In Sunday School we used to sing a song called "The Royal Telephone". I can't recall the exact words, but the gist of it was that Christians have a direct line to God. He's always on the other end of the line, ready to answer.
I haven't heard it for years, and I'm thankful for that. It was an appalling song! A generation grew up believing that God was far away but could be contacted 'long distance' We might be better off than the heathen, who could only shout and hope that God would hear them, but still the distance was maintained between ourselves on earth and God in heaven.
My understanding now is that God is distant from us morally in his holiness and perfection. But in Jesus he has lived among us (John 1:14) and by his Holy Spirit he continues to live within those who belong to him (John 14:17). When we pray "Our Father in heaven" we are not addressing someone "up there" or far away. "Father in heaven" simply distinguishes God from our earthly fathers. Earth and heaven are two different spheres of existence, not two distinct places.
So Paul could say even to non-believers "...He is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:27-28). He didn't mean that God is present in everything (which would be pantheism) but that no place or time is distant from God or outside his presence.
How does our relationship to God as Christians differ from that of non-believers? The answer, I think, is in our participation in the life of the Trinity. For all eternity Father, Son and Spirit have lived in a communion of love with each other, three distinct persons in one God, united in purpose and will. Through Christ's life, death, resurrection and ascension, God has opened up a way for us into this eternal life of his. When we belong to Christ we somehow enter into the life of the Trinity. We don't become God, but we become participants in the community of love which is God.
How? I don't know. We're told that as Christians we are 'in Christ' and the Holy Spirit is 'in' us (Romans 8:9-10). We are adopted as children of God - and the phrase 'child of God' is far more than just a synonym for 'Christian believer' (Romans 8:14-17). We are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6) and we have access to the Father, through Jesus, by one Spirit (Ephesians 2:18).
I could cite many other references, but what I'm starting to explore here (clumsily) is the idea that prayer involves the whole of the Trinity and our place in the life of the Trinity. God is not some distant being who has given us a phone card so that we can call him up every so often. Our relationship is much more immediate and intimate than that. Something far more wonderful is going on when we pray.
Hello Adam, thanks for your greetings and for taking time to comment.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had chance to look at the video you mentioned. But I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about the Trinity. It has been one of the central topics of discussion between myself and a Jehovah's witness lady who visits me regularly.
She has reminded me of how many verses in the New Testament seem to distinguish Jesus from God. There's quite a good case for arguing that Jesus could not be God, but must be something less than God.
Yet what I keep coming back to is the fact that people worshiped Jesus, and he made no attempt to stop them. Such behaviour would be quite blasphemous to any Jew who knew the Shema (as the Pharisees who opposed Jesus were well aware.)Yet God did not show his displeasure at this worship given to Jesus, as he did, for instance, when the people of Tyre and Sidon called Herod 'a god' (Acts 12:22) Rather he called him his Beloved and vindicated him by raising him from the dead.
I don't pretend to understand how God can be three and yet one, nor how Jesus can be both human and divine. But the more I come to understand of the love that exists within the Trinity, and of the 'co-operation' of the three persons of the Trinity in our salvation, the more I see how important the Trinity must be in the Christian life, including the way we pray.
Greetings Stella
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact,
the worship of men
i.e. kings, prophets, dignitaries;
is entirely scriptural!
This type of worship does not contradict the worship given to Almighty GOD!!
The following two articles explains what I mean:
The Worship of Christ
Defining the Term "Worship"
(In Herod's case, that was an entirely different matter i.e
Acts 12.22: It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.
No one ever said such things about Jesus throughout his ministry. This would indeed have been unacceptable.
Acts 12.23: he gave not God the glory:
Something Jesus would never do!The above two articles explain scriptural worship)
Consequently the Shema contradicts the notion of the trinity.
Jesus affirms the Shema as the greatest commandment.
[Mark 12.28ff]
Note the scribe's response:
(Mark 12:32) And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:Obviously then, neither Jesus nor the scribe were trinitarian!
So neither should we be!!
The video I recommended deals with the subject of the Shema.
Yours In Messiah
Adam Pastor
The Human Jesus
Hello again Adam,
ReplyDeleteI could respond by pointing out Peter's words to Cornelius in Acts 10:24-25. However, now that I've spent some time looking at your blog, I realise that whatever verses or argument I put up in support of a trinitarian view, you will respond with a ready and well-argued case for the unitarian point of view. Since the arguments for and against trinitarian theology have been going back and forth for centuries, it is unlikely that either of us will come up with anything new. (On that point, I'm curious as to why you write under the name of a 16th century anabaptist and ex-catholic priest?)
May I just add one reflection. It's unfortunate that in the past century or so, bible-based theologians and preachers have been so busy defending the deity of Christ against those who would deny it that the humanity of Jesus has been almost overlooked. The result has been that those who start reading the gospels for themselves, and discover there the fully human Jesus often feel that they've discovered a different Jesus to the one they've been presented. I think it's important to hold together both the full humanity and the full deity of Christ in order to make sense of what the New Testament says about him.
Since this is primarily a blog about prayer, I'd be interested to know what role you would assign to Christ and the Holy Spirit in prayer.