You've Got A Lot Going For You, Part 2: The Trinity

Last week we started looking at the main body of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. He starts out with a very high falutin statement of the glory of God, listing first, blessings we have received through God the Father, then through God the Son, then through God the Holy Spirit.

Starting out like that, Paul took an approach that’s just the opposite of some modern theologians. The trend today is to do theology from the bottom. Start our with human needs, with the injustices of the world or the difficulties that humans have with belief or other elements of human brokenness, and then work up from there to try to express what God is doing about it. For example, liberation theology came largely from wrestling with political oppression in Latin American countries. And that approach can be very useful. It has helped to call the church to get involved with the injustices of society. It has a place.

But Paul starts out his theology in this letter from the top, in God. And he works down from there to dealing with human problems and daily life. And I think Paul was so wise in doing that. The Bible says that we are created in God’s image. So the starting place for understanding ourselves is to do all we can to understand God. That’s doing theology from above. He is the North Star, fixed in the sky, by which the early explorers could always get their bearings. Or, today maybe we should say he is the Global Positioning Satellite from which can take a reading of our longitude and latitude and know exactly where we stand so that we can plan the next step to get us home. He is our best protection from getting pulled off course by the cross currents of the human fads that are always coming and going.

Last week we started working our way through the Trinity, with Paul’s words about God the Father. It would be natural to move this week to the second person of the Trinity, God, the Son. But before we do that, we really need to look at the concept of the Trinity itself. What in the world are Christians talking about when we talk about worshipping one God in three persons?

Sometimes you hear people talk about the Trinity as a waste of time. ‘I don’t bother with that abstract theology stuff. I just want to live a life like Jesus on this earth.’ Have you ever heard that thinking? Well, Jesus himself couldn’t live that life without depending on the Father, so we would be fools to try it without that same help. Today I want you to walk out of this room understanding that an understanding of the Trinity and an experience of the Trinity is the very heart of the Christian life.

Would you please stand now for the reading of God’s word? We’ll look again at the same passage we started last week, Ephesians 1:3-14, but at some other passages as well.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. 5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight 9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory.

How does the Trinity work? Well, you have never seen anything exactly like it, so trying to put it into words is sort of like describing the Grand Canyon to someone who has never left the flatlands of central Illinois. The words get you started, but you just can’t comprehend the wonder until you experience it for yourself. But let me try some analogies that can help us.