our flesh. If Jesus is the truth of our being, then we want to walk in him, right? So, we follow the lead of the Spirit, who speaks to our hearts the truth about who Jesus is and how Jesus lives, and we won’t live in a way that is contrary to the truth of who we are in Christ.
The Spirit in us gives us guidance. When we read the Scriptures and ask for God’s inspiration and guidance, the Spirit enables us to discern the truth about Jesus and about ourselves. When we listen to inspired speakers who preach the Word of God in accordance with the truth, the Spirit enables us to understand it and moves us to live in obedience.
The Spirit places within us Jesus’ own heart and mind, and we discover we don’t want to do the wrong thing, but desire to do what is right in the Father’s sight. We find when temptation is strong and we turn to Jesus, that we are able to resist the temptation and make the God-honoring choice because Jesus’ choice is given to us by the Spirit. And when we don’t do what is loving and we experience the guilt that comes with failure to be true to who we are as image-bearers of God, the Spirit reminds us of the grace of God, enabling us to see that God knows all things and he does not condemn us—he forgives us.
On this Holy Trinity Sunday, we pause to ponder, in awe and wonder and gratitude, our amazing God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit, and who has included each of us in his life and love. How blessed we are, that we are never alone, but are always and ever held in God’s love, cared for and cherished, now and forever, as God’s beloved adopted children, in Jesus by the Spirit.
Heavenly Father, thank you for making us your very own, beloved and cherished, and for including us in your life. Thank you for the gift of your Spirit, who enables us to know you and live in relationship with you, all through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” John 16:12–15 NASB
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Our Life in the Trinity 