What Abraham Could Not Hear

(as preserved by Dennis Kinlaw)

Henry Clay Morrison used to describe this scene in a powerful way. He would say:

I thought I heard a conversation on Mount Moriah. It wasn’t between Abraham and Isaac, it was between the first Person of the Trinity and the second Person of the Trinity. The second Person of the Blessed Trinity said to the first of the Blessed Trinity. “Father, this is not the last time we’re coming to this mountaintop, is it?”

And the Father said to the eternal Son, “No, Son, this is not the last time we’re coming to this mountaintop. It will be about two thousand years and we’ll be back here.”

“Father, when we come back the next time, it won’t be one of them on this altar, will it?”

The eternal Father replied, “No, Son, when we come back the next time, it won’t be one of them on this altar; it will be one of us.”

“It will be me, won’t it?”

And the Father said, “Son, yes, it will be you.”

The eternal Son looked into the face of the eternal Father and he said, “Father, when we come back the next time, and it’s me on that altar, and the knife’s raised or the spear is raised, and they’re ready to push it in, are you going to say, ‘Don’t touch the lad’?”

“No Son. We never ask them to do in symbol what we are not willing to do in reality.”

You Are Only Truly You in Relationship to Others

"But make no mistake. Moving churches in the West toward a trinitarian model of church life will involve a major paradigm shift away from our pervasive individualistic ways of thinking. Many Christians have bought into the cultural notion that religion is an individual, private matter and assume they can believe without belonging. We have to say to them, 'When you believed in Christ, whether you were aware of it or not, you entered into the fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and  the fellowship of every other Christian who is a part of that triune fellowship. Now you belong to everyone else who belongs. Your faith may be individual, but it’s not personal except in relationship. In fact, you are only truly you in relationship to others.' When we insist they are connected and call them to concrete relationships and practices that reflect their connectedness, we should expect resistance. Though people long for community, many are unwilling to count the cost necessary for it."

quotation from p.39-40 Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service / by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-

To Join the Dance You Must Get Close

"The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us; or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in the dance. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire; if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry."

C.S. Lewis

as quoted in Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service / by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-

Who Did God Love before Creation?

"All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that “God is love.” But they seem not to notice that the words “God is love” have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love. [Christians] believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else."

C.S. Lewis

quoted in Ministry in the image of God : the trinitarian shape of Christian service /  by Seamands, Stephen A., 1949-

Iron in the Fire, Fire in the Iron

Sadu Sundar Singh of India often used the example of the iron a blacksmith places in a red-hot coal fire. Soon the iron turns red and begins to glow like the coals, so you can truly say that the iron is in the fire and the fire is in the iron. Yet we know that the iron is not the fire and the fire is not the iron. When the iron is glowing, the blacksmith can bend it into any shape he desires, but it still remains iron. Likewise, he emphasized, “we still retain our personality when we allow ourselves to be penetrated by Christ.”

Sadu Sundar Singh, quoted in Nick Harrison, ed., His Victorious Indwelling  (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), p. 108. Citation from Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God