“All saints, that are united to Jesus Christ their Head, by His Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with Him in His grace, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory: and, being united to one another in love, they communion in each other's gifts and graces...” That's part of Chapter 26 Of the Communion of Saints, found in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Newer publications on the doctrine of the Trinity have brought about focus to Christian community. God is one God, who exists in three persons, and these three are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. Maybe you remember the spiritually rich, traditional hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy...God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.”
Heeding the importance of and good gift of genuinely connected godly relationships cannot be emphasized enough. Too easily we go along in life stringing loose acquaintances together, one after another, like pearls on a string, and we're satisfied with this low-level acquaintance necklace. One specific danger of the loose string of acquaintances is how we're disconnected from one another in our day to day roles. If we're only living at the acquaintance level, then we'll miss the other community aspects of who we are as husband, wife, mother, father, welder, homemaker, grandparent, painter, cab driver, girl scout volunteer, elder, coach, music teacher, student, gardener, coin collector or what have you. Often we're only known in one role. But we have many roles, and those roles overlap. Working at our wider, more thorough connections in life with their multifaceted applications takes effort. We are given to settle for the splintered approach knowing one another in one safe, most-often acknowledged, and self-protected role. We like our freedom. The Trinity shows us both the oneness in being, who God is, and oneness in doing, what He does. For us, being together and doing things together is the work of a lifetime.
G. Mark Sumpter
No comments:
Post a Comment