The “Simplified” Trinity
John 3:1-17
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. John 3:14-15 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Today’s Epistle highlights for us this truth: that our God is far beyond our ability to comprehend. St. Paul writes in Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” St. Paul here is referring specifically to God’s judgments and God’s ways, the very mind of the Lord. Why God determines to do what He does when He does it and how He does it are things we can never hope fully to grasp as creatures, except, of course, to the extent that He reveals these things to us in His Word.
To be sure, God has revealed many things in His holy Word, not the least of which are the clear Gospel of Christ’s sacrificial life, death, and resurrection for the salvation of all mankind, and the delivery systems of what Christ purchased for us on the cross – the holy Sacraments of Absolution, Baptism, and Supper, as well as how rightly to administer those Sacraments. But there are some things – many things – that we simply do not know, many things that we cannot know, many things that God has not revealed. There are way too many questions that we are not supposed to be able to answer, either fully or even in part. All we can say here is that we can know God and His ways only insofar as far as He has revealed Himself and His ways to us, but no further. That may be frustrating to many, but that is simply the way it is. God is God; we are not. He is omniscient; we are not. Get used to it.
Since all that is true, we focus our energy and attention on what God has revealed about Himself, and we confess the Christian faith based on what God has revealed. On other Sundays we confess the Christian faith speaking the words of either the Apostles’ or the Nicene Creeds – those correct confessions of the faith which speak of what is true about the Christian faith in concise, biblically-based statements.
Today, on Trinity Sunday, as is our tradition, we confess the Athanasian Creed. This Creed dates from the 5th or 6th century AD, and it confesses two things: the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and of the Person of Christ as far as God has revealed those things in Scripture. This Creed most certainly doesn’t answer every question, nor does it solve every mystery. It simply says what can be said about those two articles of faith, focusing today on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
In summary, we worship one God in three Persons and three Persons in one God; and we do so without “confounding” or blending the Persons together into one another as if they weren’t really three distinct Persons. It is wrong to say that God appeared sometimes as the Father, sometimes as the Son, and sometimes as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity cannot be fractionalized or separated; when you have one Person of the Trinity, you have them all.
The Athanasian Creed also states that we worship one God in three Persons without “dividing the Substance.” It is wrong to say that God is divided up into three separate parts so that each of them would be 1/3 God. And it is wrong to say that there three separate beings, in essence, three Gods.
Well, if that is still too complicated, then let us simplify it even further and consider the Trinity in a simple, concrete way. And, thankfully, Jesus reveals that to us in today’s Gospel.
It was early in Jesus’ ministry. Nicodemus had heard some of Jesus’ initial teaching in Jerusalem and was intrigued. But he was not yet convinced about Jesus’ teaching, nor was he yet bold enough to approach Jesus during the daylight hours when he might be seen by someone talking to Jesus.
“Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Without even knowing it, Nicodemus identified all three Persons of the Trinity in those words: Jesus, the teacher, the Son of God; who came “from God” the Father; attested with signs, which were evidence of the Holy Spirit, as Peter later said in Acts 10:38: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”
But Nicodemus didn’t understand all that yet. Even so, it is not nearly enough just to know that Jesus came from God; that is not enough to be saved. The demons know that Jesus came from God, too. Muslims and Mormons believe that Jesus, or at least their twisted, unscriptural version of Jesus, came from God. But in what way did He come from God? For what purpose did He come from God? How does He actually bring us to God? Nicodemus didn’t yet know those things. And even if he had known them, knowing isn’t enough. Relying on – trusting in – the Triune God for salvation is just as important as knowing Him rightly.
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How did Jesus the Rabbi, Jesus the Teacher, come from God? Well, before He was conceived as a human being, He was with God the Father in the beginning. The Bible simply calls Him “the Word.” He was begotten of the Father “before all worlds,” or, “from eternity,” which just means the Son being “begotten” by the Father wasn’t an act that took place a long time ago, but is the eternal relationship between Father and Son.
He is the divine, living, self-subsisting Word who springs forth from God the Father. He came from God in that sense, but He also came from God in that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He became Man, so that he is now both true God and true Man. As John says in verse 16 of chapter 3, the verse after our Gospel today ends, God, that is the Father, so loved the world – loved the world in this way – that He “gave” His only-begotten Son.
For what purpose did the Son come from God the Father? For what purpose was He “given” to the world? Well, to be lifted up, as Jesus said. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” We were all going to perish eternally for our sins. As Jesus said, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” All of us began our lives with a twisted soul that hated the true God and loved to make up or invent false gods whom we understood very well, because we made them; they didn’t make us. They were exactly how we wanted them to be and acted exactly as we wanted them to act.
Did we want to condone sex outside of marriage? Then we created a god who condoned it, or maybe even required it. Did we want to support abortion or homosexuality? Then we created a god who would support it, too. Did we want to worship God however we wanted; did we want to pick and choose what to believe and what to do? Then we created a god who allowed it. Did we want to be praised for what good people we are? Then we created a god who would praise us instead of telling us the truth that we’re all poor, miserable sinners who deserve only His wrath and punishment.
But the true God, God the Father, gave His Son to the world – to mankind – to be lifted up on the cross and to bear the sins of all mankind. God the Father gave His Son to suffer the condemnation we should have suffered, to be righteous where we were unrighteous, to be our Substitute before the throne of divine justice that we might approach the Throne of Grace with confidence, that we should repent of our sins and believe in the Jesus Christ in order not to perish for our sins, but to live eternally with this Holy Trinity
But even faith itself is beyond our power. So how does God bring us to Himself? How does God bring us to faith and give us entrance into His heavenly kingdom? Through the work of His Holy Spirit. “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” So, this Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is the one who is responsible for giving new birth to spiritually dead sinners. And what does He use to do that but water of all things! He uses the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word – the water of Holy Baptism, which is the “washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,” as Paul wrote in Titus 3:5.
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. He is responsible for the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. He is powerfully working in the Christian Church through the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments to break through stony hearts, to raise the spiritually dead to life, to convert the lost from unbelief to faith in Christ, to comfort Christians, to strengthen and to guide us, and to preserve us in the one true faith until the end.
That is who our God is. That is what we, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, are “compelled by the Christian faith” to acknowledge and believe. We believe in the Father who loved the world and sent His Son. We believe in the Son who was sent from the Father and came down from heaven that He might be lifted up on the cross as our Savior. We believe in the Spirit, who proceeds from Father and Son, who works through Word and Sacrament to give faith and new birth. We believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three distinct Persons, and yet not as three gods, but as one God who is zealous for the salvation of the human race that He created.
In fact, we are so bold that we confess in the Athanasian Creed that “whoever wants to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold” this catholic faith, that is, this faith that is common to all who are rightfully called Christians. Because unless you know these basic truths about who God is, you don’t know God; and if you don’t know Him, you can’t trust in Him. And if you don’t trust in Him, you cannot be saved.
We have attempted to simplify the doctrine of the Holy Trinity this morning so that all can see that all the things we need to know and understand and believe for our salvation have been placed within our reach by the Holy Spirit.
It is a gift to be able to know God in His simplicity and to study the things He has revealed to us about Himself and to study what His beloved Church has confessed about Him through the ages. But in the end, whether it is His triune nature or His unfathomable ways, we are still left with our jaws dropped in awe and wonder. We are amazed at all the things we don’t yet understand about God, and we are just as amazed at the things we do understand.
And all that is left is to say with the Apostle Paul: “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! … For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever.”
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
