Speaking of himself as the Son in the Trinity, Jesus said, "The Father is always with me."

Monday, 5/13/`13

Jesus was about to be deserted by his disciples. They would leave him alone; but he said he would not be alone because the Father was with him.

In a way each of us could say the same thing. We are never alone, because God is always with us. But when Jesus was saying the Father was with him, he seemed to mean it in a way that was special to him. It has me recalling the opening words of John’s Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

In that first chapter John will go on to say that the Word became flesh in the person of Jesus. So we are inclined to think that when Jesus said the Father was with him he was talking about their relationship within the Trinity.

The Trinity is so high above us that we feel we are incapable of understanding anything about it. But does that make it right for us to ignore what God is telling us. No, it doesn’t. Let me again go over what Chapter One of John’s Gospel seemed to be saying.

“In the beginning was the Word.” There, John seems to be thinking about the Greek philosophers who believed in something like Mother Nature. They called it the Logos, which is Greek for word.  So, John is just agreeing that the Word, what the Greeks called Mother Nature, was always there.

Next, John wrote, “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There he said that what Greeks saw as something subsisting only in Nature, actually had existence as a person outside and above Nature.

If John were speaking about anyone other than God, for him to day he was God and he was with God it would be just gobblydegook. To get at John’s meaning there I employ my imperfect version of what Aquinas said about this. Namely, God has a mental picture of himself, and that picture is three things. First, it is a complete copy of himself. And secondly, it is so pleasing that God never turns from it. Thirdly, it is so wonderful that he loves it.  

  

Next, John wrote, “All things came to be through him.” There, looking at his ‘brain child,” his mental picture of himself, he sees there all the forms that he will incorporate into the created universe.