7th June 2009 (Trinity Sunday)
Romans 8:12-17
There is only one God. The Bible makes this clear from beginning to end. Jesus made it clear. Christians do not believe in three Gods, but one God.
Jesus taught us to call God, ‘Father’. But then he also taught us that he was the ‘Son of God’ who had been sent by the Father into the world to save the world. At first his hearers might have simply understood this as a claim to be the Messiah, in line with the words of Psalm 2. His enemies realised sooner than his disciples that he was claiming more than this, that he was actually claiming to be God; they wanted to stone him to death for it (John 10:33). Then the disciples came to realise that Jesus really was divine: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us’ (John 1:1,14). They remembered that he told them he was one with the Father, that those who had seen him had seen the Father (John 14:9).
When Jesus ascended into heaven, he told his disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit to come. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit came and filled them all. Jesus had told them the Spirit was ‘another’ Counsellor, who would never leave them. He was not the same as Jesus, though he was one with Jesus and when the Spirit was with them Jesus was with them. So they came to realise that the Holy Spirit was also divine in the same way that Jesus was.
That left the early Christians with a difficulty. They knew that the Father was God, and that the Son was God and that the Holy Spirit was God. But they knew that there was only one God. How could this be? They never attempted to explain it; but they eventually chose a word for it, ‘Trinity’, tri-unity, three in one.
This realisation that God is three in one colours our whole view of life and how to live. God is by nature a community. The amazing thing is that he wants us to join him in that community, so to speak, and to live for ever in union with him – not losing our personalities in a sort of divine stew, but finding fulfilment and perfection in loving fellowship with the triune God. We become family!
This does not happen automatically. There is no way we could be accepted by God without the rescue work of the Son of God and the creative work of the Holy Spirit, resulting in us believing in Jesus and becoming his disciples. When it does happen we enter ‘eternal life’: we are accepted and welcomed into the life of the Trinity. The Father is our Father, we are co-heirs with Christ, the Spirit is living in us (Romans 8:14-17).
Now we live our lives within the community of God’s love. That means being led by the Spirit. It means loving one another. It means living for God. Are we up for it?
Questions:
1) What difference does this make?
2) How can we help others believe?