The Trinity of Persons and Their saving work

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Romans 11:33-36  +  John 3:1-15

The first Sunday after Pentecost is always celebrated as Trinity Sunday. It makes sense. Since the Church Year began, we’ve walked through the life of Jesus, from His birth (which was God the Father’s greatest gift to the world), to His ministry, to His suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, and last week we celebrated the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is the gift of both the Father and the Son. So now it makes good sense for us to pause and reflect briefly on the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not in some abstract way, but in a very concrete and practical way, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work toward the purpose of saving fallen man.

Before we get into the Gospel, which will focus heavily on the “Trinity,” that is, the “Threeness” of God, we’ll say a word about the “Unity,” that is, the “Oneness” of our God. We speak of a Trinity of Persons and a Unity of Essence or Being. God isn’t three Beings working together as one. He isn’t one Being split into multiple parts. He’s one undivided essence. One God, not three Gods, with one mind, one will, one purpose. But there is also a threeness to this one God, a threeness of Persons, clearly revealed in Scripture, especially in the New Testament. Both aspects of our God are who He is, and so it’s vitally important that we know and confess both His oneness of essence and His threeness of Persons. As I say to the catechism students, whenever you focus on the oneness of God, be to sure keep His threeness in view in the background. And whenever you focus on the threeness of God, be sure to keep His oneness also in view.

Now, on to our Gospel from John chapter 3. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night with his question. 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. Nicodemus isn’t yet a believer, but he can hear the ring of truth in Jesus’ teaching. And so he concludes that Jesus has come from God. He doesn’t realize just how right he is. He thinks Jesus has come from God like the prophets who were sent by God. The truth is much deeper. The rest of us human beings only begin to exist when we’re conceived in our mothers’ wombs. But the Person of the Son of God existed already in the beginning with God the Father. He is the “only begotten” of the Father, born of the Father in eternity as light is born of the sun, and then sent by the Father into the world as a man. As Jesus says later, No one has ascended into heaven, except for the one who came down from heaven, namely, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. Or possibly, “who was in heaven,” that is, before the Word became flesh. Either way, Jesus “came from God” into the world.

But Jesus doesn’t thank Nicodemus for his words of praise. He doesn’t allow Himself to get sidetracked into small talk or obscure theological questions. Instead, He goes directly into a sermon that gets to the heart of the matter, for Nicodemus and for everyone. How can a person be saved? How can a person escape eternal condemnation? How can a person enter the kingdom of God?

Truly, truly I tell you, unless a person is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Seeing or entering the kingdom of God is the goal. The goal of every human being. It has to be. Because life is short, sometimes far too short. If this is all there is, this fleshly life, this earthly existence, then we’re no better off than the animals. And if this is all a person lives for, to survive for a few decades here on earth and to lead the happiest life possible here, then sure enough, that person will not see the kingdom of God. What he or she will see at the end is that this wasn’t all there was, that there is either the kingdom of God or the domain of the devil, and you will spend eternity in one or the other.

The only way to see the kingdom of God is to be born again. Born a second time. Even born “from above.” Your first birth wasn’t good enough. Why? Because “flesh gives birth to flesh.” And that flesh that we’ve inherited from our parents and they from theirs isn’t clean, isn’t pretty, isn’t innocent. It’s wicked, twisted, corrupt. By nature, we hate God—the true God, that is; man has always sought to worship and to curry the favor of a god or gods, but not the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You have to be remade, become entirely new, and that new life has to come from above. It can’t come from you, as little as a tiny baby gives life to him or herself.

Where does this remaking and new life come from? Jesus tells us: Truly, truly I tell you, unless a man is born of water and 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. Those who have been born of the flesh have to be born also of the Spirit. “Water and the Spirit,” a reference to one of the primary tools the Holy Spirit uses to give that new life and new birth, Holy Baptism, which is, as St. Paul calls it, a washing of rebirth and renewal in the Holy Spirit, and “the washing of water by the Word.” The Spirit is the one who works faith in our hearts through the Word, as it’s preached by itself and as it’s connected to water in Holy Baptism. The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. But just because the Spirit also gives new life through the Word alone doesn’t mean Baptism is less important or is optional. The very Word through which the Spirit works faith calls us to Baptism, points us to Baptism, and attaches promises to Baptism, the promise of the forgiveness of sins, the promise of being clothed with Christ, the promise of resurrection to a new spiritual life now, and the promise of a future resurrection to eternal life.

But what is it exactly that the Spirit draws us to, turns the eyes of our hearts to, brings us to trust in? To what does Baptism connect us? Jesus explains that to Nicodemus: 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. This is why God the Father sent God the Son into the world. This is what God the Holy Spirit was teaching Israel all along in the Old Testament Scriptures and what He now preaches to our hearts through the Word of the Gospel: Just as Moses long ago made a bronze serpent and lifted it up on a pole, at God’s command, so that the Israelites who had been bitten by venomous snakes might look up at it and be mercifully healed by God from the venom that was killing them, so Jesus, the Son of Man, had to be lifted up on a cross, so that all those who were destined for eternal death might look to Him in faith and be saved—look to Him, no longer hanging on a cross, but preached in the world as the One who gave His life on the cross, preached in the world as the One whose death we are connected to in the eyes of God through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, where the name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is placed on the baptized, and the one who once was lost in Satan’s domain is rescued and given entrance into the kingdom of God.

And that’s the goal of our one God, of the Holy Trinity. That’s what the history of the world has been about. It’s why the world hasn’t been destroyed yet, in spite of people’s multiple attempts to bring the wrath of God down upon themselves with their godless behavior and their endless idolatry, with their refusal to believe the Word and to amend their sinful lives. God the Father knows that He has children who have yet to be born, and to be born again of water and Spirit, sinners who will become His children by the work of God the Spirit who will bring them to the knowledge of God the Son that they may not perish but have everlasting life.

So don’t get bogged down in philosophical questions about the nature of the Holy Trinity. We will understand Him better when we see Him face to face in His kingdom. For now, the goal has to be entering His kingdom, remaining in His kingdom until Christ comes again, living as holy children of God within His kingdom even now, and urging the lost to enter His kingdom, too, to know and believe in the one true God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To Him be the glory, both now and forever. Amen.