Part I - God

The beginning of the story is the Triune God. The Father (the eternal source and
wellspring of deity), His Beloved Son (who is the eternal “going forth” of all that
the Father is, the eternal Image, Word, and Radiance of the Father’s fullness), and
the Holy Spirit (who is the personal bond of union, the hypostatic love, the
fullness of God breathed out in ecstatic affirmation, eternally and reciprocally
flowing between Father and Son). This One True God—who is the perfection of
joy and fellowship within Himself—is the starting point of all that follows.

Boundless in His joy, boundless in His peace, boundless in His dynamism, God
lacks nothing and so creates out of the fullness and freedom of love (and love—as
we will see—must be defined as an outpouring of the self in order to
communicate God to the other. It is from THIS free motive that the Triune God
creates reality).

Because creation springs from the infinite freedom of Triune love, what God
creates cannot add or subtract from Him in anyway, which means that all of His
subsequent interactions with His creation will—like creation itself—flow wholly
from the unbounded freedom of His love. This is where the story begins...
Part II - Creation

God, who eternally enjoys the fellowship of Himself within Himself through the
reciprocal love of Father and Son in the Spirit, now creates a universe through
which He will externally communicate the excellence of His own internal life. All
things exist to communicate Godself to what is not God. Creation is, you might
say, the Triune God speaking His Name “out loud.”

Within this Theo-centric vision of creation, Humanity is the crowning moment

since, in Adam and Eve (two people bound together in a union of love), the Triune
God has placed an image or analogy of Himself as ruler over all things. The
Created world is to be an externalized re-presentation of the internal beauty of
God’s own life, with Adam and Eve—and their offspring—as the representatives
of God in the world. And as images, they are designed to live as God lives, that is
to say, to derive all their good from God Himself, knowing and loving the Tri-
Personal God as He knows and loves Himself and, therefore, communicating His
fullness to all of nature.

This is the second step in the story. All things are fit perfectly to God’s good
purposes...and yet, Creation is teetering on the edge of a dramatic upheaval.
Part III - Rebellion

Humanity was created to enjoy and so to declare the excellence of the Triune
God. That is what every longing in our heart, mind, and body exists for—as
mediums through which to know and enjoy and so communicate the supremacy
of the Father in the Son by the Spirit.

However, when presented with the option of rising up and taking a perceived
good for themselves (rather than waiting in humble submission for “every good
gift” to come down to them from the Father of Heavenly Lights, Js.1:17), our first
parents turned their backs on Him for whom they were made, put their
confidence in themselves, and ran after an illusory good.

This primordial act of rebellion—like a hammer blow to an aluminum rod—“bent”

the soul of humanity away from the God and toward Not-God. From this point on
the needle of desire in the human soul would point at anything and everything
except the Triune God, and so we would spiral into deeper and deeper
opposition to one another, to the world, and to our Maker.

The harmony of creation has fallen into dissonance...yet heard faintly in all the
chaos—like a silver bell amidst clashing symbols—is a single clear note of hope
(Gen.3:15)...
Part IV - Wrath

Having bent our souls toward “Not-God” rather than God, we spiral into self-
destruction, running after everything we think will satisfy—except the One for
whom we were made; and in this pursuit we devour each other, our world, and
ourselves.

But, even when our pursuit of “Not-God” doesn’t seem to cause harm (say, a
peaceful atheism or a calm, general spirituality), we are still opposing the One
True God because we refuse to submit to His supremacy. And opposition to God
(the source of all Good) is, ultimately, opposition to every Good, True, and
Beautiful thing.

So, all of humanity is alike under the “wrath of God.” This is both a passive and
an active wrath. Passive in that God’s wrath gives us over to run the damning
race that we’ve chosen for ourselves; active in that God’s wrath is His personal
opposition toward us and will—if unchecked—be poured out in final
condemnation (Rev.20:15).

God’s Wrath is what happens when God’s Love goes to war for the sake of the
Beloved....Ultimately, God’s Beloved is Himself within the Trinity, and—by our
bent nature—we are all enemies of God’s Beloved, and so all under His wrath...

Only if the enemies are made beloved ones, will the War of Love Passover their
heads.
Part V - Love

As self-made enemies of God, we all face the shattering power of God’s War of
Love. However—from the overflow of that same love—God sent forth His own
Beloved, His Image, His Word, His SON: Jesus Christ.

In every way like one of the rebels (except without rebellion), the Beloved One—
who is God—stands in the place of the damned race of which He has become a
part, bearing the totality of their “bentness” and all of its effects (sin, sorrow,
suffering, death) in Himself.

On the cross, the outstretched arms of Love Incarnate embrace and exhaust the
damning fury of Love at War for the sake of the rebel race. And as Love, in love,
is slain by Love so that the enemies in exile might be loved ones gathered
home—we see and know our God.

Yes, at the cross of Christ, the internal beauty of the Triune God—which the
universe exists in order to communicate—the beauty which has eternally been
the life and joy of Father, Son, and Spirit, is manifest with consummate clarity
within the sphere of Creation. For all of eternity, Calvary is YHWH’s definitive “I
Am.”

For those given eyes to see and hearts to receive this redemptive revelation, it is
a word of life...but for those who refuse the Name declared on Calvary, it will be
a word of death. May it not be so for any reading these words today!
Part VI - Resurrection
The War of Love against the enemies of the Beloved ends in peace when the Beloved stands in
place of the enemies so that the enemies might become beloved ones. Christ is crushed for us,
slain for us, damned for us, and joins His people in the indignity of death....

But then—beyond all hope—the Crucified One is raised up to newness of life. He is does not
merely come back from Death, rather He overcomes Death and becomes the First of a New
Humanity. If dying is like a seed going into the ground, then every other “resurrection” was an
instance of digging down and taking the seed back out of the earth...but it was still a seed and
it would still have to fall into the ground again. However, with the resurrection of Christ, the
seed falls into the earth and takes root and sprouts up from the soil as a flowering, fruitful
plant. This has never happened before, but the fact that it has happened now in Christ means
that the New Creation has dawned (2 Cor.5:17).

Yes, the risen Christ is the Morning Star of the New Creation, the Firstfruits of the Final
Harvest, the Light of Dawn whose presence heralds the decisive—and soon to be total—end of
the Night. And because the Risen Lord shares fully in our human nature, His resurrection is not
His alone, but the resurrection of humanity in Him (1 Cor.15:20-22)...and not of humanity alone,
but of the whole Creation who will enter into the freedom of the risen human race (Rom.8:20-
22).

Nature is like a fallen tent, and the human race is like the central pole. In Adam, that pole—and
the entire tent—collapsed. But God in Christ has entered the ruins of Nature, set the fallen
beam of humanity on His own shoulders, and—by raising humanity in His resurrection—raised
up the entire structure.

And yet, for some this will be a resurrection to life, for others a resurrection to judgment (Jn
5:29), the difference between the two all hinges on how one receives the gracious revelation of
God in the man who is crucified for His enemies and rises to make them His friends.
Part VII - Consummation
Through faith-union to God the Son, wrought by the indwelling Spirit of God, a once scattered
and rebellious people have become the unified and sanctified Bride of Christ. Because of the
incarnation of God in Christ, the Church truly is bone of God’s bones, and flesh of God’s flesh,
united in one Spirit with her Maker who is now her Husband

Where the risen Christ is, so also the Church will be. The day is coming when the people of
God from all times and places will join their Head and Husband in bodily resurrection within a
resurrected universe in which the beauty of God’s name as revealed in His Son will fill and
pervade all things even as the waters fill and pervade the sea.

And in that consummation of all things, the Harlot-Turned-Bride—the blood bought people of
God—will (by virtue of their union to God in their union to the Risen Christ), will drink from
the River of God’s own delight Who is the Spirit, and will feast on the Fullness of God’s own
house, Who is the Son.

She—we—will, for all eternity and with ever-increasing capacity, be gathered into the Joy of
God’s own Triune Life, carried on the wings of the Spirit’s endless unfolding of the Son’s
beauty further up and further in to the all-satisfying, inexhaustible, beatific ecstasy of all that
God is for her in the slain and risen Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the end for which humanity—and all the universe—was made: to be fully known and
loved by God in Christ and so to fully know and love God in Christ, and so to fully glorify God
in Christ....This is the consummation for which our mind, heart and body ache in every longing
that pierces this life. And it is to THIS great end that the Triune God calls us when He calls us
to come to Christ and die that we might rise with Christ and truly live. My hope for this series
is that all who read these words would answer that call and embrace the Crucified Christ as
Lord and God and Treasure, now and increasingly so for endless ages to come—amen.