If we truly understand the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity, that will affect how we live as people who bear God’s image.
How the persons of the Trinity relate to each other.
At the center of the universe, the Trinity lives as a perfect community of love. Each person of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit – is eternal and uncreated. Together within the being of the One God, they experience a constant relationship of mutual love. More than that, they created us to be invited into their community. While this is unfathomable to our finite minds, one way to picture the relationships within the Trinity is like a dance, where the three persons move in and pour themselves into each other, and each is completely open to receive the love that is being poured in by the others. The Trinity is not rigid or static, but a relationship that is dynamic and alive.
[Related: How to Talk Rightly About the Trinity]
[Related: Who Is God? God as Trinity]
How our relationships can mirror the Trinity.
People enter into a relationship with God by trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In that relationship, God designed us as vessels into whom he would pour all of his love. Thus our greatest need – to be loved – is satisfied. As a result, our greatest desire – to love someone else – can also be released out of us. God designed us as vessels who will carry his love and pour it into others. As fallen people, we hunger and demand that others would love us. But as we are rooted and grounded in God’s love, we are filled to overflowing by God’s love, so we are able to pour it out to others. This is how we are invited into the Trinity’s relational dance.
How the Trinity makes a difference for us.
Christians are part of a much bigger story. As Christ-followers, we are given the mission of reflecting the image of God to the world. We have the privilege of bringing his larger kingdom to bear in the fallen creation. When you understand the Trinity as a community of love, and that you are designed to be a vehicle of his love, it changes you. You begin to see our own selfishness more clearly. We are aware of how you have acted out of motive to be loved back, rather than being released to love without conditions or demands. The Trinity is an intimate community, so personal that God longs for us to be caught up in the dance with him. He wants us to be energized by this kind of love in all we do and say. God is crazy about us. We’re his beloved. In Christ we are made worthy and he wants us to live and move with his rhythm of love.
When we were LDS our relationship with God was more about our performance. Although we called him Heavenly Father, our relationship with him was more like a master than a loving parent. It is liberating to know that we can have deep intimacy and inter-movement with the God we worship.
[Related: Making Sense of the Trinity]
[Related: Is the Trinity a Contradiction?]
[Related: How Can We Understand God?]
