God: We Were Always On His Mind
The doctrine of the Trinity has been with us for more than 1,700 years. Most Christians consider it to be one of the “givens” of the faith, and don’t give it much thought. Theologian J.I. Packer noted that the Trinity is often considered a piece of “theological lumber” that no one pays much attention to.[1]
But whatever your level of understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, one thing you can know for sure: The Triune God is committed to including you in the wonderful fellowship of the life of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not just a doctrine about God, but a glimpse into Christian life.
Communion
The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there are not three Gods – there is only one. The only true God is the God of the Bible: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
How can three be one? This is difficult to put into words, but let’s try. The Father, Son and Spirit, we might say, live inside one another, that is, their life is shared, each one in the other.[2] There is no such thing as the Father apart from the Son and the Spirit. There is no such thing as the Son apart from the Father and the Spirit. And there is no Holy Spirit apart from the Father and the Son.
Theologian Colin Gunton put it this way: “God is…a communion of persons existing in loving relations.”[3]
Where do we fit in this picture? When we are in Christ, we are included in the fellowship and joy of the Triune God. The Father receives us and has fellowship with us as he does with Jesus.
The love for us that God demonstrated in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ is the love the Father has always had for us. He loved us before we believed and he will always love us. God says that you belong to him, that you matter to him. The Christian life is all about love – God’s love for you and God’s love in you.
God did not make us to be alone, or solitary creatures. We were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and part of that is to be created for loving relationships, for communion with God and with one another.
Why does this matter? The same love that the Father, Son and Spirit have within the Godhead, shared with each other, is shared with us in Jesus Christ. Michael Jinkins describes it this way:
Through the self-giving of Jesus Christ,…God shares God’s own inner life and being in communion with us, uniting us to himself by the Word through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus the God who is Love brings us into a real participation in the eternal life of God.[4]
Is that too “theological” sounding? Let’s make it simpler. Paul told the pagans at Athens that we all “live and move and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28). The God in whom we live is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, each existing in the other in perfect communion and love.
The Son became human so that we humans can join him in a perfect relationship of love, the same love that he shares with the Father and the Spirit. We learn this from God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ in the Scriptures.
- “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also” (John 14:6-7).
- “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?… Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10-11).
- “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20).
- “I ask…on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (John 17:20-21).
- “In him [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things…by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19-20).
Salvation flows from God’s love for and faithfulness to humanity, not from a desperate attempt to repair the damages of sin. “He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). God’s gracious purpose for humanity existed before sin entered the picture. He had the “repair” planned even before the problem began – the problem did not catch him by surprise.
God has assured our future — as Jesus said, “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). He enjoys giving his life to us. Jesus has taken us with him where he is (Ephesians 2:6).
God’s plan is that he will live with us forever (Revelation 21:3). Another way of saying it is that he doesn’t want to live without us – he does not want to be God without us. Karl Barth wrote, “[God] does not will to be without us, and He does not will that we should be without Him.”[5]
God has purposed to never be without us. He reconciled all things, all people (Colossians 1:19-20). We often forget that, but God never does. It was his plan from the beginning. Since he knows all things, he knew that we would sin. Jesus knew that he would have to become a human and die for our sins. He knew that even before he started, but he created us anyway, because he loved us. He wanted to share his love and goodness with us.
In God’s embrace
In Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit by the will of the Father, we human beings are graciously and lovingly embraced — hugged by the triune God. That is what the Father intended for us from the beginning.
He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace. (Ephesians 1:4-6)
The story of redemption does not start with sin — it starts with God’s never-ending love for humanity. In the Incarnation, Jesus became one of us and made us one with him. Through the Incarnation, God includes us humans in the all-embracing love that the Father, Son and Spirit have for one another.
God made us for this very reason—so we can be his beloved children by being united to Christ. This has been God’s will for us from before creation.
He has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth. (Ephesians 1:9-10)
Through the Incarnation of the Son, Jesus Christ, humans are already forgiven, reconciled and saved in him. The sin that entered the human experience through Adam cannot hold a candle to the overwhelming flood of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. “Therefore,” the apostle Paul wrote, “just as one man’s trespass [Adam’s sin] led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Romans 5:18).
Universal salvation?
The church is made up of people who have come to faith in Christ. But Jesus’ sacrifice applies to all (1 John 2:1-2). The price has been paid. The way is open for the human race to come home to God.
Will everyone enter the joy of knowing and loving God?
Jesus will attract all humanity to himself (John 12:32), but he does not force anyone to come. Love does not insist on getting what it wants (1 Corinthians 13:5). God wants everyone to come to faith (1 Timothy 2:4), but he does not force anyone. God loves every person (John 3:16), but he doesn’t force anyone to love him — love has to be voluntary, freely given, or it is not love.
Only those who trust Jesus are able to love him and experience the joy of his salvation. Those who don’t trust him, who refuse his forgiveness and the salvation he has already won for them, can’t love him and enjoy fellowship with him.
Those who don’t want the life that God offers won’t be forced to have it. Perhaps they don’t care. They don’t want to live with God in a communion of love. They prefer to be selfish, to write their own rules, to go their own way, even when there are unpleasant consequences to it. They would rather be “free” than happy.
For those who consider God their enemy, God’s constant love for them is grossly annoying, as if God is meddling in their life and judging them for not being as good as he is. God’s love is a constant reminder of their deficiencies. The more they are confronted with his love, the more they hate him. For those who hate God, life in God’s world is hell.
As C.S. Lewis put it, “The damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”[6]
Or as Robert Capon explained: “There is no sin you can commit that God in Jesus hasn’t forgiven already. The only way you can get yourself into permanent [trouble] is to refuse forgiveness. That’s hell.”[7]
Always on his mind
The doctrine of the Trinity is far more than a creed to be recited or words printed on a statement of faith. The central biblical truth that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit shapes our faith and our lives as Christians. The wonderful and beautiful fellowship shared by the Father, Son, and Spirit is the fellowship of love into which our Savior places us through his life, death, resurrection and ascension (John 16:27; 1 John 1:2-3).
From before all time, the Triune God decided to share his love and life. That’s why he created humans – to bring us into the fellowship and joy that Father, Son and Holy Spirit share (Ephesians 1:4-10). In Jesus Christ, God’s Son, we have been made right with the Father, and in Jesus we are included in the fellowship and joy of the Trinity (Ephesians 2:4-6).
Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension are proof of the unwavering commitment of the Father to his purpose of including humanity in the joy and fellowship of the Trinity. Jesus is proof that the Father will never abandon us. In Jesus, the Father adopted us and made us his beloved children, and he will never abandon his plans for us. Salvation is the result of the Father’s ever-faithful love and power, proven beyond a doubt through Jesus Christ and worked out in us by the Holy Spirit.
When we trust Jesus to be our life, it is not an empty trust. He is our life in the future, and he is our life right now. He is our everything. In him, our sins are forgiven, our hearts are made new, and we are included in the life he shares with the Father and the Spirit.
Although we can say that we are saved by faith, it’s not really our faith that saves us. Our faith would do us no good unless what we believe is actually true. Faith means believing that Jesus has saved us; he has already done what we need for salvation.
Faith does not create salvation – it simply accepts what is already there and given to us. The faith that saves us is the faith of Christ. He is the one who was faithful in his life, death and resurrection.
This was God’s plan from the beginning. And he gives us faith as a gift to open our eyes to the truth of who he is — and who we are, as his beloved children. God’s eternal word of love for you will never be silenced (Romans 8:32, 38-39). You belong to him, and nothing in heaven or earth can ever change that.
[1] James Packer, God’s Words (Baker, 1998), 44.
[2] The communion of Father, Son and Spirit was referred to as perichoresis by the early Greek-speaking leaders of the church. They used the word in the sense of mutual indwelling. Other theological terms that describe this communion of the Father, Son and Spirit are coinherence (each existing within the other) and circumincessio (the Latin equivalent of perichoresis).
[3] Colin Gunton, The Triune Creator (Eerdmans 1998), 9.
[4] Michael Jinkins, Invitation to Theology (InterVarsity, 2001), 92.
[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2004, vol. 2, part 1, page 274.
[6] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Collier, 1962), chapter 8, page 127.
[7] Robert Farrar Capon, The Mystery of Christ (Eerdmans, 1993), 10.
For further reading:
- Invitation to Theology, by Michael Jinkins
- The Mediation of Christ, by Thomas F. Torrance
- Dogmatics in Outline, by Karl Barth
- Worship, Community and The Triune God of Grace, by James Torrance
- The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, by Fred Sanders
- On the Incarnation, by St. Athanasius
- The Christian Foundations Series, by Donald Bloesch (seven books)
- The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons, by Thomas F. Torrance
- The Trinitarian Faith, by Thomas F. Torrance
- The One, the Three, and the Many, by Colin Gunton
- Across All Worlds and The Great Dance, by C. Baxter Kruger
- The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, by Elmer Colyer
- How To Read Thomas F. Torrance, by Elmer Colyer
- The Humanity of God, by Karl Barth
- Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
- The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis
- Experiencing the Trinity, by Darrell Johnson
Author: Joseph Tkach; edited by Michael Morrison in 2026
