As the Father and Son behold the infinite beauty and glory of the other they experience infinite, overflowing joy, and delight in, by, and through the Spirit. They are the very heart and center of the others affections. We could say each is the unceasing, passionate "heart beat" and ¹focus of the other.
By beholding and loving the other and experiencing Love and joy in that beholding, each member of our 3 person God experiences their greatest delight and significance. Experiencing their own joy and significance in the beauty of the other is what stirs affections and drives their actions. Joy and delight is the fruit of their beholding the infinite glory and beauty of the other. Bringing greater joy and significance to another is what moves them to act (within the Father, Son, and Spirit first, but to us as His image bearers as well). God is full because he already perfectly has joy and significance within Himself as the most significant being of all on which everything else depends.
And this is because of the perfectly magnificent beauty, majesty and glory of each. To behold the perfection of the other evokes admiration, joy, delight, and love for the other in, by, and through the Spirit. The Spirit is God manifested in passionate love between the Father and Son. This is who God is. God is passionate love. He is life and the very breath of God. God is Spirit.
This means each person within the Godhead is continuously giving and receiving perfect love from another who is their equal, yet also unique while equally perfect in beauty and love. Each loves perfectly and evokes in the other perfect love and delight because of the perfect beauty and glory of the other. Yet these are all God together, not separately. For God to be God, they all must be together in perfect union of beauty and delight.
Because of this, God's love is other oriented and focused, not self focused. In short God is not selfish but is - as a community of 3 with each focused on the infinite beauty and glory of the other - full and overflowing. Our 3 person God is continuously engaged in giving, receiving and overflowing in love. God has never been alone (or lonely) from all eternity past, nor will He ever be. He is not moved to get or take but only to give because He is always full of love from and for another.
When a husband beholds the beauty of his wife and a wife beholds the glory and strength of her husband it evokes a delight within each for the other. So it is with God who, unlike us, is perfectly beautiful, all glorious and continuously overflowing in love toward another.
In God all theses qualities are perfect - nothing can be added to or taken away from God for Him to be all He is.
In light of who God is, He must be and is the center, the most valuable, and significant of all beings and things for without God their would be no beauty, no delight, no joy, no love, no us or creation... in short no life i.e. there would be nothing. Everything else that is other than God, is because of God. Nothing would be if He were not. The very existence of everything else is solely because of this dynamic, vibrant, nonstop overflowing God of love as Father and Son in, by and through the Spirit.
This is why He is always calling us to glorify Him. It's not because He needs to us to, but because we need to. We are designed to find our greatest glory and joy in experiencing His.
God's life however is dynamic not static - because of the infinite beauty of the other. Because each is infinitely beautiful and glorious, each captures and delights the heart of the other and is focused on the other. This results in love always flowing back and forth - out to the other and continually received (reflected) back. The infinite and glorious beauty of God is what drives and moves everything. God is life and love because he is the infinitely beautiful and glorious community of Father, Son and Spirit.
Add us to this divine mix or dance and love increases, not diminishes i.e. love flows out of God to us and back and forth between a greater number of others (who are in His image and as close to being like God as possible without actually being Him).
We have the ³capacity to enter into this dance of divine love because we, ⁴like Christ, are in God's image. As His image bearers we, like God, are valuable and infinitely valued because we can display God (who is of greatest value) in a way nothing else can (except Christ Himself, who has and does honor His Father above all others). In Christ we become the ⁵focus of His infinite affection in addition to the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Does adding more to this divine dance "thin out" God's love? No, it increases, expands or multiplies it just like a parents love expands and increases with each additional child.
And our love for each child is unique because of the uniqueness of that child and how they each can uniquely reflect our love and image in a way others can't.
The more there are, the more facets of God's affections are experienced and displayed.
What is the beatific vision? Click here to find out more.
For more on the self sufficiency (aseity) of God click here.
For more on the Christ being the only begotten of the Father click here.
For more on how God is relationship click here.
For more on if God is dependent or independent click here.
For more on the life, love and Spirit of God click here.
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¹this is the model we build a Godly marriage on. Marriage best works as God designed it to when each is focused on the other vs themselves.
²Which is all of us until our disconnection from God - who is the source of life and love - is repaired and we are fully restored.
³I say capacity because to enter into this Union we first must be restored to God through Christ due to our rebellious and ongoing distrust of God and the alienation it has created by us. Once we are reconciled to God in and through Christ, and become the unobstructed recipients of God's perfect love and embrace we are able to partake of that love in the same way the Father, Son, and Spirit do. So much so the very Spirit of God's infinite love now indwells us i.e. God Himself lives in us in a specific and deliberate way.
⁴The Father "begets" the Son from all eternity past, not in time (like us) hence He is the only begotten Son. For a discussion of Christ being the only begotten Son click here.
⁵That infinite affection moves God to do whatever will best draw us closer to him, so we might experience and participate in more of His love. This often includes tests and trials, pain and suffering...but not always or forever.
To say God is love is to say God is dynamic passion or affections resulting in action. As the father beholds the glory and beauty of Son and the Son beholds to glory and beauty of the Father their delight, joy and passion for each other manifests as the Spirit. The Spirit of love joy and delight between the father and the Son is God. God is love and He is Spirit.
In the original Hebrew Spirit means breath (movement of air) among other things e.g. passionate affection of God?
Strong's 7307: Wind, breath, exhalation, life, anger, unsubstantiality, a region of the sky, spirit.
The value of the Father, Son and Spirit is so immense and they're delight in the other is so great it moves them to joy to behold the other and bring joy to other.
