God sends His Son

Today's Reflections 

      

God sends His Son

Jn 3:16-18

¹⁶God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

GOD IS ONE BUT NOT SOLITARY. Christianity arose in the matrix of Israel’s strict monotheism: there is only one God who must be loved and worshipped. But the Christians understood that when one has encountered God, one can no longer see God in isolation, but as God who acts, as God who seeks out human beings, as God who communicates. God is one but is not solitary.

God is the Father who creates the world, with man and woman as the crown of creation. When humanity falls, the Father sends his Son who becomes incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. God also sends the Holy Spirit upon Jesus, and in his resurrection from the dead, sends the Spirit, “Lord and giver of Life,” on all believers.

The divine persons are distinct from one another, but are bound together in love. The Son accepts to become a human being in loving obedience to the will of the Father who wishes that men and women be saved through him. The Son does not hold on to his equality with God, but empties himself, coming in human likeness (cf Phil 2:6-7). Upon completion of the Son’s mission on earth, the Father sends the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son. The Spirit does not speak on his own, but takes what is the Son’s and declares it to the disciples (cf Jn 16:13-14). Here we see that in the divine “triumvirate,” each person is attuned to the two others in loving and perfect harmony.

In Jesus’ resurrection, his disciples realize that he was not making empty claims when he called God his Father. He indeed is the Son of God, raised by the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so the Christians would begin to speak of God in relational terms. A clear example of this is Paul’s prayer of blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Cor 13:13). Much later, in the Gospel of Matthew, the “trinitarian formula” is used with the authority of the risen Christ: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19, emphasis added).