My good friend Mikey Lynch gave me a book 1 year ago and I'm still going on it [terrible sign of the times]. But what's worse, it's the greatest of books on one of the grandest of all subjects that I have ironically neglected all my life, and in all my Christianity: The Trinity. Robert Letham's The Holy Trinity is the book I've been missing, in every way.
Most striking and significant for me personally is Letham's chapter on the importance of understanding the Trinity for our right response to God in true Christian worship and prayer. Apart from the fact that there would be no true Christian experience without a knowledge of the Trinity, Letham quickly and convincingly shows that authentically Christian worship and prayer is distinctively trinitarian.
I need to stop neglecting the New Testament's unique and insistent focus on God as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and how my knowledge of that Union is to shape my whole response to him.
I need a greater focus on the persons of the Trinity; that is, I need to be more Christ-ian!
"God-centred worship (can worship be anything else?) must, by definition, give center stage to what is distinctive of Christianity, the high-water mark of God's self-revelation in the Bible. Yet... In the West, the Trinity has in practice been relegated to such an extent that most Christians are little more than practical modalists. As Laats comments, "Instead of being in the centre of christian worship and thinking it has been marginalised"...
J. I. Packer's best-seller Knowing God (1973) has only seven pages out of 254 on the Trinity. He recognizes that for most Christians it is an esoteric mystery to which lip service may be paid once a year on Trinity Sunday. However, after this chapter is over, he carries on as if nothing has happened...After his first section on biblical foundations and his lengthy sections on historical development and modern discussion, Letham finishes the book with a section covering four critical issues: The Trinity and the Incarnation; The Trinity, Worship and Prayer; The Trinity, Creation and Missions; and The Trinity and Persons.
Most striking and significant for me personally is Letham's chapter on the importance of understanding the Trinity for our right response to God in true Christian worship and prayer. Apart from the fact that there would be no true Christian experience without a knowledge of the Trinity, Letham quickly and convincingly shows that authentically Christian worship and prayer is distinctively trinitarian.
"Our communion with God "consists in his communication of himself unto us, with our returnal unto him... flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him...
The worship of the church is the communion of the Holy Trinity with us his people... it is first and foremost something the triune God does, our actions initiated and encompassed by his...
The worship of the church is thus not only grounded in the mediation of Christ, but takes place in union with him and through his mediatorial work and continued intercession...
We worship the three with one undivided act of worship...
I need to stop neglecting the New Testament's unique and insistent focus on God as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and how my knowledge of that Union is to shape my whole response to him.
I need a greater focus on the persons of the Trinity; that is, I need to be more Christ-ian!
No comments:
Post a Comment