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The
Trinity
Many found the powerpoint slides for this
sermon helpful. Below are some
summary diagrams if you’d like to follow along.
Here is the sermon audio.
Diagrams:
 God
is not solitary:
 But is a loving community:
Serving the
solitary ‘God’ is about what we offer – our prayer, worship and
service:
But with the triune
God – the service He demands, He also gives:
We are
therefore wrapped up in the trinitarian life of God!
Hopefully
that will help as you listen.
The text is
below:
TRINITY
SERMON TEXT
[SLIDE – What is
God like?]
Let me ask you a
question and let’s see where you mind goes. ‘What was God doing before
the creation of the world?’ What do
you think God was up to when there was no universe to run, no people to
care for. Just God, nothing else.
What was that like?
Well the wrong answer
to that question is basically to think about one solitary god.
[SLIDE – god blob]
God was not lonely before
creation, He wasn’t bored, He wasn’t just itching to get on and create
since He had only His thoughts for company!
No, what was God doing
before creation?
They were enjoying one another. Who’s
they?
[SLIDE – Father,
Son and Spirit blobs]
The Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit. Is that who
you were thinking about when I asked my question? Or were you thinking
about some other god – a god who is not Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
This morning we will
learn that God is not, and never has been, lonely or aloof or
self-centred or brooding or solitary or bored. God is and always has been, loving and giving and
other-centred and relational and sociable, companionable, friendly. Because the real God is the
relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christians call this relationship of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit the trinity (and I’ll tell why in a second). And this God, the trinity, is
the living and true God.
But that other,
solitary, self-centred god is not really God at all.
[SLIDE – god blob
crossed out]
That god is simply an imaginary idea that reflects
our own culture and times. Other
people in other times have imagined – perhaps – lots of different
gods and warring people have imagined warring gods. Sensual people have imagined
sensual gods. Intellectual people
have imagined that God is ‘an eternal mind’. And touchy feely people have imagined God as ‘pure energy
which we tap into’. None of this
tells you about the real God – instead it tells you a lot about the
people who offer their opinion.
It’s like the heavens are a gigantic mirror, we look up but all we
really see is ourselves. God has
to tell us about God. And we just
have to listen and discard all our own opinions on the matter.
I’m convinced that
most of the problems people claim to have with the trinity, are because
they want to have the trinity AND the god of philosophy, or the god of
our popular imagination. For most
of us it’s an attempt to MIX the trinity with the solitary, self-centred
god. And you just can’t do it.
So let’s allow God’s
Word – the Bible – to tell us who He really is. And let’s be prepared to let go of your own dearest ideas
of god. And be shaped again by
God’s Word
Have a look with me at
Galatians chapter 4 and verse 6.
6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our
hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."
Now all three Persons
are on show in this verse, that’s why it’s a good one to study. Let’s see who they are and how they
relate to one another.
Look at who they
are. The One at the beginning of
the verse called ‘God’ is also called at the end of the verse
‘Father’. And then there’s the
Spirit who God sends. And there’s
the Son who (kind of ) owns the Spirit. Three Persons.
Father, Spirit, Son. And
how do they relate? Well the
Father sends the Spirit. And the
Spirit calls out to the Father.
The Father is father of the Son and the Spirit belongs to the
Son. You don’t have to get all of
this, I just want us to see how inter-twined these Persons are? The Father is father of the Son
and sends the Spirit. The
Son is son of the Father and possesses the Spirit. The Spirit is sent by the
Father and belongs to the Son.
These three Persons –
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are involved in inseparable, loving
relationships which go back and forth.
Which is why the Bible can say ‘God is love.’ It doesn’t just say ‘God is loving’
which would be true. But God IS
love – He is who He is because of these love-relationships between the
Father, Son and Spirit.
And that’s what that
we mean when we talk about the ‘Trinity’. It’s simply the unity of these three – it’s the
three-unity, the tri-unity. The
Trinity. So what’s God like? God is Three Persons united in love.
That’s what the trinity means: Three Persons united in love. Simple.
The trinity is not a
maths problem: “How can three be one?” It’s clear how the Father, Son and Spirit are one –
they are bound together in love.
In the Bible that’s how real one-ness comes – love. In the Bible, when people get married
they become one. In the
Bible, when a whole group of people get together and agree on a certain
direction, they speak as one.
There’s even an example of this kind of one-ness in our
passage. In chapter 3, v28 we see
lots of different people Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and
female but they are all one. What
does it mean that they’re one? Have they all disolved into the one
person, are they all thrown into a giant melting pot and all that’s left
is the single essence? No, they
are different people who are a community – united in love. And God is different Persons, the
Father, Son and Spirit, united in love.
But let me make
something very clear – the trinity is a community far far superior to any
other. I could leave the community
of St John’s and somehow, you’d still get on without me. You’d still be St John’s and I’d still
be me. Gerri Halliwell can leave
the Spice Girls and the Spice Girls, unfortunately, kept on going. But with the Father, Son and Spirit –
none of them are going to leave the band. The Son is not going to split from these relationships and
begin a solo career. Why
not? Well think about who the Son
is. He is the Son because
He has that relationship with the Father. And the Father is the Father because He’s always had His
Son. The members of this
band don’t have a solo career, they’ve never had one. They don’t just work as a team, they
ARE this team. There was never a
point when the three Persons decided ‘Hey, why don’t we form a
group!’ They have always been
bound in loving relationships.
They were never solo artists in the first place and their band
will never split up. Their loving
community is not just what they do – it’s who they are and who they will
be for all eternity. God IS love.
So, to find the pulse
of the universe (if you want to tap into the heart beat of reality) what
do you find? You find fierce,
passionate, determined, life-giving love that flows between the Generous
Father, His Beloved Son and the Life-Giving Spirit.
The life of these
Persons, the relationships which they share IS the source of all
true beauty, joy, goodness, holiness and love. To belong to this God, to participate in this circle of
divine friendship is the goal of all existence, it is the meaning of
life.
The trinity is not
a maths problem. The trinity is
the good news that God is love.
On the other hand: –
the imaginary, solitary, self-centred god is nothing but bad news.
The difference between
these two ideas of God comes out very clearly when we ask ourselves – how
would I go about serving these gods?
[SLIDE - How should
I serve God?]
Let’s think about the
false, self-centred god first.
How would you serve such a god?
Well if God was just
one person…
[SLIDE – god blob]
…and if he desires any
kind of service, who’s going to have to give it to him? Well it has to be us. There’s no-one else to do it.
[SLIDE – us]
So in terms of serving
God, it’s all about what I can offer God.
[SLIDE – arrow up (advance
then back up then advance again a few times and the arrow will stretch up
to God a few times – a neat trick!)]
This
god might demand obedience and religious service and sacrifice and prayer
and elaborate worship. But with this god, the only sacrifice is our
sacrifice, the only obedience is our obedience, the only prayers
are our prayers. This is
the way of all human religion.
There is some kind of deity who requires some kind of payment
because ‘they’re worth it’ – and religion is about us paying it to
God. Horrible!
[SLIDE
– unitarian worship crossed out]
But the God who is
Father, Son and Holy Spirit has other ways of getting the job done. Look with me at chapter 4, verse 4:
4 But when the time had fully come, God [the Father] sent His Son,
born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law,
that we might receive the full rights of sons.
Let’s think about this
with the help of the diagrams.
At just the right
time, Christmas time to be precise, the Father…
[SLIDE – Father]
… sends His Son…
[SLIDE – Son]
and v4 says He is born
of a woman. The eternal Son of God joins the human race. He enters into our family tree and
becomes our brother, one of us.
[SLIDE – Son extended]
And as our strong
older brother, Jesus sticks up for us.
He steps into our shoes and He does for us what we could never
do. V4 says He is ‘born under
law’. That means that He put
Himself under the obligations of God’s commandments. So whatever
God wants from human beings, the Son of God gives. Jesus paid to His Father the debt
that we owe…
[SLIDE – arrow up]
All the worship,
obedience, devotion, prayer, love and sacrifice which the Father demands,
the Son performs. God wants human
obedience. But our human
obedience is paltry, pathetic, perverted. So the Son comes born of a woman to do in our place
what we should have done.
And then v5 tells us
He does this that we might receive the full rights of sons. (This
verse uses the male ‘sons’ here because in those days it was the males
who inherited and the writer has inheritance in mind). Now we don’t
have any right to be treated as sons.
We don’t have any rights to inherit the blessings of God. But THE Son of God has that right. And so He works His perfect obedience
in our place and then gives us all the rights that belong to Him.
Imagine today a
champion runner, entering the London marathon under your name and running
in your place. And they win and
suddenly all newspapers tomorrow go with ‘Glen Scrivener wins
marathon.’ And I receive a
gigantic cheque and am hailed as a star athlete. I’m not a star athlete, brushing my
teeth is about as aerobic as I like to get. But imagine the full rights of the winner are given to me
because a champion ran in my place.
That’s what this is like.
Someone has run the race of obedience in your place and then given
you all the winnings.
Chapter 3 verse 29
describes it as belonging to Christ – so that His vast inheritance
becomes ours. I like that image,
but I like the image of chapter 3 verse 27 even better: I am clothed with
Christ. I am wrapped up in Jesus
while He offers the perfect worship, obedience and sacrifice to the
Father. If you belong to Jesus,
the Father looks on you and sees Jesus. He looks on you as His beloved
child and says ‘here, have my fatherly love, have my verdict of ‘holy’,
have the whole universe. It
belongs to Jesus and you belong to Him.
Now if that weren’t
good enough, chapter 4 verse 6 tells us we don’t only have the Son of God
wrapped up around us, we also have the Spirit of God in us.
6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our
hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."
[SLIDE – Holy
Spirit]
The Father sends the Spirit of the Son into any who belong to the
Son. Do you belong to Jesus, do
you trust Him, then you have the Eternal Spirit of God living in
you. And the Spirit calls from
within us ‘Abba, Father’. Abba is
a very intimate term, it means something like ‘daddy’ or ‘father
dearest’. It’s something so
intimate that only the Son of God could ever get to call the Father
Almighty ‘daddy’. But now, if we
belong to Jesus, we get to do what Jesus did and call the Most High God –
Abba – Daddy.
The Spirit sweeps us up into the Son’s relationship with the
Father. If you’re a Christian,
the Spirit has swept you up into the Son’s relationship with the
Father. Everything that the Son
has by rights, you now have through Him.
Everything that the Father feels towards His Son, He feels towards
you who are clothed in Him. If
you’re a Christian, the Spirit has gathered you into the circle of divine
love. By the Holy Spirit, you
know Jesus as your Brother and the Almighty Father as your ‘Daddy’. You now belong to Jesus, and He
belongs to the very life of the Trinity.
Our privileges in Jesus couldn’t be greater. As 2 Peter chapter 1 says, we
‘participate in the divine nature.’
I started with a mental test, let me give you one more. Christians here, if I were to ask you
‘how is your prayer life going?’ How would you respond? If you belong to Jesus, you can look
me in the eye and tell me ‘my prayer life is unimprovable’. How’s your prayer life? ‘My prayer
life is divine.’
I am clothed in the Son of God and His prayer-life is pretty
darned good. What’s more, chapter
4 verse 6 tells me that His prayer to the Father is a prayer that is
placed in me by the Spirit. The Spirit prays the perfect prayer of the Son
in me and through me. I’m not just invited to pray, I am already caught
up in the prayer life of God.
All our little prayers are the ‘Amen’ to Jesus’ perfect
prayer. He’s prayed the perfect
prayer and we say ‘Amen, Father.
What He said, Father. My
Brother Jesus couldn’t have prayed it better. Amen, Father’ And as we go on in the Christian life,
the Spirit of the Son will help our little prayers to become more
child-like, so that we call out “Daddy” in reverent love. That’s so important because nothing
kills a prayer life better than praying to God like you’re a slave and
He’s a slave-master, like you’re a soldier and He’s a commanding
officer. Jesus didn’t teach us to
pray ‘Our Sergeant-Major in Heaven’ or ‘Our Line Manager in Heaven’ – instead: Our Father in
Heaven. We need to be little
children in prayer and thankfully the Spirit of the Son makes us
exactly that and helps us to pray child-like prayers where we depend on
our heavenly Dad. Our own
attempts at praying won’t be very good but, wonderfully, the Spirit takes
even our most rubbish efforts at prayer and wraps them up in the Son’s
perfect prayer and lifts them the to the Father.
I hope you can see that the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit
is unlike any god ever imagined.
He is the living, loving, working, worshipping God who invites us
into His life of other-centred love.
But, finally, if you don’t belong to Jesus, you are shut out of
this life. And you cannot get
in. No amount of your own
religious works and moral deeds will earn your acceptance into this
divine family. The only way in is
through Jesus, who offers to be your older brother, who offers to clothe
you in His righteousness, who offers to give you His inheritance. Maybe today you need to say Yes to
Jesus – to say ‘I want in. I
don’t want to live my solitary, self-centred life any more, I want in on
your life Jesus.’ Maybe for some
of us, today is the day we join the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their
life of love.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, thank You that we can call you Father. Thank You that Your Son has become our
Brother and so You have become our Father. Thank You for inviting us into Your family. Thank You for sending Your Spirit into
our hearts. If we are Christians here, may each one of us know that we
are clothed in Your Son and loved with an everlasting love. For those who don’t yet belong to
Jesus, would you draw them, would you woo them, would you claim them as
your own. May we all live in your
love, Generous Father, Gracious Son and Powerful Spirit. Now and always, Amen.
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