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Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity
Ezekiel 18:30-32 + Romans 11:33-36 + John 3:1-15
The importance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity cannot be overemphasized. It is at the heart of the catholic faith, that is, the universal belief of every true Christian. We just confessed in the Athanasian Creed that This is the catholic faith; whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved. No one can rightly be called a ‘Christian’ who does not believe in the one God who is three divine Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. No one who believes in any other god can be saved.
There are many who do not believe in this God: Atheists and agnostics, who believe in no god at all; Buddhists, Hindus, adherents of native American religions; Muslims and Jews, who do not believe in the Son of God and, therefore, do not believe in the one true God at all; Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not worship the one God in three Persons but have invented their own versions of ‘god.’
Then there are those who believe in the generic ‘American god,’ the ‘Higher Power’ who sometimes resembles the God of Christianity, but has little to do with Biblical revelation. This American god is represented by institutions like the Boy Scouts of America, who make serving this generic ‘god’ part of their core principles. Well, maybe you heard what happened this week. The BS of A decided that their generic god permits, and even celebrates homosexuality. Now openly gay young people are welcome to join.
But there are also any number of Christians who are Christians in name, but who do not believe in the one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They may know that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but they don’t trust in Him alone for salvation. Even the pope falls in this category. Last week he preached a sermon in which he praised the ‘good works’ of atheists. The very doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges Muslims and Jews as the ‘people of God’ who worship the same God we do, and the official catechism of Rome proclaims that unbelievers, too, can be saved. So much for the Athanasian Creed!
And so much for the words of Jesus. Our Gospel today is rich in Trinitarian teaching. It contains all we need to know and believe for our salvation. Maybe you didn’t even notice the references to the Trinity. Jesus doesn’t lay out doctrinal points one by one. He just tells us about God, and really, that’s the best way to understand what we can understand about the Trinity. The word ‘Trinity’ is not in Bible, and as Luther says, the best way to know the God who is Three in One is to speak about Him as He Himself speaks. We can recite the Athanasian Creed all day long, and it’s helpful to know and review it, but you don’t come to know and trust in God through the Creed. You come to know and trust in Him through His revelation of Himself in Scripture and through the preaching of His Word. To know the Holy Trinity is simply to know God rightly, to know the truth about Him, and to believe in Him as the only True God.
In the Gospel, a ruler of the Pharisees named Nicodemus came to visit Jesus at night and said to Him, “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.” See how he praises Jesus! But, wait. Why does John tell us that he came at night? Because he didn’t want to be seen with Jesus. He was a Pharisee—by definition, one of those who sought to merit salvation by keeping the Law. He was interested in Jesus; he thought highly of Jesus and even praised Jesus. But he didn’t want to be seen with him. And while Nicodemus apparently believed that Jesus ‘came from God,’ he meant it in the same way that any prophet comes from God. He didn’t believe that Jesus was the very Son of God who was with the Father before the world was made. He didn’t believe that Jesus was the ‘Word’ by whom all things were made, who, for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven. He didn’t believe that Jesus was, in very essence, God from God, Light from Light. Nicodemus is a good example of a man who thinks he believes in Jesus, but doesn’t (yet) believe in Jesus as he must in order to be saved. In other words, he doesn’t confess the Trinity.
Jesus’ reply to Nicodemus reveals Nicodemus’ unbelief. Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus wasn’t impressed by Nicodemus’ flattery, was he? He didn’t express a bit of appreciation for it. Can you believe it? Instead, he drives Nicodemus to see his own desperate need—which is where sinners need to start in our understanding of God, not contemplating the mysteries of the Trinity, but contemplating the depths of our own depravity. He tells Nicodemus in so many words, ‘You don’t know God the Father. You cannot come to Him. Your best works are unacceptable to Him as you are; you are unacceptable to Him as you are. Man is locked out of God’s kingdom by nature, because men are born sinful and self-centered. You’re not good enough to see the kingdom of God. The only way to see the kingdom of God is by being born again; the old man must die and a new man must be born.’
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus can only think in an earthly, carnal way. It sounds like foolishness to him, this ‘new birth,’ this ‘dying and rising,’ this ‘starting over.’ After all, Nicodemus wasn’t a public sinner or a rough character. He had lived a life full of good deeds. Surely they were not to be forgotten!
But Jesus insists, “Most assuredly, I say to you, 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.” Ah, so one cannot work his way into God’s kingdom or earn his way into it—because we are sinners, flesh born of flesh, sons and daughters of Adam, whose sin infects us all. Sinners cannot stand in God’s presence. The only way to see the kingdom of God is to be reborn into it, to be born again spiritually and grafted into someone better than Adam—a Second Adam—Christ!
But when a person is born, he isn’t doing that. Someone else is giving birth. The one being born is passive! But that means that all our works count for nothing for getting into God’s kingdom. Well, if I’m not responsible for working my way into God’s kingdom, if I have to be born into it, who’s doing the work? “Born of water and the Spirit.” So God is not only the Father and the ruler of a kingdom. He is also the Spirit who gives rebirth into God’s kingdom. And He does it in connection, not with works, but with water. Baptism! “…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” God the Holy Spirit gives new birth to sinners in Holy Baptism. God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit mercifully forgives sinners by means of Holy Baptism and adopts us into His kingdom.
You may say, the Holy Spirit is the Person of the Trinity that I understand the least! That’s OK. You don’t have to understand. Just know that when God convicts you of sin through His Word and brings you to repentance, that’s the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, working through Word and Sacrament, is our point of contact with God. It’s the Spirit of God who works faith in our hearts, who turns us into spiritual descendants of Christ, who grafts us into Christ and who dwells in the hearts of believers.
So far in our Gospel, Jesus has spoken of the kingdom of ‘God,’ talking specifically, not of the Son or the Holy Spirit, but of the Father. He has also talked about the Spirit as the one who works through means, like Word and water, to bring men into God’s kingdom. Now Jesus has some words to say about Himself and His place in the Holy Trinity: No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. Jesus reveals to Nicodemus just what it means that He ‘came from God.’ Not like an ordinary prophet who received a message from God, but as He who started out up in heaven and came down and was incarnate of the virgin Mary and was made man. Jesus, unlike His creatures, existed before He was born as a man. Jesus is God! He refers to Himself as the Son of Man “who is in heaven.” But wait. Jesus was standing there in front of Nicodemus. How can He say that the Son of Man ‘is in heaven’? How can He be ‘in heaven’ and standing in front of Nicodemus at the same time? Only God could say such a thing.
And after revealing this amazing truth to Nicodemus, Jesus sums it all up and explains why He, the Son of God, came down from heaven and became the Son of Man in the first place: 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. You remember the story of the bronze serpent. The Israelites grumbled and complained against God, and God sent venomous snakes into their camp in the desert to bite them. They were dying and called out to the Lord for help. So the Lord told Moses to make a serpent out of bronze and lift it up on a pole, so that all who looked up at it were healed of their snakebites and saved.
So also Jesus had to be made in likeness of sin, although He Himself had no sin. He had to be lifted up on the ‘pole’ of the cross and suffer and die for the sins of all people, so that all sinners might look up to Him in faith, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
This is what it means to know and confess the Trinity. First, to know yourself as a hopeless and helpless sinner who cannot enter the kingdom of God as you are by nature. Then, to know that the one true God is the Father who sent His Son, also true God, to become true Man in order that He might die for our sins. This God sends forth His Spirit, also true God, in Word and Sacrament to convict us of sin, to comfort us with the promise of salvation through faith alone in Christ Jesus, to bring us to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, and so to give birth to us again, this time as God’s children and heirs of eternal life.
This knowledge of—this trust in the Holy Trinity is the catholic faith. Let us give thanks to God for revealing Himself to us as our Savior God who does all things for our salvation, who, by grace alone, permits us to call Him our God, and calls us His children. And let us confess Him joyfully and confidently before the world, the God who is Three in One and One in Three, the Blessed Holy Trinity. Amen.
