Another verse that reveals the Triune God is 2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The grace of the Lord is the Lord Himself as life to us for our enjoyment (John 1:17; 1 Cor. 15:10), the love of God is God Himself (1 John 4:8, 16) as the source of the grace of the Lord, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the Spirit Himself as the transmission of the grace of the Lord with the love of God for our participation. These are not three separate matters but three aspects of one thing, just as the Lord, God, and the Holy Spirit are not three separate Gods but three “hypostases...of the one same undivided and indivisible” God (Philip Schaff). The love of God is the source, since God is the origin. The grace of the Lord is the course of the love of God, since the Lord is the expression of God. The fellowship of the Spirit is the impartation of the grace of the Lord with the love of God, since the Spirit is the transmission of the Lord with God for our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God with all His attributes. Here the grace of the Lord is mentioned first because 2 Corinthians is a book on the grace of Christ (1:12; 4:15; 6:1; 8:1, 9; 9:8, 14; 12:9).
Second Corinthians 13:14 is strong proof that the Trinity of the Godhead is not for the doctrinal understanding of systematic theology, but for the dispensing of God Himself in His Trinity into His chosen and redeemed people. In the Bible the divine Trinity is never revealed merely as a doctrine. Rather, it is always revealed or mentioned in regard to the relationship of God with His creatures, especially with men created by Him and even the more with His chosen and redeemed people. The first divine title used in God’s divine revelation concerning His creation, Elohim in Hebrew, is plural in number (Gen. 1:1). This implies that God, as the Creator of the heavens and the earth for man, is triune, and He created the universe in His trinity. Concerning the creation of man in His own image, after His own likeness, He used the plural pronouns, “us” and “our,” referring to His trinity (Gen. 1:26) and implying that He will be one with man and express Himself through man in His trinity. Later, in Genesis 3:22 and 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8, He referred to Himself again and again as “us” concerning His relationship with man and with His chosen people.
In order to redeem man so that He might still have the position to be one with man, God became incarnated (John 1:1, 14) in the Son and through the Spirit (Luke 1:31-35) to be a man, and He lived a human life on the earth, also in the Son (Luke 2:49) and by the Spirit (Luke 4:1; Matt. 12:28). At the beginning of the Lord’s ministry on earth, the Father anointed the Son with the Spirit (Matt. 3:16-17; Luke 4:18) for reaching men and bringing them back to Him. Just before He was crucified in the flesh and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), the Lord unveiled His mysterious trinity to His disciples in plain words (John 14-17), stating that the Son is in the Father and that the Father is in the Son (14:9-11), that the Spirit is the transfiguration of the Son (14:16-20), that the Three, coexisting and coinhering simultaneously, are abiding with the believers for their enjoyment (14:23; 16:7-10; 17:21-23), and that all the Father has is the Son’s, and all the Son possesses is received by the Spirit to be disclosed, revealed, to the believers (16:13-15). Such a Trinity is altogether related to the dispensing of the processed God into His believers (14:17, 20; 15:4-5), so that they may be one in and with the Triune God (17:21-23).
After His resurrection, the Lord charged His disciples to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). As we have pointed out, this is to bring the believing ones into the Triune God, into an organic union with the processed God, who has passed through incarnation, human living, and crucifixion and has entered into resurrection. It is based upon such an organic union that at the conclusion of 2 Corinthians Paul blesses the Corinthians with the blessed Trinity in the participation of the Son’s grace with the Father’s love through the Spirit’s fellowship. In this trinity God the Father operates all things in all the members in the church, which is the Body of Christ, through the ministries of the Lord, God the Son, by the gifts of God the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4-6).
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