So every doctrine is important. You will never catch me saying that something that we believe is not important. But there are some doctrines that are just really really important. And the doctrine of the Trinity is one of those doctrines. If we get this wrong, we get everything else wrong because this doctrine stands at the very heart of what we believe. This is God.
This doctrine is one of the most attacked doctrines in the history of the church. Satan was busy in the first few centuries trying to attack this doctrine. Because the church stands and falls on its understanding of the Trinity. It gets to the very heart of who God is.
So what I want to do today is briefly speak about the trinity as we have it described in the Belgic confession article 8, and then I want to just take some time here to show you how this doctrine shapes all we do.
The doctrine of the Trinity transforms our Lives
- The Doctrine of the Trinity
- This doctrine shapes all we do.
The Doctrine of the Trinity
So what is the Trinity. He is One in three, and three is One. He is Someone we will not understand but must accept. He is one essence. One God. As Deuteronomy says, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is one.” And in that God, there is three persons – who are all three divine. The Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is God the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. That does not mean there are three Gods but one God.
The Father is from none. He is as the confession says, “the cause, origin and beginning.” The Son is eternally begotten from the Father. In theological language we call this the eternal generation of the Son. He is coming from the Father. He is as the confession says, “the word, the wisdom, and the image of the Father.” As Jesus says, “if you have seen me you have seen the Father.” And the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. He is as the confession says, “the eternal power and might who proceed from Father and Son.”
All three are distinct persons. Each one has His personal existence. They can each be grieved, sinned against, lied against. They can each three speak and act. They each three can be distinguished by different personal characteristics. The Holy Spirit lives in us, not the Father. The Father sent the Son not the Holy Spirit. The Son became flesh not the Spirit or the Father. Yet they never work alone. It is not as if the Father created, the Son redeemed, and the Holy Spirit makes Holy.
That is how he has revealed himself that is what we believe. The moment we try to logically work it out we run into problems and normally end up in tritheism, or modalism. Three Gods working in different times in History, or one God just appearing in different modes. Hence modalism. We will talk more about the heresies in the next sermon. For now I want you to know that we only understand the Trinity in the way that he has revealed himself. And He has revealed himself by his actions in History in human experience.
This Doctrine shapes all we do
. If you think that the Trinity is something that you have not had any experience with or understanding of, you’re going to kind of go off on a hunting trip to find interesting, neat, little analogies that might kind of apply. So you’ll say, “So the Trinity is kind of like water being liquid water, and ice, and steam.” And then after saying that hopefully you will say, “But, of course, that’s not what God’s like.” Or God is like space time and energy. Or like an apple the skin, the flesh, and the core. Orsomeone might say it is the Trinity is like a well-functioning committee. I do not know what church committee you have been on, but it doesn’t reflect the one I have been on. You can go on on this silly and frankly dangerous road… the Trinity is like a three point sermon. Or the three-office ministry. Or Prophet Priest King. You hear the superficiality.
You can go on and one and on like this, and it doesn’t really amount to much because they don’t really believe God as Triune is very much like any of these things. They’re just looking for some little hook to think, “How could something that is three also be something that is one?”
And it’s a pretty fruitless exercise. When I say connect the Trinity to the Gospel as directly as possible, here’s what I mean. The eternal God, who always was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, made himself known in the central biblical acts of the Father sending the Son and sending the Holy Spirit.
Just as the Father created the world through the Son in the Holy Spirit, so the Father saved the world through the Son in the power of the Spirit. So, The Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son to dwell within us.
This brought into being the people of God and the church. And if you are in the church you are already soaking in the thing created by the Trinity. The church is profoundly Trinity shaped. You don’t need to go looking for something that describes the trinity! You are living in the reality made by the Trinity.
And to look away from that reality in which you are and see if you can define it outside of that it is to miss the point completely. To understand the Trinity, we must think about what God has done that manifest his tri-unity. His three-oneness.
In the eternal being of God there is something that we have called the procession. The Son proceeds or better is begotten of the Father from all eternity. The Son never did not exist and there was never a time in which he did not in a sense proceed from the Father. And the Spirit comes from the Son and the Father. This is salvation history. This is who God is. This is what all of history is about. Revealing the work of God as one and yet three. It is the gospel of creation and recreation – God acting all as one. The Father sending the Son and the Holy Spirit. Eternally.
You must get this so you understand that it is not about trying to be more Trinitarian, but that we are already living in a Trinitarian reality. We don’t need these cool intellectual word-pictures. In fact when you get this awesome picture of the church these cool word pictures look like drawings from one year old!
We are in existence because the Father sent the Son and the Holy Spirit. I want to look at three texts that help us to understand and apply this better.
First Galatians 4:4-6, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our heart, the Spirit who cries out Abba father.” I hope you heard the Trinity there. God sent his Son. What kind of God sends his Son? God the Father. And then this Father sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. So that with his Son we enjoy the full rights of Sonship and cry in one Spirit Abba. Here we have the objective facts of the gospel. The historical facts of the gospel are profoundly Trinitarian. In the Gospel God shows us most profoundly who he is. Three in One. Working together for our salvation. If you believe the Gospel you must accept the Trinity. There is no gospel outside of this. The Trinity is good news.
Second, I want to look at John 20:21-22, “As the Father has sent me so I sent you… Receive the Holy Spirit.” Not only is the gospel profoundly shaped by the Trinity, but also the Mission of the church is shaped by the Trinity. What formed the church is the Father sending forth the Son in the power of the Spirit, that gospel leads to the Son to sending the church forth in the Power of the Same Spirit to the Glory of the Father. It is the trinitarian character of the mission of the church. As Christ was sent into the world to save sinners so he sends his disciples. Trinitarian theology is mission theology.
The Lord Jesus has a special way of talking about trinitarian theology. When we hear statements like this or when he says, “That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” When we hear this the first reaction is often to try to explain it away. Like trying to say Jesus did not really mean what he said. We must make sure not to try to make excuses or try to reinterpret Jesus when he says things like this. At the same time, we must add some nuance. We are not one in every exact way as Father and Son are one. Otherwise we would be God. Neither are we sent in the exact same way. We are not eternally begotten. We are not sent to save the world in the sense that he saved it. And yet we are in a sense sent to save the world as he was sent to save it, because we are sent by the same Spirit.
The same goes for when he says, “may they be one as we are one.” What Jesus is saying there is a serious trinitarian unity that will take place in the church. And there will be a Trinitarian missional character to the church. The same momentum, direction, purpose, connection to the reality, and for the same reason God the Father sent the Son, the Son breaths the Holy Spirit into the church.. The mission of the church is deeply root in God.
And thirdly Not only is the Gospel and the Mission of the church rooted in the Trinity, but Worship is also rooted in the church. Look at Ephesians 2:18, “For through him we have access to the Father through one Spirit.” Here Paul is talking about worship. Access to the Father is something you don’t have except through Jesus. We don’t have it because we are human. We have no right on our own to go to God. None. No, we need to get it somehow. Approaching God as sons of God in Jesus. It is like we cannot access the internet, without Jesus password, so we can’t get into the throne room of heaven without Jesus.
How do you come to God? You have the authority of the Son of God. In one Spirit. The nature of our worship is trinitarian in structure. Christian worship is not we are down here, and God is up there. No when we worship, God himself is active in worship. He is enabling and making worship possible. So not only do we worship a God who is Triune, but we worship Triunly (Not sure that’s a word).
The Ephesian passage also says, “The have access in one Spirit.” Everyone who goes to worship the Trinity must come together to worship the Trinity in one Spirit. In the Son in the same Spirit to the Father. This means finally that the Trinity shapes the unity of the Church. Unity in diversity, diversity in Unity. This part of Ephesians is in the context of bridging the dividing wall between Jews and Greeks. But we can extend to between colored, blacks and white. There must be a unity in worship. The trinity bring unity across culture, race, ethnic lines. The church throughout history as often struggled with that. And we still struggle today. But the more we live in the reality of the Trinity the more this will also become reality in the church.
And finally this passage also touches on prayer. Sometimes people ask, how can I pray more with the Trinity in mind. What they mean is that they want to pray more to each person. And that is not Wrong. All three persons are equal and worthy of worship and honor and praise and glory. It is healthy to pray to Father Son and Spirit.
But the foundation is that, if you are praying, whether it is to God or the Father or Jesus, or the Spirit, you are already praying in a Trinitarian way. It is impossible to even pray without praying in a Trinitarian way. If your practice is to pray to Jesus. Many kids do this – probably because Jesus seems most concrete to them. Even if you are praying to Jesus who is God, you are not coming to God on your own authority. You are coming to him in the name of the Mediator. It is through the mediation of the Son that you come to the Son of God and you come to him in the Spirit.
Sometimes we can over think it and forget that we are actually already living in this reality. Sometimes we discuss the Trinity so much that we never learn to live in this glorious reality.
If you are saved, you are in touch with the Trinity. If you are truly praying, you are praying in a Trinitarian way. If you believe then you are one in a similar way as Father and Son are one, for you have The same spirit which flows from the father through the son To us. If you believe that. Then we can grow in that. Then we can look at the gospel, at mission, at prayers and look at worship and grow deeper and deeper in the reality we already enjoy.
So to conclude, Our the Gospel, the church, prayer, mission, and unity are all shaped by the Trinity.
We live in a reality shaped by God – lets realize that and give him the glory. This Church is Trinitarian., It is the household of God the Father, the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We are Sharing in, glorifying in, and living in the rich reality of God who is the Father sending the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen