The basic truth of the Trinity

Sermon for Holy Trinity

Romans 11:33-36  +  John 3:1-15

There are many “gods” in the world, that is, imaginary gods that exist only in people’s minds. The god of the Jews who reject Jesus; the god of the Muslims; the gods of the Hindus, and all the gods of the pagans. They aren’t real, and yet they are worshiped as if they were. There are also other kinds of “gods” in the world, that is, created persons or things that people have turned into their gods. But who is the true God, the real Creator of all things, the One who is separate from the creation itself? He is the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible: one God, who is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. This God, our God, is both Trinity (“Threeness”) and Unity (“Oneness”).

The eternal Father eternally begets or brings forth the Son, who is true God from true God, a distinct Person from the Father, and yet one God, together with the Father. The Spirit of God proceeds from the Father, through the Son, to bring life to the creation. So don’t think of God as the Father over here, and the Son over here, and the Spirit over here. Think of God as the Father in the back, as the Son in front of the Father, begotten of Him, and as the Spirit in front of the Son, proceeding from the Father and the Son, so that every time you think of God or pray to God or worship God, you have in your “line of sight,” as it were, all three Persons at once.

The Pharisee Nicodemus, in today’s Gospel, actually stumbled upon the Trinity of God by accident when he spoke to Jesus: Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing, unless God is with him. “Rabbi,” referring to Jesus. “Come from God,” referring to God the Father. And doing signs by the power of God, who was with Him, a reference to the Holy Spirit, who is credited with signs and miracles throughout the Old and New Testaments. Nicodemus didn’t understand the Trinity at that point, but he was right in what he noticed.

Jesus goes on to teach him more about this mystery, focusing on the work of the Holy Spirit, who is, in a sense, our contact-point with God as the one who brings us to Jesus and to the Father as He reaches us through the divine Word, whether it’s the Word as it’s preached with sound alone, or the Word as it’s combined with earthly elements, like the water of Holy Baptism, or the bread and wine of Holy Communion, so that it becomes a Sacrament. It’s the Spirit who comes in Word and Sacrament to enlighten our eyes to see Jesus as our Savior, and, seeing Jesus as our Savior, to see God as our Father. And when that happens, we are reborn.

That rebirth, that “being born again” is absolutely necessary for a person to be saved. As Jesus says, Truly, truly I tell you, unless a person is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. A person’s first birth is worth nothing when it comes to entering the kingdom of heaven. Just being born does not make a person a child of God. On the contrary, our first birth, our natural, fleshly birth lumps us in with the rest of fallen humanity. Flesh gives birth to flesh. Sinful human beings give natural birth to sinful human beings, so that, by nature, by birth, we were dead in sins and trespasses, children of wrath, just like the rest, as Paul writes to the Ephesians.

Unless a man is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God…Spirit gives birth to spirit. You can’t work your way into heaven. You can’t earn your way into heaven. You can’t even atone your way into heaven. You have to become an entirely new person, and that’s not something you can do to yourself, just as a baby can’t give birth to him or herself. You have to be born again spiritually, given birth to, not by your mother, not by yourself, but by the Holy Spirit, which He accomplishes through His instruments of Word alone, or Word plus an earthly element, in this case, water. Baptism is described, not only here, but throughout the New Testament as the Spirit’s means of giving new birth and the forgiveness of sins. As we heard last week in Acts 2, Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Gal. 3, For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. In Eph. 5, Baptism is called the washing of water by the word. In Titus 3, Paul says, He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. And Peter says in 1 Pet. 3, baptism, which also saves us now.

Jesus goes on explaining to Nicodemus, The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes. Such is everyone who is born of the Spirit. You can’t see the wind (the word Jesus uses for “wind” here is the same word as “spirit,” by the way), but you can hear it. So you can’t see the Holy Spirit. But you can hear Him as He calls out to sinners through the Word, “Repent and believe! Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ! Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved!” And some who hear—those who don’t stubbornly resist the Spirit’s work—are brought by the Spirit to believe and so are born again.

Nicodemus answered him, “How can these things happen?” Jesus answered him, “You are the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things? These are the basics of the Jewish/Christian faith! First of all, the basic truth of the Trinity of the one God. From the creation account, where God, spoke the creative Word, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters; or from God’s words, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness;” or from the threefold benediction, “The Lord bless, the Lord make, the Lord lift;” or from the threefold word of praise from the angels in Isaiah’s vision: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts;” or from the words of Isaiah, “The Spirit, of the LORD, has anointed Me,” that is, the Christ; or from the words of the Psalm, where David says, “The LORD said to my Lord,” referring both to the Father and to the Son as Lord; or even from the very word for “God” in Hebrew, “Elohim,” a plural noun that’s always used with a singular verb when referring to the true God.

What’s more, Nicodemus, as the teacher of Israel, should have understood from the Old Testament man’s natural sinfulness and lostness and need for rebirth. He should have understood the work of God’s Spirit through preaching and through the Sacraments, which included circumcision in the Old Testament. He should have understood the most basic thing of all: how a sinner can enter the kingdom of God, only through faith in God’s promises, especially the Father’s promise, through the Spirit’s Scriptures, to send a Savior into the world who would be both God and Man and would become the once-for-all sacrifice for sin.

But even the basics are often beyond those who call themselves scholars and teachers. They become so wrapped up in their knowledge and position that they fail to listen to the words they know so well. How many teachers there are in Christian churches who deny man’s natural, sinful state, who ascribe some power to man to regenerate himself, to believe, to choose God, who deny God’s promises attached to Baptism and search long and hard for some other way for people to be born again. Likewise, how many teachers there are who go looking for the Holy Spirit in their feelings or in tongue-speaking, even as they ignore the work He does through Word and Sacrament.

Truly, truly I tell you, we speak what we know, and we testify to the things we have seen, and you people do not accept our testimony. Now, who is the “we”? Well, it’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Spirit testified through preaching and the accompanying signs that Jesus was doing. Jesus testified as the Preacher, the One who was sent. And Father testified by sending Jesus into the world, and by sending His Spirit to testify about Jesus. But here we learn another solemn truth: God does not compel people to be born again; He doesn’t force them to believe. The Spirit works on them through the Word, but He does not work by His omnipotence. He doesn’t force people to live. He allows Himself to be resisted as He works through the Means of Grace, a stern warning not to receive His grace in vain.

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, except for the one who came down from heaven, namely, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. Another mystery of the Holy Trinity. Jesus, who has come down from heaven, speaks to Nicodemus as someone who has already ascended into heaven and who, even as He stood there speaking to Nicodemus, was in heaven. Now that’s a “heavenly thing” that no mortal can understand. Jesus, the eternally begotten Son of God, assumed human flesh in the womb of the virgin Mary, as we confessed today in the Creed. And so there are two natures, a divine and a human, but one Christ. According to His human nature, He confined Himself to time, so that He descended from heaven and was conceived, then born, then grew up, then ascended into heaven again. But according to His divine nature, Jesus is eternal, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He exists outside of time, in the past, in the present, and in the future, all at once. And yet He isn’t two separate Persons, the divine nature doing one thing while the human nature does something else. No, He is one undivided Person, one Christ.

Is that too difficult? Is that too lofty? That’s OK. Jesus leaves that saying to stand on its own and goes back to focus on something much more basic, something much simpler to understand: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. You remember the story from the Old Testament. The Israelites had complained again in the wilderness, so God sent venomous snakes to punish them—to bite them and to kill them. But when they cried out to Moses for help, Moses took their sad situation before God, and God gave him a remedy. Make a serpent out of bronze, put it on a pole and lift it up in the middle of the assembly, and whoever looks up at it will be saved. What clearer, more basic picture could there be? All men have sinned against God and are rightly punished for it and in danger of eternal death. But the Father gave Jesus, the Son of Man, to be lifted up on a cross, so that whoever looks to Him in faith is saved from eternal death. The whole purpose of the Holy Trinity, and the whole purpose of the Son of God taking on a human nature, is man’s salvation: through faith in the Son, who was sent by the Father, and who is revealed to our ears and hearts by the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament.

There are many “gods” in the world. But none of them can save. Salvation comes only from the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If you know Him rightly, then you have the Spirit of God to thank for it, who worked powerfully through Word and Sacrament so that you see the Son and the Father, even as the Father sent the Son, and the Father and the Son sent the Spirit so that you might be reborn as His precious child, so that you might spend eternity with the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.