Trinity Sunday.
May 22, 2005

Trinity.

  “And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God. . . . He, therefore, that will be saved is compelled thus to think of the Trinity.” (Athanasian Creed).

  Why are we compelled to think of the Trinity in these terms? Is it really necessary to have such a detailed confession of the nature of God? Couldn’t we get by with a simpler understanding of God? In many cases, yes we could. For example, the thief on the cross who asked Jesus for mercy certainly did not have this conception of the Trinity. He couldn’t have. Nevertheless, he died with Jesus’ promise that he would be with him in paradise that very day.

  But our case is a bit different. We have not just come to faith. Nor do we live in a Jewish community of the first century in which everyone has the same belief about God: Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. (Deuteronomy 6:4). No, we live in a world in which there are many, conflicting beliefs about God or gods. We struggle to know and confess the true God. And so the Christian Church has produced creeds, statements of what God has revealed and thus what we believe. One of those creeds is the Athanasian Creed. It focuses on the doctrine of the Trinity, that there is one God in three persons and three persons in one God. And this concept of the Trinity is necessary for a right understanding of God and the Gospel and thus for the assurance and joy of salvation!

  Let’s begin with the term “Trinity.” The word does not occur in the Bible but the concept does. The concept of the Trinity appears in all three of our readings today. Jesus sent his disciples out to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul closes his second letter to the Church at Corinth with a blessing that invokes the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And when we read the account of creation from that Christian perspective, we can hardly miss the concept of the Trinity when Moses writes of God, the Spirit of God and the Word of God as the instrument of creation. The concept is there: one God, three persons.

  Now that concept of Trinity, one God and three persons, doesn’t fit human logic very well. But it does give us a way of thinking and talking about God so that we don’t say and believe wrong things. One false belief is that the formula “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” has to mean that there are three gods. Muslims often charge Christians with having three gods. But that is not what we believe. The Bible is emphatic on this point. Isaiah says, I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. (Isaiah 45:5). Jesus prays for his disciples and says, And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3). And Paul says, As to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” (1 Corinthians 8:4). We believe what the Scriptures say and so we confess that there is only one God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three gods!

  Another false belief is that “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” has to mean that there is one God and one or two lesser gods. They can’t all be one God! This, for example, is the belief of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But again the Bible presents a different concept. In addition to calling the Father God, it calls both the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ God. For example, when Jesus confronts the leaders in Jerusalem he asks them a question to get them to think outside their box. “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” (Matthew 22:42-45). When Thomas finally sees the risen Jesus, he makes his confession, My Lord and my God!, a confession that Jesus does not refuse. And when Ananias and his wife lie about the money they brought to the apostles, Peter rebukes him with these words. “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? . . . You did not lie to us but to God!” (Acts 5:3-4).

  The Bible clearly calls all three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God. It never speaks of demi-gods that the Father created. The Bible speaks only of one God yet it calls these three persons God. And to express that, we use the term Trinity. It allows us to speak this truth.

  Consider one other false belief. For some people, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” means only that God has three different names or that he has three different states like the three states of matter, solid, liquid and gas. But in the Scriptures Jesus speaks in the present tense of himself, the Father and the Holy Spirit showing that they exist at the same time. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3). When challenged by the Pharisees, Jesus said, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, “He is our God,” though you do not know him. (John 8:54-55). When charged with being in league with the devil, he said, If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? . . . But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. (Matthew 12:26-28).

  We see, therefore, that there really are three persons who co-exist at the same time. Thus, at Jesus’ baptism, the Father spoke and the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove. The three persons always exist at the same time and always work together. They are not one person with different names, but they are one God. Thus, “we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.”

  Now why is all this so important? It is because there is more at stake here than just being able to think and speak correctly about God’s nature. We are compelled to think correctly of the Trinity because our salvation, our hope of eternal life, depends on it! The real stumbling block for people has always been Jesus. How can he be both God and man? Yet it is the Bible’s testimony that Jesus is both true God and true man, and that testimony gives us the real assurance of salvation, the promise of eternal life.

  Theologians, on the basis of Scripture, have always maintained that Jesus had to be a man to die for us and that he had to be God so that his death would be sufficient for all people. In Hebrews we read: We see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. . . . Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:9, 14-17).

  This is why the Gospel is Good News. Jesus was human so he could die for people like you and me. But he was also true God so that his death would cover not just Peter, James and John, but you and me and all who are yet to be born. If we didn’t have that kind of a Saviour, we would not have the assurance that all of our sins have been covered. If God were not the triune God, there could be no Christ. And that is the case for Jews and Muslims and all others who claim to know God but not the Trinity. They have no Christ, no Saviour! They have only Moses or Mohammed or some other prophet who can speak to them only of God’s Law and their need for his mercy. They have no God who died for them!

  That is why, according to the Bible, they do not really know God. They have only a natural knowledge of God. Jesus said to the Jews who refused to believe in him, I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he. The apostle John is very blunt: Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life. (1 John 2:22-25).

  To miss the Trinity and Jesus’ divinity is to miss the Gospel. To know that the Christ who died for you is the one true God puts your salvation in a totally different light than if he were only a mere man. God could have offered a mere man in our place. He could have accepted an animal. But then we would live with the question of whether or not a better sacrifice could have been made, a better animal, a better man or woman. We could conceive of better possibilities, other sacrifices, other ways to heaven. But not if Jesus is the Son, the second person of the Trinity. There is no higher being than God himself. We cannot think that something better than the Son of God could be offered. So we can abandon speculation and doubt, and put our trust in Christ.

  Besides Jesus’ two natures, there is another reason why we are “compelled thus to think of the Trinity.” If we cannot bend our thoughts to the doctrine of the Trinity even though Scripture speaks clearly of it, how can we believe other doctrines equally difficult to our reason? How will we believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus and his ascension into heaven? How will we believe in his sacramental presence in Holy Communion or the promise of the Holy Spirit in Baptism? Those things are surely essential to our hope of salvation! This is just like when Jesus healed the paralyzed man. He wanted to first forgive his sins. When the Pharisees objected, Jesus asked the question, “Which is easier, to tell him his sins are forgiven or tell him to get up and walk?” Neither of those things were possible or easy for the Pharisees; but both were possible and easy for Jesus! So it is with all the Bible’s teachings that are difficult for human reason. They are easy for God and they announce to us salvation!

  Brothers and sisters, the doctrine of the Trinity reveals to us a Saviour who is unequalled and able to save us all. He is Christ the Lord. He is God almighty. He is the second person of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is thus a powerful aid to faith and the knowledge of the truth. It gives us a right understanding of God and the Gospel. Let me close with the words of Luther about the importance of the Athanasian Creed.

In all the histories of the entire Christendom I have found and experienced that all who had and held the chief article concerning Jesus Christ correctly remained safe and sound in the true Christian faith. . . . On the other hand, I have also observed that all errors, heresies, idolatries, offences, abuses, and ungodliness within the Church originally resulted from the fact that this article of faith concerning Jesus Christ was despised or lost. (F. Bente, Historical Introductions, p. 14).

  And so we confess, “He, therefore, that will be saved is compelled thus to think of the Trinity.”