The Holy Trinity
Sermon
TO NEW MEMBERS – we are a Trinitarian Church. What does that mean?
One of the uniqueness characteristics of the Christian faith is that we believe in God as Trinity. Actually it is one of the distinctives. People are entitled to believe that Jesus was not God, but if they do they do not get to call themselves Christian. Christians believe in Trinity.
Trinity means TRI_UNITY – the three that are one.
When the early Christians read through Scripture and considered how God had dealt with His people, they realised God comes to us in 3 different ways. He comes to us as a Father, as a Son and as the Holy Spirit.
It would be wrong to think that first God the Father existed, and then somehow morphed and became God the Son, and then morphed again to become the Holy Spirit. God has eternally existed as Trinity.
The Holy Trinity is a mystery, it always has been and I’m pretty sure always will be. But maybe we can understand a little better today.
This week I read a great explanation.
If my mom were here today, I would call her mom, and the relationship I have with her is as a son to a mom.
But Dylan and Lauren would call her nanna, granny. Their relationship would be as a grandchild to a grandparent.
But if my dad were still alive, he would call her Dorothy, and they would relate as a husband and wife.
It is the same person we are speaking about, but three different ways of relating.
So we believe in the three persons or ways of being of God.
The Father
We believe that God the Father is the creator of everything we see, and what we don’t see.
Not only did God create everything, but He sustains it. However many millions of years ago the universe started to expand, God was the one who set every galaxy on its path, He planned the birth and death of stars, He designed and made the planets.
It is this same God who has planned the seasons, planned the rainfall patterns. HE planned the ice-ages to end chapters of history and start new ones.
Our Father planned the ecosystems where bugs eat seeds and birds eat bugs and cats and dogs eat birds and Vietnamese people eat cats and dogs.
The Son
We believe in Jesus, the Son of God who is not a part of God, like my hand is a part of me.
Jesus is fully God Himself. The Bible tells us Jesus was active in the creation of the universe from the very beginning, and at the right time in history He stepped into a human body and became a man like any other man. He came to introduce us to His Father, and then to re-create the world.
Jesus is the visible expression of His Father.
Jesus reveals the heart of the Father. That’s not to say God is 5 foot 7, blonde with brown eyes. Jesus reveals the heart of His Father.
As we look at another person, the truth is we can’t know the heart of that person, except by what they say and what they do. So when a person speaks and acts, the heart of that person is truly revealed.
When Jesus walked the earth, He revealed in what He said and did who God the Father really is.
In 1st century Israel there was a unique relationship between a father and a firstborn son.
The son would strive to be exactly like his father, to entrench all his father’s skills and values into himself.
If a father was a carpenter, the son would try to create furniture so exactly like his dad’s that a person would say, “That looks exactly like your dad’s work”.
When a son spoke, he would try to express the identical opinion as his father so that others would say, “You sound just like your father”.
The highest compliment a son could receive was when people said, “When you have seen Joseph, you have seen his father.”
When a son was that true to his father, when the son spoke he carried the authority of His father.
Jesus said, “If you have seen me, you have seen my Father. I do nothing but what I see my Father in heaven do.” He said “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.”
The Nicene Creed says Jesus is light of light, made of the exact same substance as the Father.
The image the bishops had when they formulated the Creed, was of a candle burning. At the top of the candle the flame has distinct shape. But at some point the light from the candle just spreads. The light is the same stuff as the flame on top of the candle, it has the same properties, and yet it is somehow different.
God the Father is the flame, and Jesus is the light which extends from the flame.
The Holy Spirit
If we keep the Nicene metaphor going, then the Holy Spirit may be the warmth given off by the candle. The warmth is in both the flame and the light, but is invisible, easily felt but unseen.
The Holy Spirit too was present and active from the beginning, before time began. Genesis says the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the earth.
John 16 says the Holy Spirit comes as the counsellor or comforter of Christians. Jesus said the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and while the Holy Spirit exposes the guilt of the world, He will lead us the Children of God into Truth.
Sometimes we try to make the Holy Spirit into a manager, instead of a leader.
The Holy Spirit comes into our lives to lead us to places we have never been before.
When Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness to be tempted.
The Holy Spirit leads us to truth. When we’ve believed a half truth for years, the Holy Spirit leads us to Truth.
When the Holy Spirit descended on Peter at Pentecost, the Spirit led Peter, an unschooled fisherman, to preach his first sermon to 5000 people.
The Holy Spirit led the Church Fathers to leave Jerusalem and take the gospel to Antioch and Samaria and Ephesus.
The Holy Spirit leads us beyond our old paradigms, beyond our fears, beyond being consumers to being producers.
The Holy Spirit leads us beyond worrying about our own salvation, to start worrying about the salvation of others.
It is God the Holy Spirit who leads us to green pastures and quiet streams.
When the only trip you make is from your house to the supermarket, you don’t need a leader because you know the way. The Holy Spirit leads us into uncharted territory.
Managers try to do everything just right, but the Spirit who leads us asks, “Are we doing the right things?”
The Trinity in persons.
The easiest I have ever understood the Trinity is to realise that each of us as a person are also a trinity. I have a body, and my spirit and my mind live in my body. I am 3 distinct entities yet I am one person.
I have a body, but my body is definitely not the real me, it is the vehicle that carries me, and reveals me.
My body speaks to my mind, it says “Feed me, warm me up”.
But my mind also speaks to my body. It says “Get out of bed, you need to eat vegetables and exercise.”
And then when I am quiet enough, I hear the voice of my spirit. In a time when I am angry, I hear my spirit telling me to “Calm down, to forgive, to be patient.” When I am tempted to do something wrong, my spirit says, “No, you know that not right.” My spirit communes with God’s Spirit.
Jesus said it isn’t what goes into my stomach which makes me unclean, it is what comes out of my mouth from my mind.
Jesus said it is out of the abundance of our hearts that our mouths speak. What is going on in my spirit and my mind is what comes out of my mouth.
In me there are often disagreements between my body, mind and spirit. Dietrich Bonnhoefer says the internal struggles are because I know good and evil instead of just good.
In God there is only good, so in God there is no disagreement, no incongruence. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are identical in their motives and actions.
If you don’t think you are a triune person, think of this.
When we come to faith, we confess our sins and believe in Jesus, our spirits are immediately born from above, immediately saved. Our spirits will never taste death.
But Romans 12 says we have to renew our minds. Our spirits are changed in a split second, but our minds are renewed over time. We have to learn to think like our Father.
Then when we die, we are absent from our bodies and present with the Lord. Our spirits and our minds go one way and our bodies another until Jesus returns.
Our spirits are born from above, our minds are renewed and our bodies are resurrected as new bodies.
Just as a Jewish son’s highest priority in life was to be just like his father, our highest priority should be to be exactly like our Father.
Our spirits need to be born from above.
We need to imitate Jesus.
We need to be led by the Holy Spirit.