The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, simplified

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity

Romans 11:33-36  +  John 3:1-15

Today’s Epistle highlights for us this truth: that our God is far beyond our ability to comprehend. St. Paul is referring specifically to God’s judgments and God’s ways, to the mind of the Lord. Why God determines to do what He does is something we can never hope to fully grasp as creatures, except to the extent that He reveals it to us in His Word. And He’s revealed many things. But there are some questions we’re not supposed to be able to answer fully. We’re supposed to know God and His ways as far as He’s revealed Himself and His ways to us, and no further.

So we focus on what He has revealed about Himself and we confess the Christian faith based on what He has revealed. Thus the Athanasian Creed, from the 5^th or 6^th century AD, which we confessed this morning. It confesses the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and of the Person of Christ as far as God has revealed it in Scripture. It doesn’t answer every question. It doesn’t 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, without “confounding” or blending the Persons together into one another, as if they weren’t really three distinct Persons, or as if God just appeared sometimes as the Father, sometimes as the Son, and sometimes as the Holy Spirit; and without “dividing the Substance,” that is, without dividing the one God up into three separate parts, so that each of them would be 1/3 God, or into three separate beings, so that there would be three Gods.

Is that still too complicated? Let’s simplify it even further and consider the Trinity in a simple, concrete way, as Jesus reveals it 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 by it, but not yet convinced by it, not 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 the book of Acts: 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, as I said, Nicodemus didn’t understand all that yet, and even so, it’s not nearly enough to know that Jesus came from God—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? That Nicodemus didn’t yet know, and even if he had known it, knowing it isn’t enough. Relying on—trusting in—the Triune God for salvation is just as important as knowing Him rightly.

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 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 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? To be lifted up, 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 of us—going to perish eternally for our sins. As Jesus said, Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. We had—all of us—begun 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, 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, to bear the sins of mankind, 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 Son of Man, 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 God? 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 Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is the one responsible for giving new birth to spiritually dead sinners. And He uses water to do it, of all things! The water included in God’s command and connected to 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 chapter 3.

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 true faith until the end.

That’s who our God is. That’s what we’re “compelled by the Christian verity” to acknowledge and moved by the Holy Spirit to believe. To believe in the Father, who loved the world and sent His Son. To 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. To believe in the Spirit, who proceeds from Father and Son, who works through Word and Sacrament to give faith and new birth. To believe in Father, Son and 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 as to 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.

We’ve attempted to simply the doctrine of the Holy Trinity this morning, so that all can see that all the things you need to know and understand and believe for your salvation have been placed within your reach by the Holy Spirit.

It’s a gift to be able to know God in His simplicity and to study the things He’s 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’s His triune nature or His unfathomable ways, we’re still left with our jaws dropped in awe and wonder, amazed at all the things we don’t understand about God and just as amazed at the things we do. And all that’s 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. Amen.