Triune?

Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (Romans 8:14-17).

June 3rd is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday of the church year when we try to understand that which no human can understand—the Trinitarian nature of our God.

In Deuteronomy 6:4 Moses tells God’s people, Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. At the time of Moses, most people believed in many gods—gods of the sun, gods of the moon, gods of fertility, gods of the harvest, gods of the storm, gods of the sea, even gods of traveling and commerce. Since gods like these were often related to each other, most people would worship all the gods instead of just one, lest they offend a god and risk divine retribution. Thus, most people offered sacrifices to any number of gods throughout the year.

But our God wanted to make it clear that He alone is deserving of worship and devotion. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not just ‘one more god’ to add to the list of those to be worshipped. There is only one God who created the heavens and the earth; there is only one God who knits DNA strands together in a woman’s womb and attaches a soul to it, creating a unique new human being. There is only one God who has the power to suspend the laws of nature—laws He Himself created—so that those who love Him can experience miracles in their lives. There is only one God who creates and preserves. Through Isaiah He said, "Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one" (Isaiah 44:8). And because He alone does all these things, our God said through Moses, "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments" (Exodus 20:3-6).

It is a central teaching of the Bible that God is single, God is unique. And yet the same Moses who was ordered to write, The LORD our God, the LORD is one, also wrote Genesis under the inspiration of God, and there we read, Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness"... So God created man in his own image (Genesis 1:1:26-27). Isn’t it interesting? God speaks as if He is not alone, yet a moment later, God is referred to in the singular once more. And we get another example of this at the Tower of Babel when we read, the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other" (Genesis 11:5-7). Once again, the Lord is referred to in the singular, but is quoted as conversing as if not alone. How do we explain Moses writing this way?

The fact of the matter is that the Trinity is evident right from the beginning of the Bible. In verse two of the first chapter of Genesis Moses records, Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Just one verse after we are told that God created the heavens and the earth, we are immediately introduced to the Holy Spirit. In Isaiah chapter 63 verses 8-10, God the Father speaks through the prophet about both His Son and the Holy Spirit: He said, "Surely they are my people, sons who will not be false to me"; and so he became their Savior. In all their distress he too was distressed, and the Angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. The Angel of His presence who saved God’s people is, of course, a reference to our Lord Jesus, who had no physical body until He was born to die for us.

The three persons of God were seen most clearly at Jesus’ baptism where we read, When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased" (Luke 3:21-22). And Jesus affirmed the reality of the Trinity once more just before He returned to heaven when He said, "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19).

It is the clear teaching of the Bible that there is only one God to be worshipped, yet God exists as three Persons. Does this mean that only the Father is God, but not the Son or the Holy Spirit? Certainly not! Paul tells us this about baptism: "[God] saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior" (Titus 3:5). The salvation brought to us through baptism is a salvation made possible by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together—all three persons share in the forgiveness of sins, which is the prerogative of God alone.

Many people in history have wanted to claim that neither Jesus nor the Holy Spirit are truly God, but the Scriptures prove otherwise. Moses told us to worship God alone, yet Jesus was rightly worshipped by the wise men from the east (Matthew 2:11), the man who had been blind from birth (John 9:38), and by His disciples (Matthew 14:33). Paul says of Jesus, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9-11). As to the divinity of the Holy Spirit, we read of an incident in Acts chapter 5: Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit...? You have not lied to men but to God." There is no question in the Bible that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are every bit as much God as the Father is.

And yet there are not three Gods, but one God, as the Athanasian Creed tells us. How God can be three and yet only one at the same time is one of the great mysteries of Christianity, a reality that is beyond our limited ability to understand. But the Trinitarian nature of our God is one of the things that demonstrates His uniqueness, one of the things that sets Him apart from the so-called ‘gods’ invented by the minds of men who did not know the true God, but desperately needed something more powerful than themselves to believe in.

The Trinitarian nature of our God is, I think, why we were created, and why we have been saved. God never existed in silence. Our Triune God has always had three persons who discussed things among themselves. Our God is not a god who enjoys isolation and quiet, He is a God who enjoys company and conversation. A single god existing forever in silence might create men and women out of boredom so that they could amuse him, but having existed forever without companionship He could never treat his creations as anything but toys. But our Triune God, a God of relationships, created men and women to share in the love that exists between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; He created us to speak to, to listen to, to spend eternity with together. Jesus said, Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you (John 15:13-15).

If a child breaks a toy he may be sad for awhile, but eventually he moves on to other toys that still work right. But if a child has a fight with a friend, he is brokenhearted until the relationship has been patched up again. So it is with God. If our god was an eternally lonely god who made us out of boredom, he wouldn’t concern himself with our welfare—if we became defective, he would just discard us and make another man or woman to entertain him. And if our god was only one of a whole group of gods, why not let some other god worry about whatever mess we’ve made of our lives?

But our Triune God, our God who is one yet three, took a different approach. When we became defective because of our sins, God loved us too much to just toss us aside like a broken toy and replace us. When we angered our loving God by failing to love Him or each other as we ought, our God took action to repair the damage that we had caused because there was no one else capable of putting things right. There is only one God who can forgive sin, only one God who can work the miracles of faith, of forgiveness, of life after death. That one God is our Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Paul explains the role that each Person of the Trinity plays in our lives in today’s Epistle lesson. The Spirit leads us into becoming sons of God. It is His influence in us that enables us to believe that there is a God, a God who we can turn to for help and safety and eternal citizenship in His kingdom (called heaven). It is by the trust that the Spirit stirs within us that we can come to this awe-inspiring God and address Him with the endearing name of Father.

A father is essential for human life. No human being is born without the creating act of a father. It is the father’s role to protect his children, to see that they are fed and clothed, that they are trained to be come responsible members of the family and the community. This is what our heavenly Father does for His children—He gave us life, He protects us from danger, He strengthens us in the face of adversity, and He provides a home where we can live happily forever--because as His children, we are His heirs.

But none of this would be possible without Jesus. He suffered so that we would not be disinherited. Our God is a God of love, and no unloving person can inherit a place in heaven. For us to be welcome there, we had to be purged of the sin that taints our ability to love. Jesus did this great miracle on the cross, where His love moved Him to exchange His life of perfect love for all our lives of tainted love--and the sin of our twisted, selfish love killed the Son of God. But because Jesus is true God, death could not end His life permanently and He rose from the grave alive once more. Now He is eternally alive to forgive we who are willing to share in His sufferings, by rejecting the sin that holds so much fascination for us. We suffer with Jesus by following Him in a life that rejects the joys of sin, in exchange for the much greater joys of eternal life and eternal companionship with the Triune God of love—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

You have been baptized by one God, but three divine Persons have taken away the guilt for your sins and have made you a promise that if you remain faithful until the end of your life, you, as an heir of God, will receive a crown to wear as a son of God in His eternal kingdom. You have been personally blessed by God, not just once, but three times over. May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. Amen.