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Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." -- Matthew 28:18-20
It has defied explanation for centuries. It remains a great mystery, and nothing in this world will ever compare with it, and yet it is true. Men and women have testified that they have seen, experienced and been indwelt by what they couldn't fully understand, but we have come to understand as the "Trinity". One God, the only God, who expresses Himself in three persons. In His Trinity God both cloaks and reveals Himself as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The best thing about the Trinity is that through the Trinity God is no longer hidden from us. He is no longer inaccessible. We can see Him as Creator of heaven and earth. We can see Him in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. We can experience Him through the power of His indwelling Spirit. God, who was at a distance, is now available to us all.
It's been suggested there's a fourth person in the Trinity who is essential to God's plan for His world. That came as a surprise for Pastor Ron. In the early days of his ministry when he was responsible for the Sunday School program of his church, Pastor Ron Delbene would stop in each class to read the Bible lesson for the day and talk with the children. Sometimes he would share a story from the Bible. He would only stay five or ten minutes in each class and then leave for the next classroom. The teacher would continue with the lesson. It seemed that the children really enjoyed the time he spent with them each week. In fact, they would be on the lookout for him.
One Sunday as Pastor Ron walked past one of the windows of the preschool room, a little boy cried out, "Get ready. Here comes Jesus!"
At the time, " Ron recalls, "I found the remark amusing." But there was something unsettling about it, as well. At the time Ron had a full beard and a white robe.
"I probably did look like pictures of Jesus that the child had seen," he says. As he thought more about the incident, he felt more and more uncomfortable about being mistaken for Jesus.
A few days later Ron shared the experience with a friend, who asked about his routine with the children each Sunday. "I give them each a hug," Ron answered. "Usually, two of them share my lap while I'm telling the story to the group." The friend immediately thought of Jesus blessing the little children on his lap. He said, "I wouldn't be surprised if some of these kids look back one day and wonder if they really did meet Jesus" in those special moments. This remark surprised Ron, and, in a sense, changed his way of thinking of his role with the children. From that moment on Ron would ask himself, "What am I doing each day to be more like Jesus?"
Pastor Ron discovered there is a fourth person in the Trinity, and that is the believer. All evangelism involves incarnation. That is, when we witness to our faith in Jesus Christ, the Word becomes flesh all over again and the flesh is our flesh. Many will never experience Christ until they experience him in us. That's why Jesus commissioned His disciples to preach the gospel in every land. That was the plan God chose to reveal himself. He could have written it in the sky. He chose to write His message on believers' hearts. And He calls us to share with others what Christ means to us.
At church one evening in her hometown in Sweden, Ingrid Widdell heard a voice. At first, she tried to ignore the voice by concentrating harder on the worship service, but the voice kept speaking to her, "Go down to the harbor!"
She tried to dismiss this notion by telling herself the harbor was in the roughest part of town. She wouldn't be safe going there by herself late at night. She imagined the drunks and prostitutes who roamed the deserted docks in the evening hours. There was no way she wanted to go down to the dock.
"I squirmed in my pew," she says, "until the service ended, then hurried home as fast as I could to put as much distance as possible between myself and this alarming idea. I actually slammed my door when I got inside, and at last the mysterious voice was silent."
A month later the voice was back, "Go down to the harbor tonight."
She was beginning to wonder if this voice was the voice of God. An elderly couple lived next to her who attended the same church. She thought maybe they could help her, so she went and told them about the voice. The elderly gentleman agreed to go with her to the dock that night. They found themselves on one of the ships among crewmen in various degrees of intoxication.
"Soon I found myself talking as rapidly about God as my English permitted, and how I had found a new life when I turned to Him for forgiveness," Ingrid recounts.
A sound startled her from behind. In the doorway stood a tall middle-aged man, holding an empty bottle in his hand and wearing the filthiest clothes she had ever seen. He had been listening to her.
"Ten dirty years have gone since I ran away from God," he told her.
Suddenly everyone was silent as this man talked about how his life fell apart because of his drinking. He once attended church and had a family but lost everything due to alcohol.
Ingrid started praying for guidance and then invited this stranger to church with her. "Will you come with me?" she asked him, "I will pick you up at eight o'clock."
She didn't know if she did the right thing or not inviting this man to go to church with her. When she went to the dock, though, he was waiting. This time he was clean-shaven and wearing clean clothes. Together they went to church. After the service she asked if he would like to pray with her and some of the others in another part of the church.
The man said he did. When this stranger got up from kneeling, "you could almost sense the inner light radiating from him and you could sense his new peace of soul."
That inner light was the Spirit of the Living God. The Word had become flesh – "his flesh." What a tremendous privilege to help someone experience that kind of transformation. And yet you and I have that privilege. We can be the incarnation of God's Spirit. Not in the same way that Christ incarnated that Spirit, of course. He was unique among all the people who ever lived. But in our own feeble way we can show the world God, too.
As we seek to live for Christ with His Spirit dwelling within us, He grants us His strength and power. That's what the Trinity is all about. God is no longer at a distance. We see him as Creator, we see Him in the life of Christ, and we experience Him as the Holy Comforter. And as the fourth person in the Trinity, we carry the Spirit of the living God everywhere we go.
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Rev. Charles Eldredge is a member of Maitland Church of the Brethren. He has a Facebook page and can be contacted by email: ce1133 @verizon.net.