Finding the real God enables discovering the real life.– John 17:6-26
There are sometimes arguments about the nature of God. What is God really like? Is God just the figment of our imagination with each person deciding for themselves what their God is like and what characteristics their God will display?
Among people called Christians there is a conviction that God is unlike any other being and in fact is a tripartite (Trinitarian) being who is one in three entities at once. They claim it is important to believe this in order to really know the true God and to experience the true God who enables us to become all we are meant to be in creation.
Sometimes there are controversies about which part of the Godhead is the most glorious or if one part is more powerful than the other. Is it the creator father from whom all things come or is it the Godhead who became human and understands and connects with our humanity in a complete way or is it the Holy Spirit who indwells human beings and currently connects believers to God? Is the mysterious Godhead which dwells in the trinity equal in glory, or glorious in different ways, or indivisible in glory?
St. John, explains that the glory of God is not a competition between the three persons of the Godhead but complementary as made clear when Jesus, in John’s gospel says: CHPT 17:1-4, Father, the time has come, glorify your son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.
The glory of God is said to be revealed when men live life in imitation of God. St Anselm sums it succinctly saying: The Glory of God is man fully alive! This God life includes living forever or having eternal life. But Eternal life is not just living forever it is also living in imitation of God. It includes quality and not just quantity of life. Jesus shows God’s glory by imitating the Father perfectly. St Paul helps us understand by saying of Jesus in his letter to the church in Colossians: Col.1: For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.’
What does the perfection of God look like to humans? Paul describes it in the form of Jesus in his humanity. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Jesus),20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
There are many who urge us today to be all they we can be. The best way to do that is to focus on who Jesus Christ is and to be an imitator of him. Even when we fail to do it perfectly it will be the best way to be all that we can be.
