The word ‘Trinity’ would not be coined for quite a few years after the books of the New Testament. It’s possible the term was in use by the middle of the second century, though the earliest written usage of the word comes from Theophilus of Antioch, about the year 180 AD. Nevertheless we can see a pretty detailed proto-trinitarian theology inherent in what Paul wrote: “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba! Father!’ ” (Galatians 4:4-6).

To understand this passage, we need to see that there is both an objective and a subjective factor visible in what Paul wrote. First, at a specific point in human history, God created an objective reality by sending the Son to accomplish redemption from our sins and our adoption as God’s children. That’s what God has done: that’s the reality that is there, whether we recognize it or not, established by God through the ministry of the Son, long before any awareness on our part. And second, God enables our subjective appropriation of this reality: God wants us to know and understand and enjoy the reality of this redemption. In order for that to happen, God sends the Spirit so that we can experience and recognize within our own hearts this redeemed relationship with God: and it comes out as a prayerful act on our part where we acknowledge and worship the Father.

But we keep messing up. We all experience that sneaky inner desire to grant ourselves permission to do things that we would not approve of in others. The Galatians had made the mistake of supposing that the way to overcome that – that is, the way to be a person of genuine goodness – was to learn and follow the rules. They had come to believe that if we all insist on strict enforcement of the rules, that will result in everyone doing what’s right. That theory is wrong, of course. We’ve all proven it wrong many times over, in all those situations where we ourselves have known what the right thing to do was, but we just didn’t feel like doing it, and so we didn’t. The in-order-to-be-good-just-follow-the-rules theory keeps running into my own stubborn rebelliousness. Yet many Christians today continue with that same misconceived theory.

Paul insisted, in contrast, that it is life in the Spirit that enables us to overcome the desires of the flesh (5:16). “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit” (5:25). The Holy Spirit is like a gardener growing choice fruit within our inner character: the qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (5:22-23) become more and more the essence of who we are. Thus we become good not by being rule-followers, but by being Spirit-followers.

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We pray, O Lord, that we may be responsive to your calling within our hearts: and especially that you would cultivate these fruit within us, so that we may be the children of God that you intend for us to be: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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