Forever Home in the Eternal Family of God

A Deeper Teaching by Pastor Kenton Cheek

God is three persons in one being: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The diety of each person in the Trinity is affirmed throughout Scripture and yet the Bible also affirms we worship the one true and living God. Trinitarian belief shapes preaching, teaching, leadership, worship, and pastoral care in that all ministry is to glorify the Triune God and welcome all humans into healthy, balanced relationship with Him.

The relational unity of the Trinity informs unity, community life, and relationships in the church by setting the example for all of us of perfect, harmonious, divine community and welcoming us into that community through justification, sanctification and glorification.  Perfect unity with the Triune God is the goal of our faith and as ministers we are to partner with God the Spirit in equipping the saints for the work of the Son’s ministry upon the Earth to the glory of God the Father.  Every member is a minister.

The triune nature of God forms my understanding of mission, discipleship, and spiritual formation by commissioning me to make disciples of all nations, immersing them in trinitarian reality by modeling and teaching obedience to the Way, the Truth and the Life. Each Person of the Trinity contributes to the believer’s daily life and ministry by the Father initiating salvation, the Son continually interceding on our behalf, and the Spirit applying all that God has for us to our lives by empowering, operating through gifts, bearing good spiritual fruit, and transforming the believer to become more like Jesus from glory to glory.

I show pastoral awareness when addressing misunderstandings about the Holy Spirit or the nature of the Trinity by pointing confused people back to the clarity provided by seeking the whole counsel of the Word of God regarding the trinitarian doctrine so vital to the balance and health of our faith. 

The doctrine of the Trinity is a theological solution, not a problem.  It is woven throughout the Old and New Testaments. I have explored the Trinity in the Old Testament in a previous post and will delve into the Trinity in the New Testament in the future.

To put the correct doctrine of the Trinity into correct practice in the life of the saint and the church as a whole is to welcome others into community, to learn and grow together, and to encourage greater unity.  The Trinity is our perfect example of what it means to live in loving, healthy, harmonious community.  We will see greater unity as each individual is remade in the spiritual image of the Triune God, which is accomplished in each believer’s life in partnership with the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.–John 1:1-5

The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.–Job 33:4

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

 I and the Father are one.–Jesus in John 10:30

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.–John 17:20-23

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.–II Corinthians 3:17-18