The Harmony of the Trinity

Passage: 2 Corinthians 13: 11-14

11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.

12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All God’s people here send their greetings.

14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Introduction

Introductory Story

A couple of years ago, Hannah and I were in central London, by Sherpherd’s Bush. As we came out of the tube station we found ourselves in this courtyard. And on the other side of the courtyark was a gazebo and some tables where some Muslims were speaking with people and handing out copies of the Qu’ran. My attention was immedaitely grabbed by the banner which was sitting ontop of the gazebo, and which read in huge letters: “Jesus was a Muslim”.

Now, if you know me, you know that I could not resist going over and having a chat. Poor Hannah stood with me and could bearly get a word in edgeways as I had a really great, meaningful, and civil back and forth with these Muslims.

At one point in the conversation I asked them, “in Islam, am I saved?” And they said to me, “no.” “Why not?” “because,” they said, “you believe in the Trinity.” The Trinity seemed to be our dividing line. That there is one God expressed in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I actually later found out that the conversation was secretly being filmed by their staff, who uploaded to the Muslim corner of YouTube, where the video went viral. And I the comments to the video, I found thousands of Muslims praying for my conversion to Islam. I am pleased to anncounce that a couple years down the line, those prayers have remained ineffective.

We use this word “Trinity” quite a lot, and it’s a controversial word. It invites challenge and it is deeply divise to the world and other major religions. It does not allow space for the “all roads lead to Rome” approach to faith which has become so popular. it is distinctly Christian. At this point, I’d love to entice you to come to the weekend away, where I am planning to talk about why we believe what we beleive about the Trinty, biblically, and in much greater depth than I can afford this morning. Today, we will touch on the matter briefly, but then I want us to root our understanding in the context of the passage.

The Doctrine of the Trinity

That God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a distinctly Christian reality. God as Trinity is, in his very being, the perfect eternal love-relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Where the Father is, there is the Son and Spirit also, where the Son is, there is the Father and the Spirit also, and where the Spirit is, there is the Father and Son also, always united in perfect oneness. The greatest example of this: our salvation, is a work initated by God the Father, achieved by the Son through his ministry, death, resurrection, and ascention, and administered to us in the power of the Holy Spirit. At Paul, though certainly not having an articualted doctrine of the Trinity, sees this divine coperation in the passage we heard read to us: May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. There is another more famous verse whichh does the same, which is in the comissioning of the disicples in Matthew 28: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

You may have heard some analogies for the Holy Trinity. Now, all of our analogies are imperfect. The thing is, we here in in the modern Western world like things to come in neat little boxes, that fit into a coherent system, and can be explained away. Of course, the reality is, a God so easily placed in a box is probably not one worth worshipping. God is beyond our boxes: the New Testament speaks about mystery, something we are not so comfortable with today. The Trinity is a beautiful divine mystery. I’ll go into analogies in more depth at the weekend away, but I will give one analogy which I do like.

This analogy originates from an early Church Father but has been developed by a friend of mine who is a theologian. The image is of a pianiast composing a beautiful piece of music. God the Father is the mind composing the beautiful piece of music that is his work in the world, and his work in the world is achieved through the elegant and perfect movements of the left and right hand, the Son and the Spirit, who carry out the will of the Father. And yet, the music is the combined work of the one pianist. This isn’t perfect, but it captures something of the realtionship between the Father, Son and Spirit that the Bible so emphasies. Jesus is so clear that he seeks to do the ministry of the Father for which he was sent, and the Spirit is too sent by the Father through the Son to continue the ministry of the Father in the world. That the Son and Spirit come to do the work of the Father is especially clear in John’s gospel. I don’t know if we are allowed to have favourite gospels, but if we are, John would be mine.

The Trinity in Scripture

How does that song go: Jesus loves me, this I know, for… When we gather here on a Sunday, this book here is our unfailing special revelation of God. So it is worth clarifying that if we search for the word Trinity in this book, we won’t find it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not biblical. Because the Bible is absolutely clear that the (1) God the One, (2) the Father is God, (2) The Son is God, (3) the Spirit is God.

That God is one is made especially clear in Jewish shema found in Deutereonomy, which Jesus himself would have recited: “Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

That the Father is God has always been clear, it is the heavenly Father to whom Jesus prayers, and to whom we are taught to pray in the Lord’s Prayer. When we speak of God more generally, we usually refer to God the Father. Certianly, Paul has God the Father in mind in this passage when he speaks of the love of God.

That Jesus is God is a reality scattered throughout the New Testament. Paul writes that Jesus is “in very nature God” in Philippians 4. Our friend doubting Thomas says of Jesus towards the end of John’s gospel “My Lord and my God”. John actually opens his gospel writing of Jesus the famous words: “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Jesus himself often identified himself as God, not least by referring to himself as the “I AM”, the name ascribes to himself in his conversation with Moses in Exodus 3, and which in the first century was such a clear indication of divine identity that his enemies tried to stone him because “you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Claims which were validated through his resurrection from the dead, and perhaps we can talk about that at the weekend away also.

We also say that the Spirit is God. The word we have for Spirit is the same word for breath, -pneuma- from which we get the word pneumonia, or pneumatic drill. The Spirit is the very breath of God. At creation, God the Father willed creation into being, by his Word, spoken by his breath, that is the Spirit. In the Old Testament in particular, we see the divinity of the Spirit in giving and taking away life. When God’s Spirit falls on a person they become alive, and when he departs, they die. In my opinion the clearest statement that the Spirit is God is found in Acts 5. You might know the story of Ananias and Sapphira who are challenged by Peter for lying to the Holy Spirit. And Peter is very clear with them in the passage: beause you have lied to the Holy Spirit, you have lied to God.

The Practical Doctrine of the Trinity

But what is the point of all this? Is the Trinity just abstract stuff up there for academics? Oftentimes because we don’t really know what to do with the Trinity, we just sort of tuck it away and reserve it for hymns and blessings. However, in this passage we see that the work of God as Father, Son, and Spirit isn’t just pointless jibberish, but deeply practical.

Context of 2 Corinthians

Paul is not interested in pointless theology. He is a busy man trying to share the gospel and establish self-sustaining, flourishing churches. 2 Corinthians is an especially painful letter for Paul written towards the end of his missionary jouney. He has just suffered such a terrible time in Asia that he had despaired of life itself (1:8), and everything has gone wrong: his work has failed, those opposing him in the region got the better of him, he is potentially facing execution, and to top it all off the church in Corinth seemed to be turning its back on him. Paul is not in a good way. And in his weakness he writes one of his last letters, a robust defense of the work of the Spirit in his life, and the centrality of Jesus, his death, resurrection, and what Paul calls Jesus’ “ministry of “reconiliation”. Being made right with one another and coming together. Paul is in pain, Corinth is fracturing, both with Paul and with itself. There is desperate need for reconilaition, and so he closes his letter with a plea for unity which is to be found in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Look at the final lines of his letter, especially verses 11 and 14:

The New International Version (Chapter 13)

Brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.

14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Trinitarian Image Bearers

The Church has often said it like this: God is friendship. God is the friendship relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit. Always in perfect union, peace, and oneness. And that oneness and hormony becomes the basis for our reconiliation, our harmony within the church. Jesus said it like this in John 17: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.” The unity of the Trinity consistutes the unity of the Church.

God is essentially, in his very being, relationship, the Father-Son-Spirit relationship. And because we bear his image, we reflect relational design. In the garden, Adam doesn’t work right on his own, because we are, as image bearers, designed for relationship. In God’s likenss. In Eden, before the intervention of the serpant, Adam and Eve live in perfect relational harmony, and in doing so, reflect something of God himself as Trinity. Our unity and harmony, refelcts the Trinitartian God. What does this mean for us?

The Challenge

Earlier in the service, we said the peace, this sermon has been so heavy you might fancy doing that again. In 2 Corithians Paul calls us to offer a holy kiss, but don’t worry, that was a cultural expression of peace, we don’t need to restore kissing to the peace, we can stick with a holy handshake or a holy hug rather than holy smooch.

But, what we are doing when we say the peace? If you take a step back and look around the room, you see the people of God showing a sign of affection and greeting one another piece, and also making peace if there has been conflict. When we do this, we reflect the deepest nature of God himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. In the midst of the harmony and unity of the church we see God as Trinity. We so richly embody our God-given idenity and image when we live harmoniously with one another. Unity in the church isn’t just about being a good witness, or about convenience on a Sunday, or even being civil, it’s about being who we are in God. Here’s the tough part of that, to more fully embody our God-given image, we have to be willing to step out and seek reconiliation even when it’s desperately uncomfortable and difficult. And it’s not some floppy compromising unity, because it is unity in God, it must be unity in the good and in the truth. The Father, Son and Spirit are not united in the bad, decitfulful, false, or convenient. We are called to a unity which reflects God himself. Again, Jesus’ words again John 17 before his arrest: “may they be one as we are one,” he says, “that may be brought to complete unity.” How hard a challenge is that?

When disconnected and fractured, Paul talks about finding unity by pressing into the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Grace, love, and fellowship. That is Paul’s closing wish to bring about a united church. Let’s close by reading the passage again, imagining that Paul is speaking it over us here as God’s church in Loudwater.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Closing prayer: as we spend time chatting in fellowship after the service, would you enable us to see how beautifully your trintiarian nature shines through in church family.