WE BELIEVE IN THE TRIUNE GOD (AND AS CHILDREN OF GOD WE ARE)
I. Led by the Holy Spirit
II. Loved by our Father
III. Heirs with God’s Son
Romans 8:14-17 - May 26. 2002
14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
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Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:
Everyone likes a good mystery. We read a mystery novel, and then sometimes we find it hard to put it down. Today, on this Trinity Sunday, we have one of those things that are very essential teachings of our Christian faith--the teaching of the Trinity--Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now we know as we study that teaching of Scripture and try to reason it out, that there are three persons, yet one God. It is hard to make sense of that according to human reason. So Scripture calls it a mystery. Yet, without believing that mystery, there is no salvation at all because it is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity itself. Those who do not believe in the Triune God certainly do not believe in the true God and certainly will not have eternal salvation.
How is it that we understand or how do we believe in this mystery of the Scripture? It is because of God’s grace, which works faith in our hearts. We know what faith is. Scripture defines it for us: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see"(HEBREWS 11:3). Just as sure as we cannot completely explain the Trinity, at least to the full understanding of our human reason, yet in our hearts we can believe it with the full understanding of our faith.
So we are going look at the fact that as we confess the Apostle’s Creed, that we believe in the Triune God--Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are able to say that by faith. We use this as our theme--We Believe in the Triune God. Christians everywhere throughout the world believe in the Triune God. We believe in the Triune God; and as our text points out to us this morning, as God’s children, what happens? We are I. led by the Spirit; II. we are loved by our Father; and III. we are heirs with God’s very own Son.
I. Believers are led by the Spirit
Paul writes to the believers at Rome this inspired message of God, and gives them and weaves into these two verses the Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He talks about how their lives have changed. Remember, the people that lived in Rome lived in a big metropolitan area. As it is sometimes today even, there was not much attraction to going to church. There were many other activities to do on the day of worship. There were a lot of "eat, drink, and be merry" attitudes in the city of Rome. These believers who became believers by God’s grace understood the difference between following the ways of the world and following Christ who was the Way, the Truth and the Life. They knew that they did not do it on their own. Paul says that: "Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." These believers knew that if they depended on themselves, they would be led down the path of destruction. If they had followed their own reason or thinking, they would still be lost children of Satan.
But God sent Paul to preach to them; and as Paul preached to them, they heard the Word of the Lord. As the Word of the Lord came into their hearing, God used it to change their hearts that they would be led by the Spirit to follow those things that were spiritual. He even calls them sons of God. (That really plays throughout our whole text, and we will be hearing a lot about that yet.) If they didn’t believe that he says, "But the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children." Certainly for these believers who had not known faith from early on, they understood pretty clearly what Paul was saying. For a while they were "orphans." They were without a god. They didn’t know the truth, but God had made them His children and led them by His Spirit.
He does that to us also. Now maybe for most of us if we would ask ourselves, "When did we become children of God?" We, too, would probably not remember; because for most of us it was when we were baptized. That’s a beautiful description of how a person becomes a believer, not by his own will or choice; but the Spirit leads him. When we were baptized as infants, we didn’t walk up to the front and asked to be baptized; but we had faithful parents who brought us before the Lord’s altar. By God’s Spirit and the washing of water with the Word makes us His children. So the Lord describes that mystery of salvation that comes to every believer; because by our sinful nature we don’t go out of our way to find God; but He has to go out of His way to find us. He describes to us how the Spirit comes to us in the Gospel of John: "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit"(JOHN 3:8). Now we know a lot about wind here. We know that it comes up and we know what direction it comes from; but we don’t know where it started. We don’t know where it finishes, but it is there. God says that is the same with faith--the Spirit comes to us. The Spirit leads us.
It may be difficult for us to explain, but God tells us the means that He uses. It is by God?s power and grace that we are children of God and are led by the Spirit. He says to us in the Epistle of Peter: "For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God"(1 PETER 1:23). So the Spirit comes to us through the hearing of His Word. The Spirit comes to us through the Sacrament of Baptism. The Spirit comes to us through the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
We then by faith can say: "We believe in the Triune God." As God’s children, we understand that the Spirit leads us. As God’s children, then we understand that our Heavenly Father loves us.
II. Our Father loves believers
He describes that in verse 15, this love of the Father for His children and a love that really surpasses all understanding. Because when we talk about God’s divine love for mankind, we could spend a lifetime studying that and realize that we have only scratched the surface of beginning to understand how much God loves us. We heard it already in our first lesson, the creation of the world--God said and it was so, and it was good. God does everything good for His creation, and we are part of that creation.
In our text God through Paul says, "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship." Again, the people at Rome had been under the influence of false gods before and had seen many false gods that were still there. Just as true as it was back then, it is true today that the false gods in the world try to hold their people by fear--do this or else! Every false god is a righteous and condemning god and not much at all about loving. Paul says their life was changed; because now they were led by the Spirit to understand God the Father who wasn’t sitting on His throne with lightning bolts, waiting to strike them down, but a loving Father. He declares them his children. He adds: "And by Him we cry ’Abba, Father.’" In other words we cry, "Father, Father." Now these people knew the love their parents had for them, and they probably understood the love that they had for their children. Paul says this is the same love that God has for you, except it is even greater than the love that we know.
It is the same today. We know how much our parents love us and sometimes it takes a long time to understand that. But for many of us, we know how much we love our children. God tells us though that this hardly compares to the love that He has for us. We know that sometimes we become angry with our children because of the sinful things they do. Our parents have become angry with us and sometimes even let us go from the nest without much effort. What does God do? We heard about His beautiful creation. Adam and Eve are created and they sin. They ruin perfectness; but God says, "I will send you a Savior. I will provide for your salvation." That is His love. That is our Father who loves us. Jeremiah describes this: "The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: ’I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness’"(JEREMIAH 31:3).
Rather than push us away at the moment of our sinfulness and the many times that we sin over and over again, the Lord draws us back and says, "I am your Father. I love you, and I love you with an everlasting love that cannot be broken and that cannot be taken away." In our society, love is often used so much that it is not understood anymore. The only love that there is is the love that God has for us. It is only when we use the term "love," that we understand that we are speaking first of God’s love and that we might share that love with others. Our lives have been changed. We are not alone in this world. We are not "orphans" anymore. Even though we might feel lonely, even though we might feel by ourselves from time to time, God is still with us. God says, "You are my child." What does that mean? It means our lives are different from those who feel lonely and deserted and by themselves. Paul wrote to the Philippians and reminds us: "We live our lives so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe"(PHILIPPIANS 2:15). There is not one of us here today that would not realize that our generation is more crooked and depraved than was the time during the time of Apostle Paul. The Lord reminds us that because of the love God have for us; we can shine like stars in this crooked and depraved generation. We know what the future is. We know that heaven is our home. We know that there is joy in the midst of sadness. There is comfort in the midst of trouble. There is strength in the midst of weakness. All because by God’s grace, we can say, "We believe in the Triune God."
We believe in the Triune God; and as God’s children, the Spirit, loved by our Father, leads us and finally we are heirs with God’s very own Son.
III. Believers are heirs with God?s Son
Now we get to the heart of the matter in the sense of this whole idea of the sonship, the relationship, and the fact that we are heirs. It was a big thing in the Old Testament. Remember the shenanigans that went on when they tried to steal one another’s birthright--Jacob and Esau. Even though the younger stole the blessing from God, he also received the inheritance too even though he didn’t deserve it. It happened time and again. The New Testament was the same. If you weren’t the firstborn, you didn’t get much. The firstborn received half of everything. So there was a big deal made about that, and that is why Paul brings that up here: "Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ." He reminded these believers that now they were not cut out of the inheritance. They were put into the inheritance, and they were going to inherit from God. Even though Christ was God’s only begotten Son and He would deserve the greatest inheritance, what does he call these believers? He calls them "co-heirs with Christ." That inheritance that Christ has sitting on God’s right hand would also be the inheritance for these believers.
The Triune God is a loving God. He adds: "We are co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory." He is not saying that these believers would have to share in suffering in order to share in glory. He is saying that yes, as he told them before, that it is through much tribulation that believers enter into the kingdom of God, that they would have suffering, that they would have heartache, that they would have sorrows and tribulations before coming into the kingdom of glory. But the kingdom of glory was theirs. It was an inheritance that God had given to them. It was what they were going to share with Christ.
What a great message and great good news this is. All of us can picture Christ sitting in the glory of heaven, sharing it with His Father and the Holy Spirit. The Lord says that inheritance is ours. Again, all of us are always excited when we hear something about an inheritance expecting the best. We are guaranteed an inheritance, never to be written out of the will, never having to feel that we have received a less portion than my brother or cousin or someone else. The Lord reminds us that all glory is ours simply because we are His children. In Galatians we are told: "So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir" (GALATIANS 4:7). He has prepared for us an inheritance.
Because we are His children, we realize the blessings we have here on earth. But most importantly, it is the fact that God looks beyond this life into eternity itself; and he says what we are going to inherit, we inherit by faith--the things that we are certain of that we do not see. We don’t see heaven until we are there, but it is ours. We know it! We believe it! We have joy because of it! Scripture tells us that time and again. Titus says, "So that, having been justified by his grace, (in other words, saved by faith) we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life"(TITUS 3:7).
We are confident of those things that we do not see by faith. These things are no longer a mystery. We are able to confess, not because of our own reason or our intelligence, that we believe in the Triune God, all because of God’s grace. We believe in the Triune God and as God’s children, we see that the Holy Spirit leads us to faith. We are loved by our heavenly Father forever; and finally, we are heirs with God’s very own Son of eternity, of heavenly glory simply because we are God’s children.
On this Trinity Sunday, we see the power of God. We are reminded of God’s love for us. Finally, some day we will see His glory face to face. The Prophet Amos says, "He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth-- the LORD God Almighty is his name"(AMOS 4:13).
We believe in the Triune God--Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Pastor Timm O. Meyer
