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