Hebrews 4:12 (NIV)
12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than
any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints
and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
There is great help that comes from the word of God in
that we can find strength, encouragement and rest. For God’s word penetrates
the heart and makes us aware of our short comings.
While every analogy of the Trinity has its limitations,
this picture illustrates one aspect of our Triune God—that they are all on the
same team.
Say a family is trapped in a forest fire, so a helicopter
team undertakes a rescue. One fireman flies the helicopter over the smoky blaze
to coordinate the operation and see the big picture. A second fireman descends
on a rope into the billowing smoke below to track down the family and stand
with them. Once he locates the family, he wraps the rope around them, attaching
them to himself, and they are lifted up together from the blaze into safety. In
this rescue operation the first fireman looks like the Father, who can see the
whole field unclouded from above to sovereignly orchestrate the plan.
The second fireman looks like the Son, who descends into
our world ablaze to find us, the human family, and identify with us most deeply
in the darkness of the grave. The Spirit is like the rope, who mediates the
presence of the Father to Jesus, even in his distance, and raises Jesus—and the
human family with him—from sin, death, and the grave, into the presence of the
Father. Of course, like all analogies, this one falls short. The Spirit is a
person, not a thing (like the rope). And the Father, Son, and Spirit are not
separate individuals but the one God, sharing a divine nature and essence as
one being. [Adapted from Joshua Ryan Butler, The Pursuing God (Thomas Nelson,
2016), page 122]
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