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The Tenets of the Apostolic Church don’t begin by attempting to prove God’s existence,
nor with a description of His attributes. They don’t even begin with an appeal to
the authority of Scripture (although we do believe it – but that, rightly, comes later).
No, we begin somewhere much better, somewhere much more beautiful; we begin with the loveliest
truth of all. We begin with our faith in the God of Love - The Triune God, who from all
eternity and for all eternity is The Father loving His Son in the unity of the Spirit.
That’s who our God is! That’s the God in whom we trust! God isn’t just a bundle
of attributes or Philosophical necessity. God is a loving Father who eternally pours
out His love on His Son in the Spirit. Our God is three Persons united in love.
And that’s what we mean when we talk about God. When we talk about God, we don’t mean
the same thing as other religions. We don’t mean what many people in the West think of
when they think of God either. The God we’re talking about is the loving God. That’s
at the very essence of His being. God is Love. And He’s always been love. And He always
will be love. Because He’s the Triune God.
Some ppl think God’s mean or cruel (as if His wrath were what defined Him). After all,
if Jesus satisfied the wrath of God through His death in our place for our sin on the
Cross, then God’s wrath must be rather significant. And it’s true, the wrath of God is our greatest
problem. Yet God in His love came in the person of His Son to bear His own wrath for us, to
deal with our greatest problem.
But that’s just it, God’s wrath is our problem. It’s not who He is, but who we
are. God’s wrath is His response to sin, and He doesn’t sin, we do.
Think of it like this, before God created the world there was no wrath; there was no
sin for Him to respond to in wrath. Before God created the world, there was only perfect
love; the perfect love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit united together in love. So
God’s wrath isn’t eternal, but God’s love is!
Only the Triune God could be the eternally loving God. Any other sort of God would have
had to start loving at some point in time, when there was suddenly something for Him
to love. Any other sort of God couldn’t BE love in His very essence. Only the Triune
God can be love. Only of the Triune God can it be said ‘God IS love’
So we start our Tenets with the Good News that God is love. With the beautiful news
of the Holy Trinity. With the lovely news of the Father who eternally loves His Son
in the Spirit. Everything else depends on this.
The Trinity is the fundamental reality of the Christian faith. It’s not some sort
of complicated maths problem. Nor a scary, advanced doctrine for theologians. It’s
the very identity of our God.
And it’s the very foundation of the Gospel. For as the Father loves His Son, He wants
others to love Him too. As God’s love overflows from the Father to the Son in the Spirit,
His delight is for His love to keep on overflowing to us too, through the Son, by the Spirit.
At the Cross we see the overflowing love of the Triune God.