Christianity’s Trinity

There are two large contexts in which we may experience Christian life.  The first is basically understood in the context of what we may identify as the child (immature) Christian, and the other as the adult (maturing) Christian.  The first must precede the second: the second grows from the first.  The first relates to the fundamentals (irreducible requirements) for God’s acceptance of the penitent without denying himself in the perfect mercy and love of God.  Jesus hints of this status in his remarks to Nicodemus: that persons gaining acceptance with God must be born again.  Nicodemus pursues the matter so to understand it, and discovers that Jesus is using the human experience and applying it to the spiritual so to make a point beyond the context of nature to a supernatural one.  On this occasion Jesus and Nicodemus are discussing only the lowest common denominator of the Christian experience that admits the person of this faith to enter into the kingdom of God.  By the conduct of Nicodemus on the occasion of Christ’s crucifixion we may assume that Nicodemus embraced the concepts of Jesus to personal faith.  Nicodemus may have lived out the Christian life in the context of a child (whether early or late in life period, still a child, which is to say genuine in nature, but immature in competence to a sophisticated spiritual life incorporating the fullness of spiritual experience, affirmations, service, modeling, righteousness and the literal formation of the Christian experience as God would have it formed.)  The first gains admission to the status of acceptance in terms acceptable to the person of faith.  The second takes that status and surrenders to God to apply the plan and the will of God to all that is incorporated in the believer’s life – acceptable to God.  This is a significant difference in education, practice, belief, righteousness, culture than that found in the immature Christian.  This context is dependent upon the work of the Holy Spirit in a mutual development of the Christian for effectiveness in service for God, in the applications (righteousness) of the character of God, in the decline of some demands of humanity, in the move into the affirmations of God, and in personal factors (moral) related to the righteous individual and God.  Righteousness addresses character and forms self.

Nearly all denominations of the Christian faith have something to say about the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the members, and the life of the church as a representative of the God-head in human experience.  Some denominations and churches seem not to give much attention to making personal the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers.  The Holy Spirit is recognized, referred to from time to time, but many churches and their members shy away from personalizing the Holy Spirit to individual experience.  This is partly due to fear of extremism, to the follies of ignorance, and to preoccupation with understanding the initial experience which, in itself, invites considerable debate, evasion, misapplication and mystery.  If the basic experience requires extensive effort (perhaps treated casually) there may not be much left to cast the mature experience.  The redemptive experience requires the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the convert, but the Holy Spirit needs, as Christ does, the invitation to manage the life of the person interested in the mature Christian life context.  There is a difference between those who become Christians simply to protect their ultimate destiny related to immortality, and those Christians who become Christ’s disciples seeking not only to be disciples in the Apostolic meaning, but to become Christ-like in living, suffering and dying in the meaning of God to his children in the context of heaven and nature.

Many books have been written about Christian maturation.  Various words have been used to identify it as the: Deeper Life, Sanctification, Pentecostal Experience, Baptism of the Holy Spirit.  (The belief in the evidence of tongues identifying the initiation of the experience has continued, including both Catholic and Protestant groupings.  The differences among Christians acknowledging the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of maturing Christian is often related to human signs.)  Like much of life, it is unnecessary to dictate to God in what way, in what place, in what detail, he will do his work in the lives of Christians with a range of acceptable patterns of achieving his purpose.  Christian concern, if we have the will and faith, is to be living proof of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives – further up and deeper in.