2 We love the living God

Continuing contemplation from The Cape Town Commitment - today's section is hard to hear:

2 We love the living God

Our God whom we love reveals himself in the Bible as the one, eternal, living God who governs all things according to his sovereign will and for his saving purpose. In the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God alone is the Creator, Ruler, Judge and Saviour of the world.[6] So we love God - thanking him for our place in creation, submitting to his sovereign providence, trusting in his justice, and praising him for the salvation he has accomplished for us.

A    We love God above all rivals. We are commanded to love and worship the living God alone. But like Old Testament Israel we allow our love for God to be adulterated by going after the gods of this world, the gods of the people around us.[7] We fall into syncretism, enticed by many idols such as greed, power and success, serving mammon rather than God. We accept dominant political and economic ideologies without biblical critique. We are tempted to compromise our belief in the uniqueness of Christ under the pressure of religious pluralism. Like Israel we need to hear the call of the prophets and of Jesus himself to repent, to forsake all such rivals, and to return to obedient love and worship of God alone.

B     We love God with passion for his glory. The greatest motivation for our mission is the same as that which drives the mission of God himself – that the one true living God should be known and glorified throughout his whole creation. That is God’s ultimate goal and should be our greatest joy.

‘If God desires every knee to bow to Jesus and every tongue to confess him, so should we. We should be “jealous” (as Scripture sometimes puts it) for the honour of his name -- troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honour and glory which are due to it. The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God) but rather zeal -- burning and passionate zeal -- for the glory of Jesus Christ. … Before this supreme goal of the Christian mission, all unworthy motives wither and die.’[8]  John Stott

It should be our greatest grief that in our world the living God is not glorified. The living God is denied in aggressive atheism. The one true God is replaced or distorted in the practice of world religions. Our Lord Jesus Christ is abused and misrepresented in some popular cultures. And the face of the God of biblical revelation is obscured by Christian nominalism, syncretism and hypocrisy. 

Loving God in the midst of a world that rejects or distorts him, calls for bold but humble witness to our God; robust but gracious defence of the truth of the gospel of Christ, God’s Son; and prayerful trust in the convicting and convincing work of his Holy Spirit. We commit ourselves to such witness, for if we claim to love God we must share God’s greatest priority, which is that his name and his Word should be exalted above all things.[9]

The Trinity is good news!

I deleted a comment yesterday, which is rare, but I won't allow spam by unitarians pointing to videos denying the eternal deity of Christ, and the Trinity. This new & readable article by Tim Chester on theologynetwork.org goes some way to explaining very positively why the Trinity is good news. Amen!

We aren't embarassed of this reality, nor do we keep it as a slightly curious hidden gadget no-one knows how to use. We rejoice in it, celebrate our life in it, embody it as His people, and worship the one true and triune God: Father, Son and Spirit.

Three in One, One in Three

Three in One, One in Three, God of my salvation,
Heavenly Father, blessed Son, eternal Spirit,
I adore thee as one Being, one Essence, one God in three distinct Persons,
for bringing sinners to thy knowledge and to thy kingdom.

O Father, you have loved me and sent Jesus to redeem me;
O Jesus, you have loved me and assumed my nature,
shed your own blood to wash away my sins,
wrought righteousness to cover my unworthiness;
O Holy Spirit, you have loved me and entered my heart,
implanted there eternal life, revealed to me the glories of Jesus.
Three Persons and one God, I bless and praise you,
for love so unmerited, so unspeakable, so wondrous,
so mighty to save the lost and raise them to glory.

O Father, I thank you that in fullness of grace
you have given me to Jesus, to be his sheep, jewel, portion;
O Jesus, I thank you that in fullness of grace
you have accepted, espoused, bound me;
O Holy Spirit, I thank you that in fullness of grace
you have exhibited Jesus as my salvation,
implanted faith within me, subdued my stubborn heart,
made me one with him for ever.

O Father, you are enthroned to hear my prayers,
O Jesus, your hand is outstretched to take my petitions,
O Holy Spirit, you are willing to help my infirmities, to show me my need,
to supply words, to pray within me, to strengthen me that I faint not in supplication.
O Triune God, who commands the universe,
you have commanded me to ask for those things that concern your kingdom and my soul.
Let me live and pray as one baptised into the threefold Name.

- From The Valley of Vision, puritan prayers [BoT]

Quote of the day: God Himself is a society

"The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. ... For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence) — to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone."

- G K Chesterton, The Romance of Orthodoxy, in Orthodoxy.

For a less polemical but still engaging take, have a listen to theologynetwork's first tabletalk on Islam and God as Trinity.

Quote of the day: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism

Dan has drawn our attention to the church calendar for a good reason - it's Gregory Nazianzus' day today! I've been enjoying a light reminder of the first 5 centuries in For Us and For Our Salvation by Nichols, so a timely quotation from good ol' Greg (329-390):

These words let everyone who threatens me today concede to me; the rest let whoever will claim. The Father will not endure to be deprived of the Son, nor the Son of the Holy Ghost. Yet that must happen if They are confined to time, and are created Beings ... for that which is created is not God.

Neither will I bear to be deprived of my consecration; One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. If this be cancelled, from whom shall I get a second? What say you, you who destroy Baptism or repeat it? Can a man be spiritual without the Spirit? Can he honour Him who is baptised into a creature and a fellow-servant? It is not so; it is not so; for all your talk.

I will not play Thee false, O Unoriginate Father, or Thee O Only-begotten Word, or Thee O Holy Ghost. I know Whom I have confessed, and Whom I have renounced, and to Whom I have joined myself. I will not allow myself, after having been taught the words of the faithful, to learn also those of the unfaithful; to confess the truth, and then range myself with falsehood; to come down for consecration and to go back even less hallowed; having been baptised that I might live, to be killed by the water, like infants who die in the very birth pangs, and receive death simultaneously with birth. Why make me at once blessed and wretched, newly enlightened and unenlightened, Divine and godless, that I may make shipwreck even of the hope of regeneration?

A few words will suffice. Remember your confession. Into what were you baptised? The Father? Good but Jewish still. The Son? ... good... but not yet perfect. The Holy Ghost? ... Very good ... this is perfect. Now was it into these simply, or some common name of Them? The latter. And what was the common Name? Why, God. In this common Name believe, and ride on prosperously and reign, and pass on from hence into the Bliss of Heaven. And that is, as I think, the more distinct apprehension of These; to which may we all come, in the same Christ our God, to Whom be the glory and the might, with the Unoriginate Father, and the Lifegiving Spirit, now and for ever and to ages of ages. Amen.

[Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 33, "Against the Arians," Paragraph 17; date: 380; source: Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol.VII - cited by Nichols.]

Quote of the day: monadic idolatry

...God also designates himself by another special mark to distinguish himself more precisely from idols. For he so proclaims himself the sole God as to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.

- Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, ch.XIII