[Machine transcription]
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
You may be seated.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear Saints, when someone asks you, what do you believe as a Christian? Or what sets a Christian apart? What is it that the Christian religion says about truth in the world that nobody else says about truth in the world? Now, here’s the easiest way to answer that question. I think it’s just to go straight to the Creed. What do you believe? I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Christian Church, and the communion of saints, and the forgiveness of sins. I think that’s the easiest way, but if you have a little more time, you might explore it this way. The Christian Church is set apart by our belief and by our confession of three great mysteries: the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the mystery of the Holy Incarnation, and the mystery of God’s saving work in Christ.
Today is given over to the doctrine of the mystery of the Trinity, but in fact, I’d like to think about all three of them because they have to go together. There is one God, and this is, I think, the simplest way to confess the doctrine of the Trinity: five statements. Number one, there is one God, only one God. God the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Spirit, nor the Spirit the Father.
So we confess the Trinity in unity and the unity in Trinity. That there is only one God and one Lord, but that the Father is God and Lord, the Son is God and Lord, the Spirit is God and Lord. That is the first and greatest mystery of the Christian faith. And a mystery, not a secret, because if a secret is told, then it’s not a secret anymore; but we confess this mystery and it remains a mystery. We cannot comprehend the height or depth or breadth of God and the wisdom that He reveals to us. We just are confessing the Scripture.
The second great mystery of the Christian faith is the mystery of the incarnation. And that is, we confessed all three of these, by the way, in the Athanasian Creed beautifully, that the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, came down from heaven and took upon himself our humanity, our flesh and blood, a human soul and body. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, died and buried. The third day he rose again and ascended into heaven and remains, God be praised, remains in his human nature, united to that divine nature in the personal union.
In fact, I remember one time I got in trouble on vicarage. I was, I’ll tell you the whole story actually. I was trying to talk about the ubiquity of the human nature of Christ after the ascension. And that is that because Jesus is God, he’s everywhere, but because he’s God and man, his humanity is everywhere. I remember I was trying to illustrate this to a women’s Bible study; the pastor’s wife was in the Bible study. I said, “Yeah, the body and blood, the humanity of Jesus is everywhere. The humanity of Jesus is in this cup of coffee. It’s in this table. He’s in this wall. He’s in the trees. The humanity of Jesus is in every place.”
Later that afternoon, my supervisor, Pastor Albers, called me to his office, and he said, “Vicar, what kind of coffee are you drinking? The body and blood is in the coffee.” But this is the point: the human nature and divine nature of Jesus are forever united. Jesus didn’t take up his humanity so that he could die and then lay it aside. No, he still has his human nature which is why he can give it to us today on the altar, his body and his blood. Now this is an astonishing mystery: that the humanity is assumed into the divinity, that the two natures are united in Christ.
We confess that also, the second great mystery of our salvation: that God and man are united in Christ. It’s so united that when we speak of the things that happened to Jesus, we speak of the things that happened to God, like God’s birth and God’s life and God’s death and God’s burial and God’s resurrection and ascension. These are astonishing things.
And then the third great mystery is the mystery of our redemption—the mystery of our salvation—that Jesus took on his humanity not just so that he could come for a visit, but so that he could take also upon himself our sins, our guilt, our shame, our wounds, our weaknesses. By his stripes we are healed because he is the one who’s bearing our iniquities. Everything wrong with us, everything broken, everything guilty, everything that we’ve done wrong, everything that deserves God’s wrath—all of that was placed on Christ so that he could bear it in your place and be your substitute so that God can look at you not with a frown, not with anger, but with a smile. That he could rejoice in you, that he could say that your sins are forgiven, that heaven is opened, that he could pour out his Spirit into your heart by the gift of holy baptism. And this is the third great mystery.
And this is what sets Christianity apart from every other confession and every other religion, every other theology or philosophy that exists in the entire world—that we confess the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the incarnation, and the mystery of salvation.
Now I think what’s interesting about this, and I was trying to think of how to picture it, is that they kind of lead into one another. In other words, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, exists in eternity, remember? The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, the Holy Spirit is eternal, but there’s not three eternals; there is one eternal. That is the eternal reality that has existed forever. But that God the Father decided in time, one—no, 2,027 years ago—to send his Son into the world, and so the Son of God then took upon himself human flesh. There’s an eternal mystery of the Trinity, that there’s the in-time but now forever mystery of the Incarnation, and that that results in the mystery of your salvation, which also has a date. I was baptized the Sunday after Thanksgiving in the year 1977. There’s a date also for you when the Holy Spirit brought the work of Christ and applied it to you.
And here’s the thing that occurs to me—and I don’t know why this seems like a big deal to me, but it really does—is that while there’s a sort of logical order to the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation and salvation, we get to it the other direction. What comes to us first is not the doctrine of the Trinity; in fact, it’s not even the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is the truth of the Holy Spirit bringing Jesus to us to save us so that God wants to be known first as the one who is forgiving our sins.
I think it’s like this: here’s my best illustration, and I’ll just tell you right away that it’s not a good illustration, and so we can work on it together. But can you imagine that if you are making a cookie, what you do is you go to the store, and you get the flour, and you bring it home, and you make the cookie? That’s how the cookie starts: store, flour, cookie. But the way that I experienced the cookie is cookie—what’s in this? Where did it come from?
So it’s Trinity, incarnation, salvation, but for us, it’s salvation—who is this who’s saving me? God and man in the flesh. And how can that be? It’s the Son of the Father who sends forth the Spirit. Does that make sense?
In other words, God comes to us as the Holy Trinity, as the Son who’s incarnate, but he comes to us first. The very first thing we see is that we sinners are forgiven and washed clean and given a good conscience and delivered. And we say, who is it who could be so good that he would take all that I’ve done wrong and suffer it in my place so that I could be saved? And we say, it’s none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. And how can it be that this one, that this man dying on the cross can be my salvation? Well, it’s because he’s none other than the Son of God.
And how is it that God can have a son? And we understand, well, at least we confess that this is the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And here’s the point: when God reveals himself to us, he reveals himself to us as good, as holy and kind and patient and long-suffering and forgiving and gracious and compassionate. When we find first the door of heaven, it’s already been opened.
So that our confession of the Holy Trinity is not simply an acknowledgment of the reality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but an acknowledgment that the Father is for me and you. The Father gives Himself to you with all of creation. And we don’t just confess the reality of the Son and the two natures of Christ, but we see that Jesus gives Himself to us with His blood and His suffering and His cross and His mercy and His smile and His resurrection and His glory and His Spirit.
And the same with the Spirit. When we confess the Holy Spirit, we confess that the Holy Spirit gives himself to us with all of the gifts that we have in this life, and especially the gift of life and forgiveness and salvation and joy and peace and love and hope and the confidence that God is for us and not against us.
So that we worship the Trinity in unity and the unity in Trinity not as some sort of abstraction, not as some distant academic reality, not as something for the theologians in the tower to talk about. We confess that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is for us.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
And this is our confidence in the worship of the Holy Trinity. It’s our faith. It’s what we confess and what, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we believe until the last day when we will see it—the glory of the Holy Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and worship him together with the angels and archangels in the true confession of God.
So may the Holy Spirit grant us this joy and confidence in believing. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
