The Trinity – considering God

From a London pulpit in January 1855, these eloquent inspired thoughts have meant a tremendous deal to me:

“The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, "Behold I am wise." But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass's colt; and with the solemn exclamation, "I am but of yesterday, and know nothing." No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God . . .

But while the subject humbles the mind it also expands it.  He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe . . . The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatary. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning …” from the New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, and one saint of a man, Charles Spurgeon.¹

In honesty, I find myself woefully short when it comes to being able to teach about God the Father, so incomplete is my understanding of him.  I went back to a book I studied in Bible college, Knowing God,² where I found another marvelous explanation for this study of God:  We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.  The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God.

            Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble

            and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction

            and no understanding of what surrounds you.  This way you can waste

            your life and lose your soul.

Let me then ask you to consider for yourself that which I have been pondering, studying, and about which I have been asking God himself:     Who is God the Father?

Oh yes, I believe I ‘get’ who Jesus is, I believe I am beginning to understand the import of the work of the Holy Spirit, in and around me, and since the beginning of time . . . but how do I experience and relate to God? 

Understand that I considered diagramming the roles of the three Persons of the Trinity, for that is how my mind initially works; but it is so much greater than that!  That would sell short the glorious, holy, matchless name of God, as he cannot be reduced to functions and responsibilities on an org chart.  I wistfully thought, ‘If only I could go to a faraway place and study the Words of God and pray, and ask the God of the Universe to reveal himself, so that I might begin to fill in the mammoth-sized gaps in my working experience of the Father, but alas, I cannot do that!’   

And so I repeat:  consider for yourself that which I have been pondering, studying, and about which I have been asking God himself:      Who is God the Father? 

And once you and I have begun to partially understand his Majesty, how then shall we live?  For it does indeed require our response.

Christine 

PastorWoman.com

^{1 – http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0001.htm}

^{2 - Knowing God, J.I . Packer, Intervarsity Press, 1973.}