"There is no such thing, in Christian life and thought, as being too Christ-centered. But it is certainly possible to be Father-forgetful and Spirit-ignoring. At their best, and from their roots, evangelicals have avoided that. In recent decades, though it requires vigilance to make sure we are presenting the evangelical message with recognizable Trinitarian connections. What Would Jesus Do? He would do the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit. He would send the Spirit to bring us to the Father."
--Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything
"When most Christians hear the word Trinity, their immediate mental response is to reach for an analogy: Is the Trinity kind of like a shamrock, or like the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), for instance, the one substance H20 being ice and water and steam? They do this, I think, because of a mental habit of associating the Trinity with a logical problem, the problem of reconciling three and one. But while there is a time and place for coming to terms with that problem, and while analogies can offer some limited help on that occasion, we have learned something different from the shape of the economy of salvation. We have learned to associate Trinity with the incarnate Son and the outpoured Spirit.
When we talk about Jesus, sent by the Father to work in the Spirit, we should know that we are talking about the Trinity. Our thoughts and affections should jump to the Gospels and the gospel, the story of Jesus and the present encounter with him, rather than to shamrocks and steaming icebergs. The whole point is that the presence of the Son and the Spirit themselves, sent by the father into the economy of salvation, is the Trinity. The eternal Trinity is the gospel Trinity. These person in the gospel story are not what the Trinity is like--they are the Trinity. We will see how this changes everything about how we look for the signs of the Trinity in the various elements of the church's life and work. For now, it is enough to underline the new mental associations...that we gain from attending to the economy [of salvation]. Away with tropical icebergs! Shamrocks begone! In the gospel we have God the Trinity."
-Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything
"These two problems, our forgetfulness of the Trinity and our feeling of shallowness, are directly related. The solutions to both problems converge in the gospel, the evangel which evangelicalism is named after, and which is always deeper than we can fathom. Our great need is to be led further in to what we already have. The gospel is so deep that it not only meets our deepest needs but comes from God's deepest self. The salvation proclaimed in the gospel is not some mechanical operation that God took on as a side project. It is a 'mystery that was kept secret for long ages' (Rom. 16:25), a mystery of salvation that goes back into the heart of God, decreed 'before the foundation of the world' (Eph. 1:4, 1 Pet. 1:20). When God undertook our salvation, he did it in a way that put divine resources into play, resources which involve him personally in the task. The more we explore and understand the depth of God's commitment to salvation, the more we have to come to grips with the triunity of the one God. The deeper we dig into the gospel, the deeper we go into the mystery of the Trinity. The puritan theologian Thomas Goodwin taught that the proclamation of the gospel was the 'bringing forth and publishing' of a mystery that God had treasured from all eternity and that 'the things of the gospel are depths--the things of the gospel...are the deep things of God.'"
-Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (2010 A.D.)
