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The whole blessed Trinity is "shy."

The Son says, "I will leave heaven to come to earth." This is something more than leaving a really nice location (like southern California) for a less desirable one (Chicago). In some way we don't fully understand, the Son freely chooses to leave the perfect oneness he has known for all eternity, to become like human beings in their brokenness and aloneness, to die on a cross, and to experience what Luther called "godforsakenness": "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But it's not just the Son who pays a price. The Father says, "I will offer my Son whom I love beyond words. I will see him be broken and rejected and killed. I, who have known only perfect oneness with him through eternity, will take on the anguish of estrangement. I will know the broken heart of a father."

And the Holy Spirit pays a price as well. The Spirit says, "I will be poured out on earth, and in mostly silent, invisible ways I will offer to lead and guide; never exalting myself, always pointing to the Son." To a large extent, the Spirit's promptings will be ignored or even denied. The Spirit will be quenched on Earth. The Spirit, to use New Testament language, will be grieved. The Spirit had never known grief through all eternity, but he will be grieved now, day after day, century after century. The Spirit says, "This price I will pay so that any who will might enter our fellowship."

Of course, comprehensive information about the inner life of the Trinity is beyond our grasp. Attributing to Trinity human kinds of emotions—like all our language for God—involves analogies at best. Still, there is a biblical sense in which God is anguished by the unbelief of his people, such as the wonderful reversal in Hosea 11: After a wrenching description of Israel's faithlessness and deserved judgment, the Lord says, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?"

The advantage of believing in the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for giving the right answer. Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so. To believe that two plus two equals four is to behave accordingly when trying to find out how many apples or dollars are in the house. The advantage of believing it is not that we can pass tests in arithmetic; it is that we can deal much more successfully with reality.

The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that at the core of reality lies not an isolated self but a community of humble love. So self-serving and disunity are not just wrong but doomed. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, this reality is like the law of gravity—we can never break it, we can only break ourselves against it.

John Ortberg is teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church and author of If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat and Love Beyond Reason.

Boethius's classic meditation "The Trinity Is One God, Not Three Gods" is available from Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

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February 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 2