As the Father and Son behold the infinite beauty and glory of the other they experience infinite, overflowing joy, and delight in, by, and through the Spirit. Each is the very heart and center of the others affections. We could say each is the unceasing, passionate "heartbeat" and central ¹focus of the other.
By beholding and loving the other and experiencing love and delight in that beholding, each member of our ⁶three person God experiences their ⁶greatest joy and glory (worth, significance, etc). They are passionately moved to extol or glorify the other and lazer focused on doing so. They have always delighted in each other from all eternity past and will continue for all eternity future with or without us.
Joy, love, and delight are the fruit of their beholding the infinite glory and beauty of the other. Experiencing infinite delight, joy and significance in beholding each other drives all their actions. Bringing greater joy and significance (glory) to the other (among and within the Father, Son, in, by, and through the Spirit first, but also ⁹overflowing to us as His image bearers) is their primary aim. This is what moves God to do everything He - they - do.
God calling us to love Him and our neighbor is simply an extention and reflection of what God is like i.e. this is who God is and He calls us to be like Him.
God is ⁸full because he already is - and has - perfect joy and infinite worth (glory) within Himself as the most significant (glorious) being of all. From Him everything else came and depends on for existance.
Actually He is not just full but ⁹overflowing. And this is because of the perfectly magnificent beauty, majesty and glory of each person within the Godhead. To behold the perfection of the other evokes infinite admiration, joy, delight, and love for the other in, by, and through the Spirit.
The Spirit is God, manifested by and in passionate love (breath) between the Father and Son. This is who God is. He is passionate love and He is infinite Spirit.
The Spirit is the life (energy, wind) and very breath of God. Without breath, God - like us - no longer functions. To breathe is to live and to live we must breathe. So it is with God.
The Spirit is central and vital to who God is. The Spirits role is unique from the Father and Sons role and vital to the relationship between them as well as emanating from and manifested by that relationship.
This means each person within the Godhead is continuously giving and receiving perfect love from the other who is equally perfect and their equal in beauty and love yet also unique in function. Each loves perfectly and evokes in the other perfect love and delight because of their unique and perfect beauty and glory. They are all God together, not separately. For God to be God, they all must be together in a perfect union of beauty and delight.
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
To Him be the glory forever! Amen
Because of this, God's love is other oriented and focused, not self focused. First between the Father, Son, and Spirit but also out to others who are like him i.e. In his image. In short God is not selfish but - as a community of 3, with each focused on the infinite beauty and glory of the other - full and overflowing.
When a husband beholds the beauty (glory) of his wife and partakes of it and a wife partakes of and experiences the strength (glory) of her husband it evokes within each a delight for the other. A delight so great that their Union is like another person. They are no longer two separate individuals but a new and distinct union of love.
In God all theses qualities are perfect - nothing can be added to or taken away from God for Him to be all that He is - and all this is without end i.e. we can never reach the full height, breadth or depth of our experience of the infinite God...ever. Throughout eternity we will increasingly experience and participate in more of our infinite God.
In light of who God is, He must be and is the center of all things. He is the most glorious, lovely, valuable, worthy and significant of all beings and things.
This is why He is always calling us to glorify Him. It's not because He needs us, but because we need Him in order to participate in all He created us to be and experience i.e. we are created to experience Him in the fullness of His beauty-glory. We are designed to find our greatest glory and joy in experiencing His. His calling us to glorify Him is the most loving thing He can do for us - as well as the most honoring thing we can do for him. Our praises of him throughout eternity will be the spontaneous response to beholding him in all his majesty and glory. Just like the praises of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father in, by, and through the Spirit.
God's life is also dynamic, not static - because of the infinite beauty of the persons within the Godhead. Each is infinitely beautiful and glorious; each captures and delights the heart of the other and is focused on the others infinite value.
What happens when you add us to this divine mix or dance? The love only increases (multiplies), not diminishes i.e. love flows among the Father and Son, in, by, and through the Spirit then out to us and back and forth between a greater number of others (who are in His image and as close to being like God as possible without actually being Him i.e. we are like Him in giving and receiving love but unlike Him, in that He is the Source of love and we are not i.e. we are the recipients and conduits of love not the cause).
We have the ³capacity to enter into this dance of divine love because we, ⁴like Christ, are like God himself... in His image. As His image bearers we are valuable and infinitely valued because we can display God (who is of greatest worth) in a way nothing else can (except Christ Himself, who alone did and does honor His Father perfectly above all others).
Does bringing or adding more to this divine dance "thin out" God's love? No, it increases, expands or multiplies it just like the love of parents can expand, increase, and multiply with each additional child. But unlike earthly parents God is the infinite source of life, love, and all created things.
And our love for each child is unique because of the uniqueness of that child and how they each can uniquely reflect back to the parents love and overflow that love and their image out to others in a way the others can't.
The more children there are, the more facets of God's glory and affections are displayed, experienced, and enjoyed.
What is the beatific vision? Click here to find out more.
For more on the self sufficiency (aseity) of God click here.
For more on the Christ being the only begotten of the Father click here.
For more on how God is relationship click here.
For more on whether God is dependent or independent click here.
For more on the life, love and Spirit of God click here.
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¹this is the model we build a Godly marriage on. Marriage best works as God designed it to, when each is focused on the other vs on themselves... with God as the focus and source of love to and for both.
²Which is all of us until our disconnection from God - who is the source of life and love - is repaired and we are fully restored.
³I say capacity because to enter into this Union we first must be restored to God through Christ due to our rebellious and ongoing distrust of God and the alienation between us and God, created by that distrust. This alienation must be addressed, resolved, and removed so we can be fully restored and reconnected to the Source of life and love.
Once it is and we are reconciled and restored, we become the full and perfectly qualified recipients of God's unobstructed perfect love as we were designed to be. As we come to embrace and rest in His perfect nonstop love, we are increasingly able to partake of that love in the same way the Father, Son, and Spirit do. This goes to the next level when we are glorified with God in ever increasing glory for all eternity.
There is legally no longer any obstruction between us and God in Christ. It is gone forever. So much so the very Spirit of God in all his holiness and infinite love now indwells us i.e. We are the temple of God and He now lives in us as perfectly clean vessels. Without Christ legally purifying us He could and would not.
However, practically - on our side of the union - a weak connection still exists because of our lack of perfect trust in the Father. Because of Christ we have perfect access to all God is but we must "plug in." Distrust is like a bad connection in a wire causing it to regularly short circuit and hinder the power from flowing freely and consistently through it to its intended end. But this is a separate matter. For more on this click here.
⁴The Father "begot" the Son from all eternity past, not in time (like us) hence He is the "only begotten" Son. For a discussion of this click here.
⁵That infinite affection moves God to do whatever will best draw us closer to him, so we might experience more of Him and participate in more of His love.
This often includes tests and trials, pain and suffering...but not always or forever. When we gain from the pain what we need to (i.e. a greater humility and dependence on God), we rise above that pain. Pain is still present (or maybe the circumstances causing it) but it's sting is removed because we receive it as it truly is...from the loving hand of God for our highest good and His greatest glory. Similar to the pain we experience in a workout. It hurts at the time but we know the outcome is good. To use a familiar expression, "no pain no gain."
To say God is love is to say God is dynamic passion or affections for another resulting in outward focus and loving action to and for others. As the Father beholds the glory and beauty of Son and the Son beholds the glory and beauty of the Father, their delight, joy and passion for each other manifests as the Spirit. The Spirit of love, joy, and delight between the Father and the Son is God for God is love and He is Spirit.
In the original Hebrew Spirit means breath (movement of air or wind) among other things i.e. the passionate and affectionate breathing of God for another who is infinitely glorious and beautiful.
Spirit (Greek)
Πνεῦμα (Pneuma)
Noun - Nominative Neuter Singular
Strong's 4151: Wind, breath, spirit.
The value of the Father, Son and Spirit is so immense and they're delight in the other is so great in beholding the other it moves them to bring joy to each other.
⁶We could say that love and delight is so real and intense it tangibly manifests as the Holy Spirit - i.e. the holy passion of God - as the 3rd person of the Trinity. We could argue this is in fact the over all manifestion of God who is both love and is Spirit. The very Spirit - passion/life - that binds the Triune God together.
⁷an analogy comparing God to a finite inanimate object - a generator - only gives a tiny sliver of truth, at best, in describing the infinitely overflowing God of perfect beauty, love, delight, and action. Clearly God is infinitely greater than anything created. Even more so of something mechanical. He is the cause and Creator of everything that is not God. He must be greater for without him nothing else would exist.
⁸our fullness, love, and fruitfulness as His children and bearers of His image is the overflow of beholding and participating in the beauty and glory of God in the same way He beholds and participates in the beauty and glory between and among the Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit.
⁹This resulted (and results) in an overflow of love and glory to others like Him as well as all the rest of creation.
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Grace to you
Jim Deal