One of the attention-grabbing statements in Rob Bell’s book Love Wins, published a couple of years ago, was the statement that ‘Jesus rescues us from God’. Bell loves these potentially controversial yet thought-provoking sayings, and while this may on the surface sound ridiculous, put into the context of the surrounding paragraph, it might superficially seem to make sense:
Many have heard the gospel framed in terms of rescue. God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus has paid the price for our sin, and so we can have eternal life. However true or untrue that is technically or theologically, what it can do is subtly teach us that Jesus rescues us from God.
But in doing so, Bell has revealed his lack of Trinitarian thinking. Steve Chalke did the same a few years ago, when an evangelical storm in a teacup blew up around his suggestion that God might have been guilty of cosmic child abuse by beating up his own son on the cross. Neither of them intended to communicate that they really believed what they said, but they both inadvertently ignited some controversy.
What these two, and countless other Christians in recent years have started to do, is think of the Father (aka God), Jesus and the Holy Spirit as separate people. This is understandable given that we classically formulate the Trinity as ‘God in three persons’. But a person today is an individual, whereas 1700 years ago when the word ‘person’ was first used in this context, identity was far more rooted in community, family and relationship than individuality.
That means that the Christian Fathers who thrashed out the orthodox definition of Trinity were thinking more of three ‘persons’ in relationship, in community, together, rather than three individuals. But in our individualistic culture the imagery of the Trinity is stretched almost to breaking point, as we find it hard to conceive of three ‘persons’ in one being, unless it is evidence of a personality disorder. The postmodern church has become functionally tritheistic, simply because it is, on the surface, easier to reconcile.
But Bell is wrong: Jesus does not rescue us from God because Jesus is God. Chalke is wrong: God did not beat up Jesus; God took the beating personally on the cross.
Trinitarian believers need to learn to see God in Jesus as much as we see Jesus in us. Jesus had a very high Christology: He who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9). I am in the Father and the Father is in me. (John 14:11). I am the Father are one (John 10:30). In this latter verse the Greek implies one thing or one substance, rather than the more metaphorical being of one heart and mind.
Not only did Jesus self-identify with the Father, he co-acted with the Father – The Son can do nothing by himself… Whatever the Father does, the Son also does the same (John 5:20) and he co-spoke with the Father – I do not speak on my own initiative… I speak what the Father told me (John 12:49-50).
Even more radically, he then goes on to include to include us in this relationship of being and acting – I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you (John 14:20). Remain in me, and I will remain in you (John 15:4).
And his missional mandate includes us too: God seeking the lost in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:9) becomes Jesus seeking and saving the lost (Luke 19:10) becomes our mandate in the Father and the Son: As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you (John 20:21), empowered by the Holy Spirit, who abides with you, and will be in you (John 15:17).
When we see ourselves as part of this Trinitarian missio dei – God’s outreach to the world – we will find ourselves truly commissioned, sent, indwelt and inspired by the living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
