Earlier in this week, we noted that Paul preaches to the Athenians to help them understand that God is transcendently close. That’s good news. In this passage, Jesus is addressing his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion. He is offering them a word of comfort because he knows that after his crucifixion they will be scattered and afraid. So he promises them the gift of the Holy Spirit, which will be God’s presence with them and will comfort them and lead them into truth.
Then Jesus says something that expresses the very heart of our Christian hope: “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Christians believe that God exists eternally as a trinity of persons, existing together in love as the one God. Early Christian theologians used the phrase mutual indwelling to describe this truth. The three persons of the Trinity live in one another. Here Jesus is making that startling and beautiful claim: We too belong in that community of love. By grace, God is taking us into our truest home, which is the very life of God.
Not only is God near to us, but also we live in God and God lives in us. We have been invited to enter into the very heart of God’s life.
We come from the God of love—we are love’s offspring—and we find our truest identity in relationship to God as children of God becoming who we are meant to be. Now we see in Jesus our destiny: To live forever in God’s life, to live in the very heart of this Trinity of Love. Good news indeed.
God, thank you for taking me into your life and love. I long to find myself in you. May I have the grace to continue to grow as your beloved child. Amen.
In Acts, Paul visits Athens and finds the people worshiping various deities. He attempts to show them the one true God not by open confrontation but by understanding where they are in their own thinking and then engaging in conversation. This model is confirmed in First Peter: We should always be prepared to give reasons for our faith, but this should be done with gentleness and respect, not confrontation. The psalmist promises to make offerings in the Temple to the Lord because God has brought the people through a period of testing. The psalm thus also ties into First Peter, where the believers are being tested. Jesus tells his disciples in John that God will send the Spirit to empower them to demonstrate their faith by keeping his commands.
Read Acts 17:22-31. When have you searched for God? How did God’s nearness surprise you?
Read Psalm 66:8-20. What tests have you endured? How have you known God’s presence through times of difficulty?
Read 1 Peter 3:13-22. How does your faith help you determine what is right? How does it give you courage when doing what is right brings you suffering?
Read John 14:15-21. When have you felt encompassed by the Trinity? When has your identity as part of this family felt fragile?
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