Written by Matthew Y. Emerson and Brandon D. Smith |
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
The point is clear: the single, perfect, pure communion of love between the persons is poured out on us, as we are loved by the Father because of our union with the Son, whom the Father loves. The love of God is poured out on us by the inseparable work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Trinitarian Unity in Communion
The word communion might bring to mind the Lord’s Supper that Jesus instituted before his death and has been practiced by Christians ever since (Luke 22:7–23; 1 Cor. 11:17–34). For now we will discuss the idea of communion more generally. Here is a simple working definition for communion in Christian theology: the sharing of fellowship among God and his people.
The eternal communion of Father, Son, and Spirit is the grounds for our communion with him and one another. Our triune God, simple and perfect for all of eternity, has always been the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Scriptures witnessed to the incarnation of the Son and the sending of the Spirit long before these events were made manifest in time and space. The Father did not “become” a Father at some point in time when he decided to create the Son with some unnamed heavenly mother. No, this would insinuate that the Father changed at some point, which would deny Scripture’s claim that God cannot change (Mal. 3:6). Further, this would insinuate that the Son was created, which would deny Scripture’s claim that he is the Creator, not a creature (John 1:1–3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 13:8). Rather, the Father and the Son shared a communion of love with the Holy Spirit in all eternity—indeed, “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
If God truly is one (Deut. 6:4), then we cannot treat the persons as a “team” of disconnected beings or three “members” of a “divine dance.” This way of speaking hints strongly at three divine beings who are one only by virtue of agreement or a unity of will.
This is basic anti-Trinitarian Mormon theology. Instead, it’s more fitting to speak the way the Bible speaks: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). This verse is simple and yet packed with rich Trinitarian theology. God is love. He’s not a collection of entities or beings who simply love one another, however deeply, which leads them to work together as some sort of heavenly taskforce. He doesn’t love sometimes and not love other times. He doesn’t wrestle between fluctuating emotions. No, it’s much deeper than that—unfathomably so. The best we can make sense of this is to say with John that Father, Son, and Spirit just are the one God who exists in an inseparable communion of love. God loves us as an outflow of his very nature—the one who loves perfectly and eternally.
This one God who is love exists as three persons who fully and truly are the loving God. Do the three persons love one another? Yes. But we say this only insofar as the Scripture gives us language to distinguish the persons from each other. However, if we exaggerate the oneness, we deny that there are three persons who exist in a perfect and pure life of inseparable, mutual love.
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Family is wonderful. It can also, at times, be volatile. Establish a regular rhythm of prayer together as a family. This can be as easy as praying at mealtimes. This regular rhythm, even if it is only at one meal a day, gives us an opportunity to go before the Lord whenever inevitable tensions arise. When a fight has just broken out, Jesus calls us to be reconciled. One way to clear the air is to ask for help in prayer. Something about the ordinariness of a mealtime prayer of thanksgiving makes such requests surprising but, most importantly, ordinary.

Parents are parables. Our lives tell stories to our children. The great gospel story that we hope our lives will tell is one of forgiveness. God forgives us in Christ, and a living witness of God’s forgiveness is a heart of forgiveness in us—a heart that not only receives, but gives. We must begin teaching our children about forgiveness with the gospel, but we must also become parables of forgiveness for them with our lives.
One of the most striking parables about forgiveness is told in the negative: the parable of the unforgiving servant. In the parable, a servant who owes much is forgiven much, only to turn around and demand from another the relatively little that was owed to him (see Matt. 18:21–35). This parable stresses how incongruous it is for the forgiven not to forgive, but the fact that Jesus stresses such an incongruity implicitly teaches us that we first become forgivers by being forgiven. That is why we teach forgiveness to our children by starting with the good news that we are forgiven because of the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.
The Heidelberg Catechism in its exposition of the Apostles’ Creed helps us understand the extent of our forgiveness in the gospel:

What do you believe concerning “the forgiveness of sins”?A. I believe that God,because of Christ’s satisfaction,will no longer rememberany of my sinsor my sinful naturewhich I need to struggle against all my life.Rather, by his graceGod grants me the righteousness of Christthat I may never come into judgment. (Q&A 56)

As outlined here, our forgiveness is lavish—secured in Christ and forever. The next lesson for our children is that if this is our forgiveness in the gospel, then so it should be when it comes to our forgiveness of others.
We teach our children that their forgiveness of others should look like their own:

Our forgiveness should be because of Christ, in honor of Him, just as God forgives us “because of Christ’s satisfaction.”

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McKinley is an engaging narrator who is conscious he’s standing on the shoulder of a giant. He’s crafted a book that is faithful, revitalising and, thankfully, trimmed of Ye Olde English. Occasionally, his preacher’s socks are showing when he drifts into overly formulaic three- and four-point chapters, but sometimes we all need little steps before walking in giant’s shoes.

Calling Jesus my friend has never sat well with me. Lord? Yes. Saviour? Yes. Prince of Peace? Yes. God? Definitely! But friend? That’s a very emotionally loaded term.
Is he like the kids I grew up with in the country, riding our bikes through fields of red dirt and purple Paterson’s curse? Or my teenage classmates who rolled their eyes at the uncool crowd?
Is he the wonderful saint who has always been willing to listen to my hurts over a warm meal? Or the distant friend who gives me the cold shoulder?
Just as some Christians struggle calling God “Father”, some of us struggle seeing Jesus as a friend. Into this space comes American Baptist pastor and author Mike McKinley’s edifying new book, Friendship with God. It’s based on the classic, Communion with God, written by 17th century English puritan John Owen. McKinley modernises Owen for the iPhone generation, respecting the source material but also adding his own reflections for those of us who perceive God as remote and distant.
Our Own Worst Enemy
As McKinley observes, people struggle with the concept of friendship with God despite the Bible’s assurances (Jn 15:13–14; 1 Cor 1:9; 1 Jn 1:3). First, it sounds too good to be true. Second, we don’t know how this friendship plays out in real life.
It’s easy to accuse God as being an absent friend, but that is blame-shifting. We’re the ones who aren’t naturally God’s friends: “we go about our lives thinking about ourselves. We focus on the things we have and the things we want to have” (9).
Ultimately, we were God’s enemies (Rom 5:10), spiritually dead (Eph 2:1), haters of God (Rom 1:30), and children of wrath (Eph 2:3) (10).
Best Friends Forever
So how did we become friends with someone like God? We couldn’t. Not by our own efforts.
Friendship with God is simply impossible—unless God himself makes it happen. He must act. He must do something to mend our relationship. All the cards are in his hands. (10)
Thankfully, God has acted. God the Father sent God the Son to die for our sins and defeat death. When God the Son ascended into heaven, God the Spirit was sent to give us new spiritual lives. God has initiated everything needed for us to be his friends.
As McKinley repeatedly points out, this God-initiated friendship then becomes a two-way street. To be in union with Jesus means we must be in communion with God. Always. He reminds us, “Because we are in Jesus and the Holy Spirit lives in us, we have a lot in common with God now.” (12). We must love the same things our friend loves, and delight in the things that please him. We do this by ongoing prayer, love, delight, obedience, and sharing in the Lord’s Supper (12). 
And amazingly, our affections need to be focussed on more than just Jesus. Any authentic friendship with God must be directed to each person of the Trinity (15).
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