In God We Trust

Introduction: How commonplace our American expressions regarding God, including that familiar inscription on our coins, “In God we trust.” But does that simple understanding of God make a difference in our lives? Doctrinal statements, such as those describing the Holy Trinity, are often perceived as stuffy and impractical. But the fullness of God’s revelation of himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit contrasts sharply with the shallow misconceptions of the American image of God. We must recognize this contrast to know our place and responsibilities in society as children of God, marked by the Holy Spirit, who trust in God and experience the abundant life, both here and hereafter.

1. America has an inadequate understanding of God.

Illustrations: The Declaration of Independence speaks of “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” but natural knowledge of God cannot save because the grace of Jesus Christ is not revealed through nature. The Pledge of Allegiance speaks of “one nation, under God, indivisible,” but does not tell who God is. President Eisenhower used the phrase “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” so frequently that journalists condensed it in the acronym FOGBOM, but this phrase also does not reveal Christ, through whom alone God becomes our Father and we become brothers and sisters. During World War the British criticized Americans for presuming they knew God, saying, “You Yanks have God in your hip-pocket.” Polls often claim that 95% of Americans believe in God (that God exists), but “even the demons believe that—and shudder” (James 2:19).

A. Contemporary Americans may be:

(1) Atheistic: There is no God, and this life is all there is.

(2) Agnostic: God may exist, but not much can be known about him, and he is irrelevant for daily life. This view is supported by humanism, the belief that mankind is good and getting better, leading to American pragmatism and “do-gooder” attitudes.

(3) Fatalistic: “What will be will be; things just happen to you in life.” God has little interest in the individual and cannot or will not control daily events.

(4) Optimistic: God is “Someone who likes me,” “Someone who presses the buttons in his celestial control booth in my favor,” “the Man upstairs.”

(5) Materialistic: God is a Santa Claus who sends good things to those who “live right.”

B. American denominationalism reflects this incomplete understanding of God. In the book Christ and Culture, Richard Niebuhr presents five models of American churches in society. To the extreme left is Christ of Culture.The kingdom of God is accommodated to, or identified with, the kingdom of the world. Gone is any witness that a sinful humanity needs a sinless Christ to know a loving and forgiving God. Unitarianism, Universalism, and Reform Judaism are prime examples. To the extreme right is Christ against Culture. This fundamentalist position rejects the world. Salvation is defined and supported by sectarian additions to Scripture. Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Science, and Mormons illustrate this position. Moderately to the right is Christ above Culture. The interpretation of the church guides the world ethically and morally. Salvation proceeds from Jesus Christ through the church. The Roman Catholic Church and confessional Lutheranism are placed here by some.

Center on Niebuhr’ s scale is the most common expression in American religion: Christ the Transformer of Culture. This has been the driving force of American Protestantism. Pragmatic churches motivate believers to move out into the world to effect change. Baptists, the Salvation Army, Campus Crusade, and many television evangelists are examples. They may think of change as our work within society rather than Christ’s work within us. Moderately to the left is Christ and Culture in Paradox. The Christian lives in tension with the world. This best represents Luther’s stance, expressed in his familiar dictum: the Christian is “both sinner and saint,” led by the Spirit, becoming more and more “a little Christ,” a co-heir of the abundant life.

2. To know God is to be led by the Spirit of God.

A. As with every aspect of the Christian life, the solution is God’s solution. God provides us with an understanding of himself that is completely adequate—it is saving.

(1) Jesus has the right to claim unique status as the only-begotten Son of God. We have no such natural claim to be God’s children. But God in his grace has adopted us through baptism, bestowing his Spirit. Roman law required witnesses to testify to an adoption. The Spirit joins with our spirits, testifying that we now are sons of God (v 16). Through faith in God’s unique Son, we are born again as sons.

(2) Trusting in God, we are led by the Spirit to say, “Abba, Father” (see study helps).

(3) Adopted as sons, gone is slavery and fear (v 15). This contrasts with the fear and bondage created by living under American images of God.

B. God fills our hearts with his Spirit so that we love him with heart, soul, strength, and mind. He quickens us through his Word so that we glorify him and use his gifts. What a difference that makes every day!

C. Baptized and led by the Spirit, we are co-heirs with Christ.

(1) Though we may share in his sufferings now, we also are heirs of his heavenly glory.

(2) The American practical question is like Nicodemus’ question, “How can that be?” Again, it is God’s doing, not ours. We respond with lives marked by the Spirit. We need to interpret and address our world’s problems, sharing God’s solution with society. Karl Barth defined a Christian as one who holds the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Christians seek to know about their world in order to apply God’s Word to the issues and needs confronting our country. The mass media provides the pastor with a ready source of illustrations regarding sin in the world and how we can serve Christ by responding to the needs of the world. God works through us to his praise and glory.

Conclusion: We Christians confess, “In God we trust,” not according to the shallow American national understanding, but in the full Biblical sense. Baptized, we are led by the Spirit to see Christ more clearly and serve him freely. He enables us not simply to know about God, but to know God. Gone is the guilt of the past, the uncertainty of the present, and fear of the future. The final fear, death, is vanquished since we are co-heirs of Christ’s eternal glory. Amen.

The Theme of the Day

This year, Trinity Sunday is juxtaposed with Memorial Day, offering the opportunity to contrast the fullness of God’s revelation of himself in Christ with the shallow national understanding of God. Only as Christians are marked by the Spirit will they truly know who God is and what it means to trust in him.

Textual Study Helps

Today’s OT lesson contains the Shema, the divine revelation of God’s oneness and uniqueness in stark contrast to the multiplicity of Baals and other pagan gods. The multiplicity of American images of God leads just as commonly and tragically to chaos in the social order (cf. Israel’s experience in Judg 2:11–13; 21:25). The Christian understanding of God is summarized in the Shema and the Decalogue as Jesus explained them (Matt 22:37–38; Mark 12:29–30, Luke 10:27). Those marked by the Spirit have the new covenant written in the heart (Jer 31:33). The heart is the seat of the will and emotions. The soul (nephesh) is one’s very life and vitality; it is not, as for the Greek, imprisoned in the body, but united with the body. To love God with all the soul is to love with one’s whole being. To love God with all one’s strength is reinforced by Jesus with the amplification “and with all your mind.”

To know God as fully as the Shema directs is always beyond the sinful nature’s doing. But the Holy Spirit makes us new creations who live on a new level. Christians are obligated not to live according to the flesh (Rom 8:12), since the mind of sinful man can only bring death (8:6). But through the life-giving Spirit the misdeeds of the body are put to death (8:13). The Epistle declares that all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God (8:14). The presence of the Holy Spirit within is the consequence of justification through faith, accomplished in baptism (Rom 6:1–4). Made a child of God by the Spirit, the Christian is set free from slavery to sin and to law (Rom 6:14–18).

Being sons and daughters of God, we are able to call God “Abba, Father,” by the Spirit dwelling within. Jews thought the Aramaic word too intimate to apply to God. But no word expresses so well this understanding of God. The one word makes a whole prayer in itself. It is evidence of the Spirit’s groaning within (Rom 8:26), expressing all human searching and longing.

As God’s children, now we are co-heirs with Christ. The idea of inheritance is frequent in the OT, where Israel inherits the land and God’s gracious promises. Knowledge of God comes through Jesus Christ. Such knowledge does not bring the triumphalism that marks so much of American religion, but sharing in his sufferings and bearing the cross of discipleship. The Christian follows the Father’s will by denying self and following Christ (Mark 8:34–38), thereby gaining a foretaste of the life to come.

In today’s Gospel (John 3:1–17), Nicodemus wanted to be changed, but he could not change himself. Born again—what a dream, but what an impossibility if Yankee ingenuity and American rugged individualism are to do it! The little word anōthen, meaning both again and from above, denotes the radical change that comes only from God and is possible only through his grace.

The American understanding of God rejects the necessity of rebirth, of total, radical change that can come only from above. American practicality—“Does it work?” has contributed to a propensity to make God in the American image. The New Age Movement, self-help philosophies, success-oriented religions, and situation ethics condoning abortion and the ordination of homosexuals all illustrate making God according to one’s own understanding with concurrent disregard of the Scriptural Word and the Incarnate Word. This day presents a grand opportunity to describe the inadequacy of the national understanding of God and present the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, underscoring inspired Scripture’s practicality for practical Americans.