If God Were Not Triune a sermon

If God Were Not Triune

a sermon on Hebrews 1.1-14 by David C. Mauldin Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

Every year forty million Americans try to meet someone special on Internet dating sites. This according to the book Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, published in 2005. The subtitle reads: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. For those keeping score, that’s more than 10% of our population of 300 million. Two economists and psychologist conducted a study of online dating. They examined the personal data of 30,000 users of a popular online dating site. Here is a little of what they found (and you won’t be surprised): When presenting themselves online, people tend to exaggerate. “More than 4 percent of online daters claimed to earn more than $200,000 per year, whereas fewer than 1 percent of typical Internet users actually earn than much … Male and female users typically reported that they are about an inch taller than the national average. As for weight, the men were in line with the national average, but the women typically said they weighed about twenty pounds less than the national average.”

“Fully 70 percent of women claimed ‘above average’ looks, including 24 percent claiming ‘very good looks.’” Sixty-seven percent of men claimed to be above average. “This leaves only about 30 percent of users with ‘average’ looks, including a paltry 1 percent with ‘less than average looks’”—which caused the authors of Freakonomics to quip that these people must be truly fabulous, stuck on themselves, or “resistant to the meaning of ‘average.’”

“Twenty-eight percent of the women … said they were blonde, a number far below the national average. … Some users meanwhile were bracingly honest.” Eight percent of men admitted to being married. Half of them claimed to be happily married!

The book goes on: “Of the many ways to fail on a dating website, not posting a photo of yourself is the most certain. (Not that the photo necessarily is a photo of yourself …) … A low-income, poorly-educated, unhappily employed, not-very-attractive, slightly overweight, and balding man who posts his photo stands a better chance of gleaning some e-mails than a man who says he makes $200,000 and is deadly handsome but doesn’t post a photo.” [All quotes are from pages 80-82 of the book.]

Question: Why this amusing lesson on the hazards of online dating? Answer: I could not think of a better way to illustrate to you the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Before you decide the cheese has finally fallen off my cracker, consider this: Which is a better way to get to know someone—sitting alone with your computer swapping email with an unknown person, or talking with that same person face-to-face? Which provides better opportunity to really know that person—a person online can claim to be anybody, say an attractive woman, but the person might be someone else entirely, say a college guy fond of pranks? And now this: Which scenario provides a better analogy of how God reveals himself to us? Is he far away somewhere, sending messages? Or has he come in person, met us face-to-face, and showed us by his words and deeds who he really is?

Today is Trinity Sunday. We Christians believe in One God who is Three Persons. The One is Three. The Three are One. As I have often said, you cannot start with One and try to figure out how One can be Three. Nor can you start with Three and try to get One. The Trinity is not a mathematical problem. No, you look at how God has revealed himself to us. You start with the God of Israel, the One True and Living God, beside whom there is no other. Then you add the mystery of the Word made flesh. That is, Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is God, yet he is somehow different from the Father. This was what his friends and the very first Christians came to believe. It wasn’t an invention of later generations. The gospel accurately portrays resurrection faith when it has Thomas exclaim, “My Lord and my God.”

Then, of course, there is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is obviously divine. Knowing this, those same first Christians were able to differentiate the Spirit from both the Father and the Son. The triune nature of God, therefore, is something we can know, even if we cannot explain it.

Perhaps, however, all this sounds like nonsense to you. And anyway, what practical difference does it make? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out. Without the doctrine of the Trinity, Christianity would be shallow and incoherent. But let me show you how this is so. Suppose a Christian found the doctrine of the Trinity bizarre and irrelevant, and this Christian wanted to be a Christian without fooling with it. Let’s indulge this person a bit. What if God were not triune?

1. If God is not triune, then Jesus is not God. He may be the highest and greatest creature of God’s creation, or he may be a mere human. People have believed both these things. He could be something in between, but the one thing he most certainly could not be is God. Two drastic consequences follow from this.

The first is, we have no mediator. Jesus is the mediator between God and humanity because he is both fully divine and fully human. He is the point where God meets us face to face. If he is not God, then he cannot reveal God to us. That is, he cannot show us who God really is. If Jesus is not God, then at best we know about God, but we do not know God. That’s a big difference.

The Book of Hebrews points out this difference because the author wanted to strengthen persecuted Christians who were tempted to give up their faith in Jesus. He felt the best way to keep them loyal to Jesus was to explain how important he is. Thus the book begins, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” Think back to the computer-dating scenario. God sent messages to his people from time to time, not online but through prophets. God being God, these messages were true. His people really did know some things about him. “But,” the Book of Hebrews continues, “in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” That’s better, you might think, but still secondhand. Not so, for this Son, “is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” Now we are talking about face-to-face knowing—actually knowing God, not just about him. Take away the Trinity and you take away that.

The second drastic consequence if Jesus is not God because God is not triune is this: Do we have a Savior? If Jesus is God, certainly we do. But if he is not … what more can he do for us than teach us doctrine and ethics? He might teach perfect doctrine and infallible ethics, but is that enough? It is not. We human beings are not separated from God and making a mess of our world because we lack knowledge. We abandon God and destroy ourselves because we are broken and sinful. We do not need a mere teacher. We need a Savior. Jesus had to both teach us and die on the cross for us. Nothing less would do. You know this is true because God gave his law long before he sent his Son, and when did his people ever keep his law? We know it too, but do we obey it? No, not any better than his people ever have. The fact is, we depend upon the mercy of God and the grace he provided on the cross. But if Jesus were merely a human being, he could not atone for our sins. Could he if he were some sort of super-angel. I think not. If God could have saved us apart from the death of his Son, I assume he would have. In Gethsemane, Jesus asked for another way. God had to save us himself. If Jesus is not God, we are not saved. We have no Mediator. We have no Savior.

John 1.18 says, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” If God is not triune, then Jesus isn’t God. And if he isn’t, then we face a lot of uncertainty about who God is, how we know God, and God’s promises. If God sent his Son to die for us, we can be sure he loves us and his promises are good. If not … how can we be sure? We are sitting at our screen, and maybe we like what we are reading, but how do we know it is true? That it always will be? Even assuming it is, how much better it is to really know someone. The divinity of Jesus means that in Jesus we see God. God is not different from or other than we see him to be in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Take away the doctrine of the Trinity and you lose with it the divinity of Jesus and all that it entails. You lose Christianity.

2. If God is not triune, Jesus is not with us. Jesus promised not to leave his followers as orphans. Yes, he was returning to the Father. But, he promised he would prepare a place for us, and he promised to always be with us. The Holy Spirit is how he kept that promise. Through his Holy Spirit, Jesus is with his people and empowers our mission in the world. Through the Spirit, the Father is present in this world he loves so much, and through the Spirit, he works out his purposes. If, however, God is not triune, then Jesus and the Holy Spirit might be friends, but they are not One. That means he is not with us and he didn’t keep his promise.

We might still experience the working of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit might still be divine. In the Old Testament God’s Spirit was God’s presence in the world. He showed up from time to time for some particular purpose. And God promised one day to pour out his Spirit, a Promise kept at Pentecost. However, if God is not triune and the Holy Spirit is just a way we have of talking about how God is present in our world, we still lose something. As Christians we trust that the Spirit is with us and in us because that’s what Jesus promised. Sometimes—even most of the time—we do not feel particularly inspired. Without Jesus’ promise, how could we be sure of the Spirit’s presence? We would be tempted to confuse strong emotions with the Spirit and think he was only with us once in a while. If God is not triune, maybe that’s the best we can hope for? This leads to our next consequence.

3. If God is not triune, God is not necessarily with us. If the Holy Spirit is not God, just a way for us to think and talk about what God does in our world, then God may be near to us or far from us, but who knows? He could be near one minute, far the next. Instead of having his constant, personal presence (as we do if God is triune and Jesus’ promises are good), we would get occasional messages from him. Perhaps a phone call. Maybe a personal visit, but not face to face. We see that in the Old Testament too. At Sinai, God made himself known with thunder and clouds and a voice, but his people did not see him.

4. If God is not triune, Christianity is not distinct. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” And of course we see this must be so because if God is triune, then the Son and the Father are One; the Father makes himself known through the Son; and the Son is the Mediator. The logic of the gospel confirms this. Again, if God could have saved us without the death of his Son, surely he would have; and if there are ways to God apart from Jesus, then there is another way that does not require his death. Jesus is essential because Jesus is God.

If God is not triune, then what does Christianity offer beyond the other monotheistic religions? It becomes a religion in which God sends messages by his prophets and nothing more. The question then becomes, who has the best prophets? Judaism? Christianity (it can’t be this one because Jesus claimed to be divine, and if he was wrong he wasn’t a prophet)? Islam? Mormonism? Without a Son, all we have are prophets, so who has the best ones? Or does anybody? Has there ever been a true prophet from the beginning of the world?

Personally, if I just could not believe the doctrine of the Trinity, I would have to conclude that Jesus was just a failed prophet. I know he isn’t this because the Father raised him from the dead, but that leads me to his divinity and back to the Trinity. Without the Trinity, I couldn’t believe the resurrection, and that would kill my hope and my resilient spirit. I would be able neither to believe the resurrection nor to live it. In that case, I would conclude that whatever the truth about God and the origins of the universe and human life might be, none of the major religions is right, nor is a secular materialism. I wouldn’t know what to believe, so I wouldn’t believe anything. Not believing anything, I would have nothing to live for but my own pleasure. That’s depressing. But of course that is just me. Many people happily believe in some other religion. If I had never heard of Jesus, maybe I would be one of them. It’s like computer dating. If you just can’t meet anyone where you live, maybe swapping email with a stranger is better than nothing.

5. If God is not triune, then God is not love. God could of course still love us, but he could not be love. Why? If God is triune, then God’s inner life is characterized by love. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit; the Son loves the Father and the Spirit; and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. St. Augustine tried to explain the Trinity by saying the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Spirit is the love they share. Either way, God’s very nature is love. He did not create the world in order to have something to love. He created because God’s own love overflowed.

If, however, God is not triune, then in order to have something to love, he would have to create something. This would make God dependent on his creation. Without out it to love, he would not be God. This is intolerable. God does not need creation to be God. If he did, he wouldn’t be God. Thus, if God is not triune, he could love us, but he could not be love.

I realize this is a lot to digest mentally and that time is short. I hope the computer dating analogy helps. What do I want you to do about all this? One thing: Rejoice in the triune nature of God. Love God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. There are many practical consequences of the doctrine of the Trinity, including the importance of community, but now is not the time to draw them. Let it be enough, for today, to love and praise God—thanking him especially that he has spoken to us by his prophets and made himself known to us by his Son. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
June 3, 2007

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