The Truth of the Trinity Saves You

Romans 5:1-5

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

The Truth of the Trinity Saves You

Can I ask you a potentially obvious question? By show of hands, how many of you want to go to heaven someday? (OK. It’s always good to know what I’m working with.) Let me ask you a less obvious question. How do you get there? That’s a loaded question. Christians have been trying to clarify the answer to that question since Jesus went to heaven.

In a few minutes we’re going to recite an answer to that question together when we read the words of the Athanasian Creed. Let’s do a little bit of it now. Read this with me:

Whoever wishes to be saved, must, above all else, hold to the true Christian faith. Whoever does not keep this faith pure in all points will certainly perish forever.

So far, I don’t think that what we just said would surprise too many people, especially the kind of people who would come to a Christian church on a Sunday. You would hope that Christians would have a certain level of conviction in the Christian faith. But we’re going to get more specific. Finish this sentence from that same creed:

Whoever wishes to be saved must have this conviction of the Trinity.

I said before that of the 50 major and minor festivals throughout the Christian calendar, only 1 celebrates a doctrine. To think of it another way, these are the doctrinal statements – the theology – of the Lutheran church; only one concept contained in all these books merits an entire Sunday’s focus.

So, the question for today has to be, Why? Why is the Trinity so important? Why is a proper understanding of the Trinity necessary for eternity?

To answer that question, we have to answer another first. Thankfully it’s an easy one: What is the Trinity? Simply put, the Trinity is the biblical truth that there are three persons in one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

That’s a simple sentence, but it’s a complex thought that’s trying to balance seemingly contradictory statements from the Bible. One the one hand, you hear God say this to the Israelites:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[1]

But then you hear God say strange things like,

“Let us make man in our image…”[2]

or, even what we heard last week at the Tower of Babel,

“Let us go down and confuse their language.”[3]

So, which is it? Is God one, or is he more than one?

The answer is, Both. There is only one God, but there are 3 distinct persons within that God, and yet, as we will also confess today, you cannot mix the persons or divide the divine being. It’s a mystery. People have tried to explain it. “The Trinity is like a clover leaf or an egg – three parts, one whole.” But that would be too distinct a division to define the Trinity. “The Trinity is like the phases of water – solid, liquid, gas – three different expressions of the same thing.” But that would be mixing the persons together.

The Trinity is a mystery: three persons in one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The longer you think about it, the more your brain hurts. The math doesn’t add up, but thankfully the meaning does.

And that’s where our reading from Romans 5 gives us a hand. It’s not a dry, doctrinal dissertation about the Trinity. It’s not a dictionary definition for the Trinity. You might even struggle to find the Trinity in this passage. But what Paul does tell us about the Trinity is immediately practical and eternally relevant.

Paul starts this way:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.[4]

The Trinity matters – the Trinity is necessary for salvation – because it give us peace with God.

Peace is nice. Show of hands, how many of you would like to live in peace? We all would. The world craves peace, precisely because peace is so rare. Iran and Israel. Ukraine and Russia. Tariffs. Trade wars. Florida Panthers. Estranged children. Enraged neighbours. There are so many things in this world that threaten or prevent peace.

But this is peace with God, which means that there was a time that we didn’t have peace with God, i.e. that there was hostility, animosity, enmity between us and God. And there was. We call it sin. It’s the natural condition into which we were all born. And even if you recoil at the idea that you are by nature sinful, rotten to the core, I want you to think about the scenario that Paul paints for us here.

Paul talks about the impact of suffering in our lives – and praises it for its ability to produce perseverance and character and hope. But is that always true for you? When you experience suffering are you always patient? Or are you quick to complain or to blame others or to blame God? Does stress build character in you, or does it draw out anger from you? Can you feel your fuse getting shorter? Your temper getting hotter? Or maybe stress does the opposite for you; it makes you withdraw into a shell of anxiety and worry, and ultimately a distrust that God can or will do good for you. Does pressure provide you hope? Or does it lead you to despair and depression and resentment and bitterness at the situation, at yourself, at God?

Pressure often robs us of peace – not this internal feeling of calmness, but peace with God as we point the finger at him or turn our back on him. There was a time when we didn’t have peace with God, when we were estranged from him, when our relationship was strained or even broken and through no one’s fault but our own.

But that’s why Paul says what he does:

Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.[5]

That’s the Trinity at work! Not some dry, doctrinal definition or a vague, conceptual abstraction, but a personal God who took a personal interest in you. The Father who loved you so much that he sent his Son Jesus to be your Saviour. To justify you, which just means to forgive your sin.

Those times that we lose our patience, that we blame others or God, that we lose our temper, that we lose our trust, that we grow anxious, afraid or worried – those aren’t neutral. They’re negative and sinful. They drive a wedge between us and God and destroy our relationship with him. You can’t be at peace with someone you’re angry at. You can’t have peace with someone you don’t trust.

But God the Father restored peace through Jesus. He took the initiative. He did all the work. God didn’t wait for you to make the first move; he sent his Son. Jesus didn’t ask for your help; he went through life – he endured so much pressure and suffering – without breaking. He never lost his patience. He never lashed out in anger. He never lost his trust in his heavenly Father. Instead, even under a load of suffering that you and I can’t even begin to understand, he remained faithful and loving and clean of conscience and pure of heart until that heart stopped beating. So that by his death he could give you access by faith into this grace in which we now stand[6] and into this hope of the glory of God.[7]

You get to look forward to heaven, i.e. to an eternal life in your heavenly Father’s home because of the salvation that the Father accomplished through his Son. But you also have been granted access to him now by faith in Jesus. Where there once was a barrier, Jesus tore it down. Where once God turned his face away from us in sadness over our sin, he now smiles at us because of the peace won for us by his Son. Which means that now we get to go to him for every problem – every stressor, every worry or concern. We get to pray to him, have daily conversation with him, and receive a blessing that can only come from him. Paul says,

God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.[8]

The Father didn’t just send his Son to die for us. He also sent his Holy Spirit to live in our hearts by faith. It’s the Holy Spirit who creates faith. It’s the Holy Spirit who teaches us to know the love of God through the Word of God. It’s even the Holy Spirit who equips us to overcome our sinful weakness and to find strength in suffering.

Patience without problems isn’t patience; it’s privilege. And it’s privileged people who struggle most when problems come, because they don’t have practice. But the beauty of what God does for you through his Holy Spirit is that he gives you opportunity to exercise your faith until you excel in it.  

With the Holy Spirit’s help, stress, pressure, adversity, affliction, trial, temptation can all be blessings for you because they teach you to see the goodness of God even in evil situations; they teach you the value of trust in the Lord when your strength fails; they teach you the personality and the practicality of the Trinity – that you have a Father who loves you; that you have a Brother who gave everything to give you peace and grace; that you have the Holy Spirit to give you strength in times of trouble and a hope that does not disappoint.

The Trinity is the biblical truth that there are three persons in one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But this is the truth of the Trinity: your God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – pours out blessing after blessing into your life – justification, peace, grace, faith, perseverance, character, hope – all because he loves you.

That’s the truth we confess today. That’s the conviction that will save you. That is the source of our joy and the hope of the glory of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three persons in one God, united in love for you. Amen.

[1] Deuteronomy 6:4

[2] Genesis 1:26

[3] Genesis 11:6

[4] Romans 5:1-3

[5] Romans 5:1

[6] Romans 5:2

[7] Romans 5:2

[8] Romans 5:5

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In a Battle of Wills, God Always Wins

Genesis 11:1-9

1Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

In a Battle of Wills, God Always Wins

What would you think if you were hiking in the mountains and you suddenly came upon a sight like this? Or what if you were bushwacking in the jungle and saw ancient buildings overgrown with centuries of vines and roots? Or what if you were trekking through the desert and you stumbled across the remains of what was clearly once a vast and glorious settlement but now is little more than a pile of rocks and sediment?

Maybe you’d ask, like many would, “What happened here?” “Who were these people?” “What was their story?” “What went wrong?” Something must have gone wrong, otherwise they’d still be here, right?

Well, this is the picture of Genesis 11. Moses takes us on a tour of these ruins and tells us the story of what happened at Babel – one of the most ambitious but, in the end, foolhardy construction projects never to be finished.

We don’t know exactly when these events take place. The words we read today follow immediately after the story of the Flood. But we do know from context that this didn’t happen the day after Noah and his family got off the ark. There were only 8 of them. The story that Moses records for us includes hundreds of people – enough people to justify the building of a city and to begin construction on a project of this magnitude. So, this probably took place a couple hundred years after the Flood.

When Noah and his family got off the ark, God put a rainbow in the sky as an eternal promise never to destroy the world by flood again, but God also gave Noah and his family a command: “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”[1]

So God’s vision for the next several generations after Noah, is constant expansion. But what do these people say? “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”[2]

“A tower that reaches to the heavens.” That sounds more than just ambitious; that seems ostentatious, i.e. boastful. “So that we may make a name for ourselves.” That’s bald-faced pride. “Otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” They know what God wants them to do; they just don’t want to do it. They are taking active steps not to do what God wants them to do. They are in open and direct rebellion against God’s clear command.

It reminds me of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…”[3] These people got it backwards. They wanted to make a name for themselves, to make a kingdom for themselves, and to do whatever they wanted to do regardless of what God wanted them to do. Their prayer sounded more like this: Hallowed be my name, my kingdom come, my will be done… And, as sad as it is to say, the spirit of the proto-Babylonian is still alive and well in us today.

“Hallowed be my name.” You know that temptation, don’t you – to confuse the success or failure of your schoolwork, your work-work, your family life with your personal worth or reputation, i.e. to want things to go well so that people look up to you, so that your parents can be proud of you, your classmates can envy you, your friends can appreciate you. I want to be the smartest, funniest, sweetest, nicest, best (you fill in the blank).

But that’s not what our goal in life is supposed to be. Paul reminds us what is: So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.[4] God’s name is the one we’re supposed to hallow, not ours.

“My kingdom come.” The proto-Babylonians reached Shinar and asked, “Why would we go any further? We have everything we could ever want right here.” They had made it their life’s mission to seek security and stability.

And let’s be honest, who doesn’t want that? It’s not bad to desire security and stability, but at what cost? At the rejection of God’s plans for us that often differ from our plans for ourselves? At the exclusion of seeking his kingdom first? We can be so busy building a life for our families that we don’t have time worship, Bible study, devotion, prayer. Are we so busy building a little kingdom for ourselves that we don’t take time to advance God’s kingdom on earth?

“My will be done.” In the end, this is always what it’s come down to – a battle of wills. Whose desires are most important – God’s or mine? Who wins if those wills don’t line up – God or me? If we’re honest, God usually takes a backseat. If I want something different than he wants, I usually find a way to get what I want.

The bad news is that you don’t have to build a tower that reaches to heaven to be in open rebellion against God. You just have to be human. But here’s the good news: even if we (sinfully) get our own way for a little while, God always wins eternally.

Think about this scene from God’s point of view. If the proto-Babylonians had continued on this path, they would have recreated the conditions that necessitated the Flood – this rampant and willful disobedience and rebellion against God.

And if that happened again so soon after the Flood, what’s to say that it wouldn’t happen again after a worldwide fire or plague or asteroid-strike. God had to break the cycle to preserve his promise – to make it possible for his Son to born so that his Son could save us from our sin. So he confused their languages and scattered them over the face of the earth.

And this is important. The sacrifice of Jesus is very different than these acts of judgment like the Flood or the Tower of Babel. Those things were temporary measures meant to halt the progression of sin for a little while. Jesus’ death would bring the permanent resolution. It wouldn’t put an end to sin – not by a long shot. It would do something better. It would forgive sin and bring about the inevitable reversal of the Tower of Babel the way God had always planned.

Scripture is full of promises to that effect. We read it repeatedly in Revelation: After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before they throne and before the Lamb… They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”[5] No more division in heaven. No more hatred, discord, envy or slander. No more rebellion or sin. Just perfect unity among people from every corner of the globe, reunited in praise at the salvation that is ours through Jesus.

We saw a preview of that promise at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit empowered Peter and the rest of the apostles to speak all kinds of different languages to the wonderment of the crowd: “How is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs – we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”[6] God overcame the natural boundaries and divisions of this world by proclaiming the good news of Jesus in words that everyone could understand. He brought a piece of heaven to earth for the disciples to enjoy even now.

And while it may not look exactly the same as it did at that Pentecost, that’s the same miracle that continues to take place today. Again from Revelation: Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth – to every nation, tribe, language and people.[7] That’s you and me, and all the people we’re privileged to meet – whether they’re members of our congregation or visitors to our Open Air Fair, whether they’re from Canada or the US or the Ukraine, Nigeria, Haiti, or Brazil. God continues to unite us to himself and to each other through the proclamation of the salvation won for us by his Son and worked in us by his Holy Spirit through faith.

Here's the good news of Pentecost: In a battle of wills, God always wins. No amount of human interference can disrupt his plan of salvation. No amount of your sin can hinder his grace. And when God wins, so do you. His victory means forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life for everyone who believes – whether that’s the 3,000 who believed on Pentecost, the 144,000 we read about in Revelation, or you hearing these words today, because God’s promise is true for you just as it was 2,000 years ago or 3,000 years before that: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.[8] Thanks be to God! Amen.

[1] Genesis 9:1

[2] Genesis 11:4

[3] Matthew 6:9,10

[4] 1 Corinthians 10:31

[5] Revelation 7:9,10

[6] Acts 2:8-11

[7] Revelation 14:6

[8] Acts 2:21

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