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May 18, 2008
The Trinity and You
a sermon on 2 Corinthians 13.11-13
by David
C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
“Hear, O Israel: The
LORD our God, the LORD is one” [Deut 6.4]. This is the beginning of our
knowledge of God. It is the reason for the doctrine of the Trinity. There exists
only one God—one true and living God beside whom there is no other. Read the Old
Testament and you won‟t be able to miss this vital truth. The same goes for the
New Testament. When his followers realized the divinity of Jesus—or better
phrased: when he revealed his divinity to them—they did not conclude he was one
god among others. They held fast to the truth that there is one God only. Yet
they understood that within this one God a differentiation could be made. Jesus
and his Father are one, yet they are not identical. The same goes for the Holy
Spirit. This is why Christians speak of One God in Three Persons. We will never
give up the truth that there is one God, and this God has revealed himself as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Far from being a dry, abstract doctrine, this
truth about the triune nature of God has exciting implications about who God is
and who God wants us to be. Here‟s a very basic one: Because God is triune, God
is love. The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father; and so on. The
inner life of the one true God is characterized by love and community. If God
were not triune but singular, God could still love, but God could not be love.
Love would be something God does, not an essential part of who God is. To love
requires another person. Love reaches beyond the self to the other. In order to
love, a singular god would have to create someone to love. Granted such a god
might do that, but the triune God is love. God was love long before he created
anything at all. And he created because of his overflowing love. Is it any
wonder then that God said, “It is not good for man to be alone”? God created us
male and female, not because God could not think of another way for babies to be
born, but because the complimentary natures of men and women, and the love
between husband and wife and within a family, are good. Marriage is not
everyone‟s calling, but all of us are social creatures. That is, we need
relationships. Is it any wonder God made us social creatures? We are made in
God‟s image, which means at the very least that we thrive on community and love.
Is it any wonder God creates the church? I say “creates,” present tense, because
God builds the church as he calls people to faith in Christ and as he leads us
to maturity as
The Trinity and You 2
Christians. The church has a special place in God‟s plan. It provides community
and love to believers, but its more important function is this: to show the rest
of the world what God is like. You see, God wants us to be like him. He loves
the world and wants the whole world to know what he is like. When the rest of
the world sees us, it should recognize God. Our life together is supposed to
reflect God‟s glory out into the world. This is not something any one of us can
do alone. It doesn‟t matter how holy you are. It is the life of the church as a
whole that reveals God. This is why community and love are so important. God‟s
own inner life is characterized by community and love. Therefore, the lives of
Christians must be too, if the world is to see God in us. You may at times
imagine the church is holding you back on your spiritual journey. So many
imperfect people. So many problems. You may feel you are already holier, more
spiritual than most. So why do you need the church? Here‟s your answer: You are
more like God when you are in community (even a flawed one) than you are on your
own, no matter how holy you may be. As we go on from here, I want you to keep in
mind these two important truths, because if I did not emphasize them, you might
have missed them. First that God is one. Second that your relationship with God
makes you part of a community. The heart of this sermon is simple: As a
believer, you have a relationship with each person of the trinity. You do not
relate to God generically but to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Mainly
what I want to do is look at each of these relationships, always keeping in mind
the unity of the three. What one does, all do. Nevertheless, each has a special
role in your life. This sermon grows out of the Wednesday night Bible studies we
have been having. Francis Schaeffer wrote the study guide, and he says a few
things in it that sparked my thinking. Here‟s one: “I have a present vital
relationship with each of the three persons of the Trinity every moment of my
life, and that is what I rest upon as I grow as a believer.” Here‟s another:
“The work of each of the three persons is important to us. Jesus died to save
us, the Father draws us to Himself and loves us, and the Holy Spirit deals with
us.” And here‟s one more: God the Father is the Christian‟s father, the only
begotten Son of God is our Savior and Lord, our prophet, priest and king. We are
identified and united with Him. The Holy Spirit lives in us and deals with us.
He communicates to us the manifold benefits of redemption.” When you pray, you
are not addressing a generic god, an unknown god. People do that. Someone who
never thought much about God finds himself in a pinch, so he prays to whatever
might be out there. Or another person is seeking faith, so she prays, “God, if
you exist, help me find you.” We Christians, however, know the God we address.
We know him because he has made himself known to us—in scripture, through Jesus,
and by the Holy Spirit. We know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; so we
relate to him this way. I am not trying to explain something so you gain
knowledge.
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I am encouraging you to grow spiritually by realizing how you have a
relationship with each person of the trinity. If you tend to think of God
generically or address your prayers simply to “God,” look at who God has
revealed himself to be. Begin relating to each person of the trinity, always
keeping in mind the unity of the three. I want now to look at how each person
relates to us. What does each person of the trinity do? We start with the fact
that God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—created us, loves us, and desires a
relationship with us. But we can be even more specific. God desires to share
with us the relationship of love that the Father, Son, and Spirit already share.
Think of the trinity as a circle of love. God wants to bring us into the circle.
God wants to live in us, and the Holy Spirit is how he does this. So I am going
to start with the Spirit and work back to the Father. What does the Holy Spirit
do? Schaeffer says, “The Holy Spirit deals with us.” That‟s kind of vague. He
means of course that the Holy Spirit brings us to faith, strengthens us, and
empowers our ministry. All that God wants to do to us or through us he does by
the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is the immediate presence of God. We could
pour through scripture and list all sorts of specific things the Spirit does,
but I‟ll focus on two critical ones. First, the Spirit is how God lives in you.
This goes back to last Sunday‟s Pentecost sermon: Jesus promised never to
abandon his friends, and the Holy Spirit is how he keeps that promise. Jesus
lives in all who believe in him. And of course, as Jesus told his disciples, he
and the Father are one. When the Spirit lives in you, God is present, with all
that that means. His peace, his joy, his comfort, and above all his power are
right there, closer than your skin. God loves you. He wants your love. He wants
to live in you. You were made for that kind of relationship with God. It happens
through the Spirit. Second, the Spirit brings us into the circle of love. He
does this both by making God present and by making us ready. The Spirit gives us
faith. He empowers us to forgive. He produces peace and joy in our hearts. He
gives us gifts for ministry, because we are supposed to be like God. God is a
circle of love, but never a closed circle. The love of God overflows, and he is
always looking outward. So we do too. Ironically, being in the circle means you
care about those outside the circle. When we were outside, God cared about us
enough to become a human being and die for us. That‟s the kind of
self-sacrificial love we ought to have too. The more we know God, the more we
are like him, the more the Spirit works in us, the more we start to love that
way too. It‟s a frightening prospect. Most of us are not ready to give that much
of ourselves. Jesus says, however, that giving ourselves that way is the only
way to find abundant life. So the Holy Spirit is how God is present to us and
how he draws us into the circle. What about the Son? For this I have a helpful
illustration drawn from Tom Wright‟s Pentecost sermon last week. Tom Wright is
the Anglican bishop of Durham and one of my favorite New Testament scholars. In
the sermon he told about how, many years
The Trinity and You 4
ago, he and his wife had hosted guests for dinner. For this dinner they had
purchased some good wine. They had the meal to prepare and children to get to
bed. In the busy-ness, they neglected to put the wine glasses on the table. The
guests were seated, and everything was ready. Tom ran to the cupboard, grabbed
the glasses, and put then right on the table without a thought. The wine was
poured. He took a sip. Ugh! It was awful. What was wrong? That‟s when he looked
closely and noticed something he had not seen before. A spider‟s web. Apparently
the wine glasses had not been used for some time. They were dusty and home to
unwelcome visitors. The moral of the story is: Clean your drinking glasses. The
beverage has not been made that goes well with dust and cobwebs. The application
is this: His text was the passage in John 7 [vv. 37-39] where Jesus spoke of the
Holy Spirit as living water. “Jesus cried out, „Let anyone who is thirsty come
to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out
of the believer‟s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” ‟ Now he said this
about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was
no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The Spirit is the clear,
refreshing presence of God. We are the dirty glasses. You do not pour clean,
good drink into a dirty glass. First you clean the glass. This is what Jesus
does. He cleans us, so that we are fit vessels for the Spirit. The other thing
Jesus does to bring us into right relationship with God is, he shares his Father
with us. Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father. Before creation, he and the
Father found joy in each other. The tendency among us humans, when we have a
very special relationship, is the get jealous. Siblings battle for their
parents‟ attention and affection. Friends get jealous when one begins to spend
more time with other friends. When a human being has a special relationship of
intimacy, whatever the nature of that relationship, the tendency is to hoard it.
“This is my special relationship. I don‟t want anyone else horning in.” Not so
with Jesus. He has this wonderful relationship with the Father—the best
relationship ever. In fact, it is so important that it makes him who he is: The
Son is the Son because he is the Son of the Father. Likewise the Father is the
Father because he is the Father of the Son. It doesn‟t get any better than that.
But rather than keep this love to himself, he freely gives it to us. He says, “I
want my Father to be your Father too.” When we come to faith to Christ, he makes
us God‟s children. His Father becomes our Father—which is why he taught us to
pray that way. He becomes our brother, but also much more. He is our Savior and
Lord. That‟s what Jesus does for us: He cleans us out so that we can receive the
Spirit, and he reconciles us to the Father, making us his children. What does
the Father do? Well, he does a lot. The most important thing is, he loves us.
Through the Son and the Spirit, he draws us to himself. Then he wraps his arms
around us and loves us.
The Trinity and You 5
At the end of his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul blesses that troubled
congregation with a benediction. And by the way, they were his most difficult
church. Plagued with problems. When he tells them to put things in order and
start getting along, he‟s not just using flowery words to wrap up the letter.
They were plenty flawed. And yet, he knew God‟s hand was on them. He never
doubted that. A lot of people might look at that church, or any other church,
and decide, “Christianity is just a lot of empty words. How does God‟s glory
shine through that?” But that‟s precisely the point. The Father loves us in
spite of our brokenness. The Son died for us, so that we might be forgiven and
holy. The Spirit lives within us and empowers us. God chooses weak, ordinary
human beings, pulls us together, and lives in us, so that the world might know
him. So Paul, confident of all this, wrote: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” That
grace, love, and communion that characterize the Christian life are what this
sermon is all about. You have a special relationship with each person of the
trinity. The trinity is not an abstract point of theology. It is truth about the
living God—and it is truth about you. This relationship you have with God is
vital. It is your life. Every day, it makes a difference. It makes you who you
are. God has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is who he is
and how you know him, because you know him as he is. The Father loves you, and
draws you to himself. The Son died for you, and he cleans you out and makes you
holy. The Holy Spirit lives in you and makes God present. He brings you into the
circle and fills you with power and sends you out into the world. Your worship
and prayer should reflect these realities. You should worship God as he is. And,
your whole life should be shaped by these truths. And, if you do not know God,
if you have not been cleaned and adopted, if you want to be part of the circle,
nothing would please God more than to welcome you into his family. All you have
to do is trust in Jesus Christ and receive his grace. Many people imagine
Christianity is all about how to be a good person so you get to go to heaven.
That‟s a total misunderstanding. It is really all about how the death of Jesus
on the cross is sufficient atonement for your sins, so that you can be forgiven.
What matters is what he has done for you, not what you can do for him. Though he
will change you. Once you put your trust in him and grow to love him, you won‟t
be the same. Do you see how God loves you? Do you perceive him drawing you to
himself? He offers to share with you the rich love and community enjoyed by the
Father, Son, and Spirit from all eternity. What could be more exciting? You can
know God. And I don‟t mean you can know about God. You can know God. And you can
experience his grace and love firsthand and share a lively, intimate fellowship
with him. Don‟t miss it! … Amen. rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
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