The Divine Dance

After Jesus said this, He looked toward Heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You.” — John 17:1

Christianity, alone among the world faiths, teaches that God is triune. The doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one being who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity means that God is, in essence, relational.

The Gospel writer John describes the Son as living from all eternity in the “bosom of the Father” (John 1:18 NKJV), an ancient metaphor for love and intimacy. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus, the Son, describes the Spirit as living to “glorify” Him (John 16:14). In turn, the Son glorifies the Father (17:4) and the Father, the Son (17:5). This has been going on for all eternity (17:5b).

[. . .] What does it mean, then, that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit glorify one another? If we think of it graphically, we could say that self-centeredness is to be stationary, static. In self-centeredness we demand that others orbit around us. We will do things and give affection to others, as long as it helps us meet our personal goals and fulfills us. 

The inner life of the triune God, however, is utterly different.

The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self- giving love.

~ The Reason for God

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Joining Creation’s Dance 

“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love Him — these are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit. — 1 Corinthians 2:9–10

God did not create us to get the cosmic, infinite joy of mutual love and glorification, but to share it.

• We were made to join in the dance.

If we will center our lives on Him, serving Him not out of self-interest, but just for the sake of who He is, for the sake of His beauty and glory, we will enter the dance and share in the joy and love He lives in. We were designed, then, not just for belief in God in some general way, nor for a vague kind of inspiration or spirituality. We were made to center our lives upon Him, to make the purpose and passion of our lives knowing, serving, delighting and resembling Him. This growth in happiness will go on eternally, increasing unimaginably (1 Corinthians 2:7–10).

This leads to a uniquely positive view of the material world. The world is not, as other creation accounts would have it, an illusion, the result of a battle among the gods, nor the accidental outcome of natural forces. It was made in joy and therefore is good in and of itself. The universe is understood as a dance of beings united by energies binding yet distinct, like planets orbiting stars, like tides and seasons, “like atoms in a molecule, like the tones in a chord, like the living organisms on this earth, like the mother with the baby stirring in her body.”1 The love of the inner life of the Trinity is written all through it.

Creation is a dance!

~ The Reason for God

1. Rienstra, So Much More, p. 38.

Excerpted with permission from Go Forward in Love by Tim Keller, copyright Tim Keller.

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Your Turn

We were created to join in the dance with the triune God! God is relational and wants deep and fulfilling relationship with us. Let’s glorify Him in our lives with joy! ~ Devotionals Daily