Theme: How great is Your Name
Text: Pr. 8:22-31; Rom. 5:1-5; Jn. 16:12-15
Today is Trinity Sunday - the day we celebrate the Holy Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We can only understand this revelation, as the Scriptures teach us, when the Spirit, who is identical with Jesus Christ as He is with His Father, reveals it to us. Jesus is the truth and the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth. Just as Jesus Christ received everything from the Father and was the “way” to know the Father while on earth, so the Holy Spirit has received everything from Jesus Christ in order to be the “way” for us to know Him. The difference between Jesus and the Holy Spirit is that Jesus, the divine Word become incarnate and dwelt among us whereas the Holy Spirit is not incarnate in one body or person but dwells in all who love Jesus by keeping his word. Like Jesus the Holy Spirit is in conflict with the “world” which cannot see or recognize Him, just as those “of the world” could not truly see Jesus even though they could see him on the physical level. He also, like Jesus, serves as teacher, only now he explains the implications of what Jesus said whereas Jesus revealed and explained the Father. To explain the doctrine of the Trinity is like trying to describe an iceberg. To describe the tip of the iceberg above the water is not to describe the entire iceberg. So as Christians we affirm the Trinity, not as a complete explanation of God, but simply as a way of describing what has been revealed to us. What we know about God is just the tip of the iceberg and points us to how great His name is.
An infinite God cannot fully be grasped by a finite human mind. If we think we fully understand God, we have created God into an image and He is no longer God. The Scriptures reveal that God is one. The words recorded in Deut. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” are recited by every devout Jew at least twice a day. This simple statement of faith is followed by a call to single hearted devotion to Him. The Scriptures also reveal that God is three and that each person of the Trinity is unique, equal is stature to the other, yet still only one God. Each is fully divine – fully God - and each is a fully distinct person. We must not confuse the Father with the Son or the Son with the Spirit. The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit. And it is not as if God were simply changing roles, like an actor in a play, sometimes playing the role of Father, sometimes the role of Son and sometimes the role of Spirit. God is always Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is one of the distinctive doctrines of Christianity. Just because it’s hard for the brain to understand it doesn’t mean we should pretend it’s not there. How can God be one and God be three at the same time? It cannot be fully explained but looking at light we often do not realise that it consists of three kinds of rays. Its chemical rays are invisible and can neither be felt or seen. Its light rays are seen but cannot be felt and its heat rays can be felt but cannot be seen yet it is the same one light. St. Augustine so the story goes was struggling to understand the doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that God is One, Father Son, and Holy Spirit. One day while taking a walk on the beach he saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a seashell and then running to the ocean, filling the shell, and rushing back to pour it into the hole he had made. “What are you doing, little man,” Augustine asked. “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole”, the boy replied. St. Augustine immediately realised that this was indeed, what he had been trying to do - to fit the great mysteries of God into his mind. We have to accept the Trinity by faith as someone once said, “A God understood, a God comprehended, is no God.” For some this is difficult because our minds want to understand everything so we can be in control. But there are many things we cannot understand. Do we really understand what makes some seeds grow into flowers, others into vegetables or fruit? Do we understand how an orange seed when planted can produce oranges on a tree? We know the soil, the rain, and the sun helped but what exactly turned those seeds into flowers, vegetables, and fruit. We try to understand how and have explanations for what happens but in spite of all our explanations the process is still for us a mystery. The Holy Trinity, the many truths of God’s dealings with us are difficult to understand. There is a mystery about God, a mystery we just have to accept. The mystery of the Trinity is difficult, but the Holy Spirit of that Trinity leads us to accept and believe that mystery by faith.
As Christians we believe in the Trinity because Christ reveals it. Jesus came and lived among us to teach and show us how to live in love. He worked miracles and died for our sins and rose from the dead to show us the way to eternal life. So whatever Jesus revealed to us, He revealed for a reason and it is important for us to pay attention to it and try to understand it as best we can. The Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit give us the perfect model of harmony and unity. It is the perfect relationship, so perfectly intertwined that you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends.
According to the Scriptures in Genesis we are created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, since Jesus has revealed to us the essence of God as perfect unity and harmony, then the very core of our creation is a call to perfect unity and harmony. This type of perfect unity is God’s divine will for marriage and Ecclesiastics 4:12 puts it this way, “A threefold cord is not quickly broken”. Marriage should not merely be a relationship between the man and the woman but the binding together of three persons – the man, the woman and God. When the three are united you will in your marriage experience heaven on earth. As believers we should demonstrate this unity. We should be united with one another and with God and when this happens, as God said at the building of the tower of Babel, “nothing shall be impossible for us”.
Jesus constantly claimed that he was not speaking on his own authority, but saying only what the Father had told him to say. In the same way the Holy Spirit, is no independent source or force, but the transmitter and communicator of the Father now that Jesus is no longer physically present on earth. Thus, the Spirit will re-announce or re-proclaim what Jesus originally announced or proclaimed. Jesus, the Word of God, revealed the Father. The Holy Spirit guides Christians to understand and interpret the significance of what Jesus said and did. The Spirit glorifies Christ by fulfilling His mission through His disciples, the Church. God has revealed and expressed his entire will and plan for humanity through and in Jesus. The Spirit, like Jesus, is the emissary of the Father. Thus, what the Spirit declares as given him by Jesus is the same as what Jesus received from the Father. Thus the Spirit continues to interpret the Father throughout history as Jesus did at a certain time in history.
Everything that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son and everything that belongs to the Son belongs to the Spirit. And everything that belongs to the Spirit belongs to believers. As believers God has made everything available to us when He sent the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately many believers do not even know what they have. There is a story of two sailors who were shipwrecked and had been clinging to boards for so long that they were near death. There was water all around them but they were afraid to drink salty water that was far worse than drinking no water at all. When all hope was lost, a passing boat came into sight and the sailors cried out for fresh water. They were told to dip their hands into the water and drink and when they did so they found out that it was fresh water. Those two sailors knew they were close to fresh water when their ship wrecked, but they forgot or hadn’t thought of the possibility they could have been in fresh water. They didn’t use the wisdom and knowledge they had. It was as if they forgot everything they knew or had learned. They needed to be reminded about the truth, the knowledge they possessed. Jesus says, "When the Spirit of truth comes He will guide us into all the truth". The Spirit gathers us together in a community of faithful people so again and again we can be reminded of all the truths we have learned about God. We cannot understand everything, we cannot even understand a majority of God’s truth, but we have been given the faith to accept, the trust to believe and the power and courage to stand by our convictions. The Holy Spirit leads the believer into the abundant life. He guides and leads us to God’s provisions for our lives. Do we understand the truth and live by the truth. The Scriptures declare, “we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free”. Jesus is the truth and when we know Christ, He will set us free.
If someone does not believe that Jesus is fully God, they cannot understand the concept of the Trinity. If Jesus was not fully God, He is no different than Mohammed, Buddha and countless other religious leaders claimed by the world religions. If Jesus were merely a man, the world would be correct in its claim that all religions point to the same God. The Holy Spirit makes sure we do not forget this truth. He reminds us that indeed Jesus is the true Messiah—the Messiah who had been promised for the salvation of the world. He also reminds us that since Jesus is God, He has the right to claim that no one can come to the Father except by Him. He reminds us that the cross is not just another symbol but the doorway to salvation that God Himself created by His own sacrifice and His own blood. God did not provide works or methods to redeem us. God paid our debt by becoming our sin so that we can become His righteousness through Jesus Christ. As Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” (John 10:1). No matter the claim of many religions today, unless they come through the door of the cross, they and their leaders are robbers and thieves. There is no other way. Only God has the right to pay for sins and only God can redeem our souls from the justice demanded by the law. We cannot redeem ourselves, nor can any religious leader. Only Jesus Christ is God and only He has the right to pardon our sins. Only He paid the debt so we could be pardoned. Amen!
