Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
John 14:10–11
“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”
Our study of the relations of origin in the Godhead has noted that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each have a unique personal property that distinguishes the persons. The Father alone is eternally unbegotten, the Son alone is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from (or is spirated by) the Father and the Son. As the church has thought about these divinely revealed truths, it has also sought to understand how these relations of origin do not divide the one divine essence. One doctrine emerging from this theological reflection is perichōrēsis.
Perichōrēsis is a Greek term for the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity. This term refers to the reality that the Father is in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, the Son is in the Father and in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is in the Father and in the Son. Another way of saying this is that the three persons of the Godhead occupy the same divine “space,” as the Reformed theologian Gerald Bray has stated. Of course, God has no spatial limitations, but we mean that the persons are coextensive with one another because They are God. Human persons are distinct from one another and apart from one another such that individual humans can be born and die, the total number of people ever fluctuating. This is not so with God. The three persons are distinct, but They are not apart from each other. There are three divine persons and only three divine persons. Where one is, the other two are as well. We do not add the three together to get the one God; each person is truly God. Therefore, to contemplate one person is to contemplate the entire divine essence, and to contemplate all three is to contemplate the entire divine essence.
This doctrine of mutual indwelling is necessary because the three persons are identical in essence and all have the same attributes of that essence. For example, the divine mind of the Father is the divine mind of the Son is the divine mind of the Spirit. This is not so with human beings, for while all humans have a human essence and the complex of attributes that make up that essence, Norah’s human mind is not Charley’s human mind is not Zachary’s human mind. Jesus Himself also teaches this mutual indwelling, as we see in today’s passage (John 14:10–11). Therefore, to be in fellowship with one divine person is to be in fellowship with all three and to lack fellowship with one divine person is to lack fellowship with all three.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Many people who do not trust in the Lord Jesus Christ claim to call on God as Father. Yet the mutual indwelling of the persons means that you can never have one divine person without the others. Thus, those who think that they can have God as their Father without also believing in Christ are only fooling themselves. But those of us who do rest in Jesus alone for salvation also have the Father with His love and protection.
For further study
- John 10:37–38
- John 14:15–31
- Romans 8:9–11
- 1 John 2:23
The bible in a year
- Leviticus 26–27
- Mark 2