************ Sermon on Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 24-25 ************
Doctrine: The Trinity
By: Rev. Adrian Dieleman
This sermon was preached on May 28, 2000
Q & A 24,25
Deuteronomy 6:1-4; Matthew 28:16-20
"Three Persons, One God"
Introduction
I believe in music. I believe in love. I believe in peace. I believe in arms control. I believe in me. I believe in reincarnation. I believe in astrology.
It seems different people believe in different things. But what do you as a Christian believe?
In its very first phrase the Apostles' Creed stakes out what those with true faith, what those with saving faith, believe: "I believe in God ..." Our faith, our belief, our confession, starts off with God. But, then, the Christian's starting point must always be God. There is no room here for a man-centered atheism or humanism. The boundaries are immediately established. What do you believe? "I believe in God ..."
Having said this, we must now try to explain Who God is. This is difficult but not impossible. It is possible for us to say Who God is – not because we are so smart but because He has graciously revealed Himself.
It is possible to say Who God is, but it is not possible to say it adequately. Every talk or book about God should be introduced and closed by a text such as Psalm 139:6: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." Or, Isaiah 55:8-8:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. (9) "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
In A.J. Cronin's The Green Years, Robert Shannon says to the priest, "I don't believe in God anymore. I've given up the whole thing."
After a silence, the priest said, "You don't believe in God; you've achieved a triumph of reason. But what do you know about God? For that matter, what do I know about Him? I'm afraid the answer is, nothing. He is absolutely unknowable, incomprehensible, infinitely beyond the grasp of the imagination, of all the senses. We can't picture Him, or explain His treatment of us, in human terms. Believe me, Shannon, the intellectual approach to God is madness. You cannot fathom the impenetrable. The greatest mistake we can make towards God is to be always arguing when we ought simply to believe in him blindly."
So the church of all ages says "I believe in God" even though He is beyond our ways and thoughts.
There are two ways to try and say Who God is. The first is to try and describe what God does. This is the approach taken by Danny Dutton, an 8-year-old, in his essay "God," quoted by a Lutheran newsletter:
Topic: God
Subtopic: Search for
Index: 4100
Date: 10/1996.301
Title:
"One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes these to put in the place of the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things here on earth. He doesn't make grownups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way he doesn't have to take up his valuable time teaching the to talk and walk. He can just leave that up to the mothers and fathers. I think it works out pretty good.
"God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, cause some people, like preachers and things, pray other times besides bedtime, and Grandpa and Grandma Dutton pray every time they eat (except for snacks). God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV on account of this. Cause God hears everything, not only prayers, there must be a terrible lot of noise going on in his ears unless he has thought of a way to turn it off. I think we should all be a little quieter. God sees everything and hears everything and keeps everything and is everywhere. Which keeps him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting his time asking for things that aren't very important or go over your parents' heads and ask for something they said you couldn't have."
The second approach is to try and describe God's essence or being. That's the approach taken by the Athanasian Creed for instance:
"Now this is the catholic faith: That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal. What quality the father has, the Son has, and the Holy Spirit has ..."
The Catechism takes neither approach. Rather, in telling us who God is the Catechism ties together His essence and His work:
God the Father and our creation;
God the Son and our deliverance;
God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.
I The Doctrine of the Trinity
A Our confession concerning God was formulated in the early days of the Christian church. The formula says that God is one Being Who exists in three persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We say He is one because that is the clear teaching of Deuteronomy 6: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." We say He is triune because that also is the teaching of the Bible (cf the baptism formula in Mt 28).
In Catechism class I ask my students to think of the Trinity. Then I ask, "Does God consist of three persons or does He exist in three persons?" Students generally answer the question wrong and say He consists of three persons. But God does not consist of three persons; rather, He exists in three persons. There aren't three parts that make up God; each person is God, and there is only one God. He exists in three persons.
B Since the beginning of the New Testament church theologians have tried to explain this by means of various examples. One example involves marriage. When two people marry, their lives are enriched, and they become a unity. When they receive a child, they become a kind of tri-unity, one unit with three distinct persons.
Another example involves water. Water exists in three states: solid, liquid, and gas. All three are exactly the same substance; yet it exists in three states.
A third example is a triangle. Sometimes one of the three angles is in the foreground – God the Father, our Creator, for instance – but the other angles are always connected and involved. When the second angle is in view – God the Son, our Redeemer – the others are still there. And when the focus is on the third – God the Spirit, our Sanctifier – we may not forget that this being is still part of a triangle with two other corners.
I can try to illustrate the Three-in-Oneness of God, but I have to admit that all the examples fail to equal what the Bible has to say on this topic. We may never forget that all things are from God, through God, and to God (Rom 11:36); yet there are not three Gods but only one God. And this, we have to admit, is beyond our understanding.
C The church has accepted the Trinitarian formulation of the Council of Nicea which met in A.D. 325. The formula was necessary because Arius was teaching that Christ was a created being, substantially different from the Father. Today the Jehovah's Witnesses say the same thing. I have quoted to them Jesus' own words from John 10:30: "I and the Father are one." They say there is indeed some sort of unity between God and Christ, the kind of unity that exists between an architect and a builder. And the Spirit is not God either, they say. He is not "somebody." Just as my own spirit is not somebody but a power within me, so God's Spirit, they say, is just a way of speaking of God's power.
The church must fight these false teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses and others.
This was the same battle the Council of Nicea faced; there, Arius was opposed by Athanasius. Athanasius won not because he was more smarter or knew the Bible better but because he saw this: if Jesus Christ is not God, then I cannot be sure of my salvation.
Jesus' enemies understood Him better than Arius did. Remember when Christ said to the paralytic, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven"? Some of the Jews fumed about this because only God can forgive sins. "This fellow is blaspheming," they said (Mt 9:2-3). It is an understandable anger. These Jews were committed to the confession of Deuteronomy 6:4 that "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." In this light the claims of Christ are intolerable. "You, a mere man, claim to be God," said the Jews (Jn 10:33). They said this because only God can forgive sin. For that reason Jesus' enemies wanted to stone Him, and for that reason they later crucified Him (Jn 19:7).
D We believe in a triune God. Yet, we say God is one. The doctrine that God the Lord is one Lord is basic to all that the Bible teaches about God: He says, "You shall have no other gods before me" (Ex 20:3). When people bow before a creature, any creature, the Bible says, "No!"
Do you remember the time Paul and Barnabas arrived in Lystra? A man crippled from birth was healed by Paul. When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted, "The gods have come down to us in human form," and they brought bulls and wreaths to offer sacrifices to them. When Barnabas and Paul realized what the people were doing and saying, they tore their clothes and rushed into the crowd, shouting:
(Acts 14:15) "Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them."
Paul and Barnabas knew the teaching of Scripture: that the worship of anything alongside of or in the place of the one true God is blasphemous.
In the last chapter of Scripture the same thing happens again: the apostle John was so overcome with his vision of heavenly things that he bowed – not to God but to an angel. Then the angel said, "Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers the prophets and of all who keep the words of this book. Worship God!" (Rev 22:9).
That's the refrain heard throughout the Bible: we are to worship God and God alone.
Yet, in the book of Revelation we see man singing many songs to God and to Christ (4:11; 5:13; etc). So, the Bible teaches both the oneness of God AND the worship of the trinity.
E The awareness of the mystery of the Trinity did not start until after Easter. It was then that the women "clasped his feet and worshiped him" (Mt 28:9). It was then that a doubting Thomas fell to his knees and said, "My Lord and my God!" (Jn 20:28). Don't forget, Thomas and the women were Jews. Every day they recited the Shema, "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." But when they were confronted with the resurrected Christ, they confessed that He too was God. Ever since Easter the church has confessed that He Whose human ancestry is Jewish is also "God over all, forever praised!" (Rom 9:5; cf Rom 1:3,4).
If Jesus is not God, how can the Bible not only permit but also command the worship of the Son! And, if Arius and the Jehovah's Witnesses are right that Jesus is a different creature, neither God nor man but a different substance, then all who worship Him commit idolatry.
F As for the Holy Spirit, because He is both Gift and Giver, the Bible speaks of Him as a blessed power as well as a holy person. Yet, he is not "something," but a "somebody." For Jesus did not say He will send comfort but "another Comforter" (Jn 14:16). He is a person. He too is God. Therefore Peter could say that Ananias and Sapphira lied "to the Holy Spirit" and could explain this by adding, "You have not lied to men but to God" (Acts 5:3-4).
This, then, is the church's doctrine of God: He is one God existing in three persons. But, as I already said, this is beyond our understanding because God's thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways and not our ways.
II Salvation, Praise to the Triune God
A The deepest difference between believers and unbelievers is that believers know God and unbelievers don't.
What is the purpose of this knowledge? What difference does it make that we know there is one God existing in three persons?
B We can identify two purposes. First of all, do not forget that we are talking about true faith, about saving faith. True faith or saving faith, we learned, is a knowledge and conviction that everything God has revealed in His Word is true. So then, we need to believe in the Trinity in order to be saved. The Athanasian Creed puts it this way:
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold ... this: That we worship on God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity ... He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.
When it comes to salvation, almost everyone will say you need to believe in Jesus, and they leave it at that. But that is NOT the approach of the Catechism, the Athanasian Creed, or the Bible. When it comes to salvation, we need to believe in the Father and our creation, the Son and our deliverance, and the Holy Spirit and our sanctification. Have you ever thought of the Trinity this way? Have you ever thought of the Trinity as a doctrine essential to your salvation?
C There is also another reason for knowing that there is one God existing in three persons. All knowledge of God is supposed to lead to the praise of God! All talk about God, all sermons on God, and all books about God miss the point unless they help us to praise Him.
What is the greatest moment in your life? Perhaps you will say it is the day you got married, or the day you graduated, or the day you scored the winning goal, or the day your team won the trophy, or the day your got your dream job. As Christians we realize the greatest moments in our lives are those in which we spontaneously praise the Lord. How stirred I am those times when the walls and ceiling seem to be in the way of our singing. In such moments we begin to understand we were created, saved, and sanctified for God's praise. Then we understand that real living is praising God.
Topic: God's Glory
Subtopic:
Index:
Date: 12/1991.101
Title: Story
A teacher was drilling his young students on the Westminster Confession of Faith. The first question in the catechism is "What is the chief end of man?" The answer being "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever." One youngster seemed quite sure of himself as he anxiously waved his hand for recognition. When the teacher called his name he proudly blurted out "The chief end of man is to glorify God and annoy Him forever!"
Many times, I'm afraid, we annoy God rather than enjoy God. Yet, our chief end and purpose – in all of life – is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
I am sure you realize that you don't have to understand everything about God and the Trinity in order to do this. People don't have to become theologians or ministers in order to praise God.