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Triperspectivalism: Part 3
The good news is that the Father’s creation, ruined by the Fall, is being redeemed by Christ and restored by the Holy Spirit as the Kingdom of God on earth. This revelation of God’s Triune Lordship in the gospel is not just a set of theological beliefs. It’s also a way of seeing God and all things, a biblical worldview, so we will know, love, serve, and worship God as Triune Lord in all areas of life.
This is the good news that our God reigns over all things through the Lord Jesus Christ and by his Holy Spirit. It’s the good news that our Triune God is Lord. The Bible associates three ideas with God’s Lordship: authority, control, and presence. These lordship attributes are unique reflections of God’s attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, through which God reveals to us who he is and what he does.
In the biblical history of God’s mission for the world, he reveals unique aspects of his Triune Lordship in his person and work as Creator, Redeemer, and Restorer:
• God the Father reveals his supreme authority as Lord in his creation of all things.
• God the Son reveals his sovereign control as Lord in his redemption of all things.
• God the Spirit reveals his transforming presence as Lord in his restoration of all things.
Although we are identifying particular lordship attributes of individual members of the Trinity, it’s important to see these attributes as forming a unit, not as separate from one another. Remember that God is “simple” in a theological sense, meaning he is one and not made up of parts. So there is a sense in which all of God’s attributes involve one another, including these three lordship attributes.
This revelation of God’s Triune Lordship in the gospel gives us a way of seeing God and all things we call Triperspectivalism. We define Triperspectivalism as multiple perspectives rooted in the biblical doctrine of the Trinity that apply God’s revelation in Scripture to all areas of life.
Triperspectivalism sees the revelation of God’s Triune Lordship in the gospel – the good news of who God is and what God does as Triune Lord in creation, redemption and restoration of fallen humanity and the world.
See the Son’s Sovereign Control as Lord in Redemption
The Scriptures teach that God the Son, through his sovereign control as Lord, accomplishes the Father’s plan to redeem all things lost in creation because of the fall of humanity into sin. As the Lord of redemption, Jesus sovereignly executes the Father’s plan to redeem all things through his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and promised return to make all things new.
Jesus stands at the center of the biblical story proclaiming good news about God restoring his sovereign rule as Lord over all of fallen humanity and creation through him. And he executes his sovereign control in the redemption of all things under the supreme authority of the Father’s will and by the Spirit’s transforming presence.
The Apostle Paul writes, “For God was pleased … through (Christ) to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” (Col 1:20) When Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father in heaven, he was enthroned as Sovereign Lord to carry out God’s cosmic rescue mission to redeem fallen humanity and creation as far as the curse is found. This is the good news we bring to the world, that our God reigns (Is 52:7, Rom 10:15 ) over all things through the Lord Jesus Christ.
We call this the situational perspective through which we see God the Son’s sovereign control as Lord in the redemption of all things.
To behold the Son’s sovereign control as Lord in the redemption of all things is to join our minds and hearts with the former prime minister of the Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper, and say, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’
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