The
point of this passage is that the Trinity because of the love and
will of the Father has made it so that we experience and participate
by the Holy Spirit in his self-revelation in, through, and as Jesus
Christ, a revelation that transforms us. Now I have the arduous task
of telling you what that means. It first of all means that we can
know the Trinity who is otherwise unknowable because he has revealed
himself to us through and as Jesus Christ according to the gospel and
because of that knowledge, the knowledge of personally knowing him,
we somehow participate now in that self-revealing through the work of
the Holy Spirit. To say that we can know the Trinity is a bold
statement because we have all been enculturated by a philosophy of
science that says everything that exists can be known and understood
by us because we have the ability to know and understand and what we
mean by knowable is that an object can be observed and measured or at
least proven to exist by mathematical formula or by its effects on
other things.
For
example, this cookie is an object that we with our ability to know
and understand things can know and understand. We can know and
understand its ingredients right down to their sub-atomic make-up.
We can know and understand the processes of chemical interactions
that take place as it is transformed by heat from a doughy mixture of
ingredients to what we call a cookie. We can know its smell and most
importantly it’s taste. We can know it as intimately as taking it
into ourselves by consuming and digesting it so that it becomes part
of what we are. And finally, if it’s effect on us was profound
enough, we could say it has become part of who we are because it has
changed us. The cookie was so good I am now a cookie lover when
before I was agnostic with respect to cookies. In the end there is
something strangely sinister about this way of knowing and
understanding; the object we want to know and understand sooner or
later ceases to exist because in our wanting to know it we have
consumed and destroyed it.
Well,
so much for the cookie. When apply this philosophy of science to
persons it begins to break down a bit. Rule number one: human
persons are not objects to be known the way we know a cookie. To
attempt such a thing would be, well, cannibalism. The human body can
be known as an object, but the human person, the human being, is a
mystery we cannot ultimately know. My wife Dana is not an object for
me to observe, manipulate, or consume in my efforts to know and
understand her. Dana is a thinking, feeling, and willing subject
meaning she is a person. She is not the object of my desire, but
rather the subject, the person, whom I desire to know. I can know
thing’s about Dana; her likes, dislikes, and habits for example.
But there is a limit to which I can know of her as a person. I
cannot know what it is to be Dana. If I could, it would be evil.
That would mean I could objectify, manipulate, and consume her at the
core of her being. When we call a person evil it is because they
attempt to do just that. We all feel very violated when we sense
someone is trying to objectify us or manipulate us or consume us for
their own ends.
Martin
Buber, a Jewish biblical scholar and theologian from the early
twentieth century wrote a book called I
and Thou
in which he says we cannot really know another person. We can only
know the change that comes about in us from having encountered that
person. I cannot know Dana as Dana is in her person, but I can know
the change her person brings about in me in our relationship and that
is if I’m willing to let her person have an effect on me. We as
persons know one another by the way we have been changed by relating
to one another. If my relationship with Dana has not changed me,
then I have not let myself be vulnerable enough to let Dana truly be
present in my life. She would be just an object in my life. Her
thoughts, abilities, giftedness, love, support, and even her
dysfunctions all have an effect on me that changes me. She does not
do this intentionally for that would be manipulation. Thus, we can
never know what it is like to be another person. We can only know
the change a person has caused within us by means of a personal
relationship.
Now
let’s talk about knowing the Trinity. The Trinity is not knowable
as an object. The Trinity never offers himself to us as an object to
be known. The Trinity cannot be observed and manipulated. The
Trinity cannot be seen or measured. The Trinity cannot be proven by
reason or mathematics. The Trinity is not part of what makes things
make sense nor is the Trinity a part of the equation of the Theory of
Everything. The Trinity cannot be known by his actions nor the
effect he has on things. The Trinity is utterly not knowable as an
object.
The
Trinity is even unknowable to us as a person except by his own
self-revelation through a living personal relationship. Indeed, the
Trinity is knowable because he reveals himself to us as subject, an
"I". The Trinity is Person and what we know of the Trinity
personally is the change that encountering him brings about in us.
This entails that we must have an encounter with him. The Trinity
does not have a physical presence that we can know other than as
Jesus Christ God the Son incarnate who lived faithfully for us, was
put to death by us for us, and was resurrected from the dead and sits
as a human at the right hand of the Father; this Jesus risen and
ascended makes himself known to us by the Holy Spirit. So, we say
the Trinity is spirit, meaning a person to whom we can relate – not
a force, not an essence, not an energy; but rather a person. Just
like my being in relationship to Dana, we cannot know the Trinity
apart from the Trinity’s revealing of himself, a revelation that we
can only know because it renders a change in us. Let us now talk
about this change, our personal knowledge of the Trinity and its
effect on us.
Paul
says here in verse six that the Trinity spoke and said “Let light
shine out of darkness.” He is probably referring to the first day
of creation when the Trinity said let there be light. Please capture
that image. We would say that light shinning forth from darkness is
impossible because there is nothing in darkness that can produce
light both in a scientific terms and in a spiritual sense. But, the
Trinity speaks the Word and it makes light shine forth from out of
darkness. Now let us take that image of the Father speaking the Word
and making light to shine forth from darkness and apply it to our
hearts because he has spoken into our hearts the Word Jesus Christ by
whom he has revealed himself and by whom he has saved us by giving us
the Holy Spirit through the proclamation and hearing of the Gospel.
The Word is spoken to us by the proclamation of the Gospel, the
announcement of our salvation by Jesus Christ, a salvation that is
made real in us by the Holy Spirit who is the Trinity’s personal
self-revelation to us. By having met this Holy Spirit we are
changed, saved. We encounter the Trinity in his very person and know
the Trinity as the one who has rendered this saving change in us
through Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit in accordance to the gospel.
This
saving change, which is our salvation, is nothing short of being a
new creation according to the promise of the gospel. This saving
change one could metaphorically say is to experience the first day of
the New Creation. We know the Trinity by the saving change we
experience having encountered Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit
according the gospel. The change that we experience is that we now
know ourselves to be the loved children of the Trinity even though we
were dead in our sin. The Trinity has made light shine forth from
the darkness of our dead hearts.
That
is what Paul says is knowledge of the glory of the Trinity that we
see in the face of Jesus Christ who’s glory shines to us through
the gospel which is veiled to those who are perishing. When we see
the word glory in the Bible think the personal presence of the
Trinity. To have knowledge of the glory of the Trinity is to have
knowledge of the personal saving presence of the Trinity as it shines
forth in the face of Jesus Christ and touches us by means of the Holy
Spirit saying the word of the Father “you are my beloved child whom
I have made able to hear the Word of salvation that I have spoken to
my creation as Jesus Christ, my Son, your Lord and Saviour.”
That
saving change that happens in our hearts that comes about by
encountering the love and faithfulness of the Father towards his
children causes us to treat others with the same unconditional love
by which we have been saved. Light shines forth from the darkness of
our hearts so that when we relate to others the effect our persons
have on others is part of how the Trinity saves them. The light of
the Trinity shines forth from our hearts so that our personal
presence proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the
Holy Spirit to others. In my relationship with Dana, because she is
a Spirit-filled Christian, her presence that changes me is part of
the Trinity’s working to transform me as his child to be more the
image of Christ. So it is with each of us. Friends, be aware that
you are now part of the shinning of the Trinity’s saving light
simply because he has saved you from the darkness of this world. You
are part of the Trinity's saving “You are my beloved child” to
every one you meet. Be ever so careful to let it shine. Amen.
