The Trinitarian Vision
Summary
©C. Baxter Kruger,
Ph.D. 2012
From all eternity, God is
not alone and solitary, but lives as Father, Son and Spirit in a rich and
glorious and abounding fellowship of utter oneness. There is no emptiness in
this circle, no depression or fear or insecurity. The trinitarian life is a great dance of unchained communion
and intimacy, fired by passionate, self-giving and other-centered love, and
mutual delight. This life is
good. It is right, unique, full of
music and joy, blessedness and peace. Such love, giving rise to such
togetherness and fellowship and oneness, is the womb of the universe and of
humanity within it.
The stunning truth is that
this Triune God, in amazing and lavish love, determined to open the circle and
share the trinitarian life with others. This is the one, eternal and abiding
reason for the creation of the world and of human life. There is no other God, no other will of
God, no second plan, no hidden agenda for human beings. Before the creation of the world, the
Father, Son and Spirit set their love upon us and planned to bring us to share
and know and experience the trinitarian life itself. Unto this end the cosmos was called into being, and the
human race was fashioned, and Adam and Eve were given a place in the coming of
Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son himself, in and through whom the dream of our
adoption would be accomplished.
Before creation, it was
decided that the Son would cross every chasm between the Triune God and
humanity and establish a real and abiding relationship with us—union. Jesus was predestined to be the
mediator, the one in and through whom the very life of the Triune God would
enter human existence, and human existence would be lifted up to share in the
trinitarian life.
When Adam and Eve rebelled,
ushering in chaos and misery into God’s creation, the Father, Son and Spirit
never abandoned their dream, but wonderfully incorporated darkness and sin into
the tapestry of the coming incarnation.
As the Father’s Son became human, and as he submitted himself to bear
our anger, and bizarre blindness, and as he gave himself to suffer a murderous
death at our hands, he established a real and abiding relationship with fallen
humanity at our very worst—and he brought his Father and the Holy Spirit with
him. It was in Jesus himself, and
in his death at our bitter hands, that the trinitarian life of God pitched its
tent in our hell on earth, thereby uniting all that the Father, Son and Spirit
share with all that we are in our brokenness, shame and sin—adoption.
In the life and death of
Jesus the Holy Spirit made his way into human pain and blindness. Inside our broken inner worlds the
Spirit works to reveal Jesus in us so
that we can meet Jesus himself in our own sin and shame, and begin to see what
Jesus sees, and know his Father with him. The Holy Spirit takes of Jesus and
discloses it to us, so that we can know and experience Jesus’ own relationship
with his Father, and we can be free to live in the Father’s embrace with
Jesus. As the Spirit works we are summoned
to take sides with Jesus against our own darkness and prejudice, and take
simple steps of trust and change.
As we do Jesus’ own anointing with the Spirit—his own fellowship with
his Father, his own unearthly assurance, his own freedom and joy and power in
the Spirit—begin to form in us, while not diminishing but augmenting and
freeing our own uniqueness as persons.
The Spirit’s passion is to bring his anointing of Jesus to full and
personal and abiding expression in us as unique persons, and not only in us
personally, but in our relationship with the Father in Jesus, and in our
relationships with one another, and indeed with all creation, until the whole
cosmos is a living sacrament of the great dance of the Triune God.
An excerpt from The Shack Revisited, C. Baxter Kruger, 2012
