The Nature of the Trinity, Part 4: Emmanuel

“He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (Jn14:7)

“In beholding the Son, we see the Father.” (Athanasius)

Emmanuel – God with us. Jesus Christ is “the embodiment of the whole being of God,” the “perfect and proportionate image of God.” In The Crucified God Moltmann comments that the doctrine of the Incarnation holds that “God is not only other-worldly but also this-worldly; he is not only God, but also man; he is not only rule, authority and law but the event of suffering, liberating love.”

Torrance writes “that no human being has such a full and rich personal human nature as Jesus….Far from crushing our creaturely nature or damaging our personal existence, the indwelling presence of God through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit has the effect of healing and restoring and deepening human personal being.”

In Christ we have both Deity and the fullest expression of humanness as God intended it, lived in a relationship of love, obedience and dependence upon the Father, completely filled with the presence of God through the Holy Spirit.

Emmanuel – God with us. Migliore writes, “[i]n Jesus Christ we do not have less than God’s very own presence in our humanity,” and God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2Cor5:19).

If God truly is fully revealed in the Son, then God is good of heart and beautiful of character, full of grace and truth (Jn1:14).

God as Trinity must be the interpretive ground of all Christian understanding, for it is only in the Trinity that we can know God as the the eternally kenotic, perichoretic ‘I AM’ of love that is forever with us.

Emmanuel – God with us. God with us. God with us.

Hallelujah!