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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 13:11-14
In 13:14 we have a threefold blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” This threefold blessing involves the Triune God, for here we have the grace of Christ the Son, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
In the Old Testament we also have a threefold blessing, the blessing pronounced by the Levitical priesthood at the end of Numbers chapter six. In this threefold blessing the Triune God is implied. Numbers 6:24-26 says, “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” First we have the blessing related to the Father: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee.” Second, we have the blessing related to the Son: “The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee.” Third we have the blessing related to the Spirit: “The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” The Levitical priests surely treasured this blessing. However, it cannot be compared with the blessing in 2 Corinthians 13:14. What we have in Numbers 6:24-26 is a mere blessing, that is, a blessing without enjoyment. But in 13:14 what we have is not only a blessing; we have God in His Triune Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
To speak of the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is actually to say that the love is God, that the grace is Christ, and that the fellowship is the Holy Spirit. Thus, we have God the Father as love, we have God the Son as grace, and we have God the Spirit as fellowship. This means that we have the Triune God in a direct way as our enjoyment. What we have is not merely a blessing from Him or by Him.
In the New Testament the real blessing is the Triune God Himself. As we have pointed out, this blessing is threefold, a blessing of grace, love, and fellowship. With love as the source, grace as the course, and fellowship as the transmission, the Triune God reaches us to be our life, our life supply, and our enjoyment. Now in a practical way we can enjoy the Triune God all day long. This is our unique New Testament blessing.
The grace of the Lord is the Lord Himself as life to us for our enjoyment (John 1:17; 1 Cor. 15:10), the love of God is God Himself (1 John 4:8, 16) as the source of the grace of the Lord, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the Spirit Himself as the transmission of the grace of the Lord with the love of God for our participation. These are not three separate matters, but three aspects of one thing, just as the Lord, God, and the Holy Spirit are not three separate Gods, but three “hypostases...of the one same undivided and indivisible” God (Philip Schaff). The love of God is the source, since God is the origin; the grace of the Lord is the course of the love of God, since the Lord is the expression of God; and the fellowship of the Spirit is the impartation of the grace of the Lord with the love of God, since the Spirit is the transmission of the Lord with God, for our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, with Their divine virtues. Here the grace of the Lord is mentioned first, because this book is on the grace of Christ (2 Cor. 1:12; 4:15; 6:1; 8:1, 9; 9:8, 14; 12:9). Such a divine attribute of three virtues — love, grace, and fellowship — and such a Triune God of the three divine hypostases — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — were needed by the distracted and confused, yet encouraged and restored, Corinthian believers. Hence, the apostle used all these divine and precious things in one sentence to conclude his lovely and dear Epistle.
In the preceding paragraph we twice used the word hypostases. This word requires further explanation. The singular form of the word is hypostasis. It is anglicized from the Greek. It is composed of two Greek words: hupo, a preposition that means under, and stasis, a word that means supports or stands forth. Hence, this word refers to a support under, a support beneath, that is, something underneath that supports. The Greek word hupostasis is used in 9:4 and 11:17. This word means the groundwork on which some superstructure is founded; hence, foundation, ground; thence, as in 9:4 and 11:17, confidence. If we have the proper groundwork or support underneath, we then can have confidence.
Some dictionaries associate the word hypostasis with the three Persons of the Trinity. This meaning of the word, given in certain dictionaries, is an interpretation. The word hypostasis does not mean person. But theologians have used it to refer to the three Persons of the Godhead, to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Actually, the Father, Son, and Spirit are three hypostases, that is, supporting substances of the Godhead. In other words, the Godhead is composed of the supporting substances of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This means that if these three hypostases were taken away, the Godhead would lose its substance.
Certain ancient teachers of the Bible used the word hypostases to refer to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Other theologians spoke of the three hypostases as denoting the three Persons of the Godhead. This use of the word person has led some into the error of tritheism, the doctrine that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three Gods. As we have pointed out a number of times, W. H. Griffith Thomas has said that we should not press the word person too far, lest we have the doctrine of tritheism. Thus, it is not entirely safe to use the word person in this way. Nevertheless, we may need to use it temporarily. For instance, we use it in one of our hymns (Hymns #608): “What mystery, the Father, Son, and Spirit, in Person three, in substance all are one.” But even if we use this term temporarily, we wish to make it emphatically clear that we have only one God, the unique God. Nevertheless, God is triune: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The term hypostases is an attempt to convey the truth of the three-one God.
Second Corinthians 13:14 is a strong proof that the trinity of the Godhead is not for the doctrinal understanding of systematic theology, but for the dispensing of God Himself in His trinity into His chosen and redeemed people. In the Bible the Trinity is never revealed merely as a doctrine. It is always revealed or mentioned in regard to the relationship of God with His creatures, especially with men created by Him, and even more with His chosen and redeemed people. The first divine title used in His divine revelation concerning His creation, Elohim in Hebrew, is plural in number (Gen. 1:1). This implies that He, as the Creator of the heavens and the earth for man, is triune. Concerning the creation of man in His own image, after His own likeness, He used the plural pronouns, “us” and “our,” referring to His trinity (Gen. 1:26) and implying that He would be one with man and express Himself through man in His trinity. Later, in Genesis 3:22 and 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8, He referred to Himself again and again as “us” concerning His relationship with man and His chosen people.
In order to redeem fallen man, that He might still have the position to be one with man, He became incarnated (John 1:1, 14) in the Son and through the Spirit (Luke 1:31-35) to be a man, and lived a human life on earth, also in the Son (Luke 2:49) and by the Spirit (Luke 4:1; Matt. 12:28). At the beginning of His ministry on earth, the Father anointed the Son with the Spirit (Matt. 3:16-17; Luke 4:18) for reaching men and bringing them back to Him. Just before He was crucified in the flesh and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), He unveiled His mysterious trinity to His disciples in plain words (John 14—17) stating that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son (14:9-11), that the Spirit is the transfiguration of the Son (14:16-20), that the Three, coexisting and coinhering simultaneously, are abiding with the believers for their enjoyment (14:23; 16:7-10; 17:21-23), and that all the Father has is the Son’s, and all the Son possesses is received by the Spirit to be revealed to the believers (16:13-15). Such a Trinity is altogether related to the dispensing of the processed God into His believers (14:17, 20; 15:4-5), that they may be one in and with the Triune God (17:21-23).
After His resurrection, Christ charged His disciples to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19), that is, to bring the believing ones into the Triune God, into an organic union with the processed God, who has passed through incarnation, human living, and crucifixion and has entered into resurrection. It is based upon such an organic union that at the conclusion of his second Epistle to the Corinthians the apostle blesses the believers with the blessed Trinity in the participation of the Son’s grace with the Father’s love through the Spirit’s fellowship. In this Trinity, God the Father operates all things in all the members in the church, which is the Body of Christ, through the ministries of the Lord, God the Son, by the gifts of God the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4-6).
The entire divine revelation in the book of Ephesians concerning the producing, existing, growing, building up, and fighting of the church as the Body of Christ is composed of this divine economy, the dispensing of the Triune God into the members of the Body of Christ. Chapter one unveils how God the Father chose and predestinated these members in eternity (vv. 4-5), God the Son redeemed them (vv. 6-12), and God the Spirit sealed them as a pledge (vv. 13-14), thus imparting Himself into His believers for the formation of the church, which is the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all (vv. 18-23). Chapter two shows us that in the divine Trinity all the believers, both Jewish and Gentile, have access unto God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Spirit (v. 18). This also indicates that the Three coexist and coinhere simultaneously, even after all the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. In chapter three the apostle prays that God the Father would grant the believers to be strengthened through God the Spirit in their inner man, that Christ, God the Son, may make His home in their heart, that is, may occupy their entire being, that they might be filled unto all the fullness of God (vv. 14-19). This is the climax of God in His Trinity to be experienced and participated in by the believers in Christ. Chapter four portrays how the processed God as the Spirit, the Lord, and the Father is mingled with the Body of Christ (vv. 4-6) for the experience of the divine Trinity by all its members. Chapter five exhorts the believers to praise the Lord, God the Son, with the songs of God the Spirit, and give thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, to God the Father (vv. 19-20). This is to praise and thank the processed God in His divine trinity for our enjoyment of Him as the Triune God. Chapter six instructs us to fight the spiritual warfare by being empowered in the Lord, God the Son, putting on the whole armor of God the Father, and wielding the sword of God the Spirit (vv. 10, 11, 17). This is the experience and enjoyment of the Triune God by the believers even in the spiritual warfare.
The Apostle Peter, in his writings, confirms this trinity of God for the believers’ enjoyment by referring them to the election of God the Father, the sanctification of God the Spirit, and the redemption of Jesus Christ, God the Son, by His blood (1 Pet. 1:2). And John the Apostle also strengthens the revelation of the divine Trinity for the believers’ participation in the processed Triune God. In the book of Revelation he blesses the churches in different localities with grace and peace from God the Father, Him who is, and who was, and who is coming, and from God the Spirit, the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from God the Son, Jesus Christ, the faithful Witness, the Firstborn of the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth (1:4-5). This blessing of John to the churches also indicates that the processed Triune God in all He is as the eternal Father, in all He is able to do as the sevenfold intensified Spirit, and in all He has attained and obtained as the anointed Son is for the believers’ enjoyment, that they may be His corporate testimony as the golden lampstands (1:9, 11, 20).
Thus, it is evident that the divine revelation of the trinity of the Godhead in the Holy Word, from Genesis through Revelation, is not for the study of theology, but for the apprehension of how God in His mysterious and marvelous trinity dispenses Himself into His chosen people, that we as His chosen and redeemed people may, as indicated in the apostle’s blessing to the Corinthian believers, participate in, experience, enjoy, and possess the processed Triune God now and for eternity.
