Heresy?
In posing such a question, you may wonder if I have strayed into heresy – I can assure you that this isn’t the case! I am not asking the question theologically. Evangelical Christians recognise and assent to the statements of the various creeds, some even reciting them as part of a religious litany at Sunday services. No, what I am asking is that we each consider how this biblical understanding of the nature of God works out in our personal experience. Do we experience God as three distinct persons – is this our reality?
God with us
I appreciate that some people hesitate to put much emphasis on experience, but a faith that is only theoretical isn’t a great deal of use here and now; surely it must be practical too, and that should entail being experiential. If we don’t actually experience God in our day-to-day existence, then he is like a distant ruler whom we pay homage to but have no relationship with. This is akin to the days of the British Empire, when people from far-flung nations owed allegiance to, and could be called upon to fight and die for, a monarch whom they had no experience of, who resided within a distant and foreign culture. God isn’t like that. He doesn’t demand allegiance from afar, as we can see in Matthew 1:23, where we read about Jesus being known as Immanuel, meaning God with us. See also Psalm 34:18 and Isaiah 41:10.
Trinity
The trinity is a difficult concept for us, mere mortals, to grasp, but that is no reason to conflate the three persons, or to refer to them interchangeably. God is in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; surely we need to relate to each as such. There is one God, but we experience the three persons distinctly. We should relate to them distinctly, too, and not simply for the nicety of being correct. To do so, we need to grasp some basic facts. Jesus, who was on earth and was directly experienced by his disciples at the time, is now in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father. The privilege that we have of addressing the Father has been won for us through Jesus’ death and resurrection. We can ask the Father anything in Jesus’ name – John 16:23: “In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you”.
Prayer
It makes no sense to me to address prayer to Jesus and then tag on “in Jesus’ name” at the end, almost as a formality. We pray in his name because we address our requests to the Father on the basis of the access that Jesus has won for us. This isn’t to say that we can’t ever talk to Jesus in praise and worship, but our prayer of petition should surely be addressed to our heavenly Father, as per the above quotation. I appreciate that for some readers, this will be challenging to hear. We may have been taught as children to address prayer to Jesus and never moved on from this. Many have a problem with ‘Father’ because of a difficult relationship with their human dads. We should recognise that our heavenly Father provides the pattern that earthly fathers are meant to follow, not the other way around. We can be assured that our heavenly father is, and will be for us, everything that we need him to be. Some might counter what I am saying by asserting that it doesn’t really matter how we pray because God knows our hearts, and the latter is certainly true; he does pay more attention to where our hearts are than to the words we speak. But the New Testament writers call us to be mature. I think that if we are to be mature Christians, we need to develop a solid, biblical understanding of the trinity, and to relate to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit aright.
God with us – still
This brings us to consider how we relate to the Holy Spirit. I use the word ‘relate’, because we need to have a direct experience of the Spirit – he is not a person somewhere in the background who we can simply ignore. In fact, the opposite is the case. Jesus was very real and tangible during his ministry, which we read about in scripture, but he ascended to be with his Father and made a deliberate point of assuring the disciples that, whilst they would see him no longer, he would ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit to be with them, and us, forever (John 14:16,17; 16:7). He is not a mere brooding presence but our comforter, which surely must entail a relationship. He is the one who stands up for us – our advocate – and also the one who imbues us with power to minister in Jesus’ name (Acts 1:8). Our experience of the Holy Spirit is how we normally experience God. The Holy Spirit is the member of the trinity who is with us now.
Reality
The subject of this topic is whether we experience the trinity as a reality, not just a theological construct that we go along with. So, let me ask this question directly: Is the trinity a reality in your own experience; do you have a clear relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Now, you might feel that, in all honesty, your answer needs to be negative. If this is the case, then there is a follow-on question: What will you do about this? You might decide that you are just going to ignore the matter and carry on as before. Alternatively, you could ask God to guide you into a deeper understanding and fuller experience of himself. If you ask, then I rather think he will do this for you. See Luke 11:9,10.
Impersonal?
From my own experience, I can tell you that I follow the pattern of the biblical authors in referring to ‘God’ in both spoken and written form, but it feels strange to do so because I relate on a personal level. The term ‘God’ seems impersonal, particularly if contrasted to my heavenly Father whom I speak with every day, to Jesus whom I know from the gospel accounts as well as being my Saviour and the Lord of my life, and the Holy Spirit whom I interact with and know as my Comforter, Advocate and the one who empowers me to minister in the kingdom. To continue in uncertainty is to lack clarity, to be less sure of our spiritual standing and authority, and unclear about the power that God imbues us with and is entrusting us to use for his glory.