Trinity Sunday
Dear friends in Christ. Our text today is quite fascinating, not only are these 5 verses rich in doctrine but they also give a nice summary of what we have heard and celebrated the past Sundays of the Church Year. The events of our text took place sometime during the 40 days after Jesus’ resurrection. The angels had told the women [v. 7]: And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. And now our text begins: Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. So we are reminded of Easter. And while there with the disciples on the mountain, Jesus gives them the Great Commission—to make disciples of all the peoples by baptizing them and teaching them—and here we are reminded of our Lord’s ascension: that although to the eyes absent, He is with His Church and through His Church gathering people into His kingdom. But the disciples were to go out into all the world only after having received the gift of the Holy Spirit—Pentecost.
In a sense the Feast of the Holy Trinity is also a summary—it is a summary of all that we have heard this Church Year about the God of our salvation. Throughout the Church Year from Advent to Pentecost, through the Scripture readings and accounts we have heard, the God of our salvation was revealing Himself and His saving work to us once again.
Throughout that first half of the Church Year we have come to know that the one true God and the God who alone saves us is the holy Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As we examine our text we will see that without the doctrine of the holy Trinity there is and can be no Christianity.
1. Really, the question basic to any religion is: who is your God? The Moslem, for example, worships the moon god, allah. Even those who claim that they worship no god, really have a god that they worship; for the basic definition of a god is whatever it is that a person puts his/her trust and confidence in. The atheist puts his/her trust in something—be it self, science, technology, etc. Our materialistic world around us puts its trust in money and goods and thinks of its god as that what can be seen, touched, etc. Its twin, hedonism, makes self and pleasure and the serving of self center; trust and confidence is placed in self and happiness of self. Really, there is nothing that is purely secular—one god is merely replaced with another. It is simply a matter of whether one worships the one true God or one of the myriad of false gods.
What makes Christians Christians is that we worship the Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We confess in the Athanasian Creed: And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. We worship one God in Trinity—that is, one God who is three distinct Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and Trinity in Unity—that is, although there are three distinct Persons, they are only one God. Notice what Jesus says in our text: baptizing [the nations] in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Notice one Name, but three Persons! It is not as if the Father is a third of God, the Son is a third of God, and the Holy Spirit is the rest; instead the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God; but these are not 3 Gods. This is impossible for us to understand certainly this side of heaven. But that’s the clear teaching of Scripture: there is one divine being, God, but three distinct Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s exactly what the word Triune means—Tri means three and une, unus, means one; the Three in One. Do the words Triune or Trinity appear in the Bible? No! But the teaching does! Trinity/ Triune are simply “theological shorthand” to express this great mystery. What we have heard this first half of the Church Year is the Triune God’s work to save us from our sin and give us eternal life.
B. There is no Christianity without the Trinity because Christians worship the Triune God. That’s why no real Christian will be part of any so-called “interfaith” service where the Triune God is, if you will, put on the same stage with the gods of the Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Sikh, etc. as if these are merely different expressions of the same God, all equally true. In a wonderful Trinitarian section of the OT, the Lord, the one true God says [Is. 42.8]: I am the Lord, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to graven images. Nor is there any “generic” god or patriotic god—the politically correct god so commonly invoked.
The simple fact of the matter is that to confess Christ is to confess the whole Trinity. If we are Christians we confess, trust in, Christ. And who is Christ? The Son! The Second Person of the Holy Trinity! Any person who does not confess Christ—like Jews, Moslems, etc.—does not worship the true God; they are denying, rejecting the true God, the Triune God. In fact, what does Jesus say elsewhere [Jn. 14.6]? I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.
Notice Jesus in our text as He says: All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Jesus, as true God, already had for all eternity all authority in heaven and on earth; but here it is being given to Him also as man, according to His human nature. Jesus is the God-man. People cannot say that Jesus is “just a man/ creature” and so reject Him and reject the Triune God and think they can still worship the true God—like JW and Mormons. Jesus stands in the middle of the Trinity—He is true God begotten of the Father from all eternity who became also true man to save us from our sins through the shedding of His holy, divine blood and now sends us the Holy Spirit to work faith in Him in our hearts that we may receive the blessings of His saving work.
Precisely because Jesus is true God, we know who God really is and what He is like. During His earthly ministry Jesus revealed what God is really like because He is God. Who better to tell us about Himself than He Himself? In Jesus, the Son, we see the love of the Father who gave up His Son for us; in Jesus we see the love of the Son as He took on human flesh and blood and became man and willingly suffered and died for our sins that we may be forgiven our sins and have eternal life in heaven; in Jesus we see the love of the Holy Spirit as He, sent by Christ, comes to bring us faith and spiritual life.
Because Jesus is God, He is the one true and only Teacher of the Church. That’s why He says in our text: teaching them to guard all things that I have commanded you. He revealed to us most fully and completely the doctrine of the holy Trinity, that most basic of doctrine of any religion: who is the God you worship? –Just as He has every other teaching. Our task as Christians is to hold to and treasure this doctrine and every doctrine of Scripture. Do we/ can we understand completely this doctrine of the Trinity that there is one God but three distinct Persons? Certainly not! But we believe it. Do we/ can we understand completely of how Jesus is both eternal God, the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity and also true man born in time, the son of the virgin Mary? In no way! But this is what we in Spirit-worked faith believe because Jesus, the Church’s only Teacher taught it.
We are like the disciples in our text: When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted. And when Jesus approached, He spoke to them. We, too, will often have questions about what Christ taught and revealed in holy Scripture. But some doubted; the Greek word doesn’t imply that they were rejecting Jesus but that they were “divided within themselves;” they had difficulty absorbing the events; there was confusion on their part as to what to make of it all—after His resurrection, Jesus would appear and then disappear without warning; is this really Jesus. The amazing thing is that the disciples seeing Jesus did not bring an end to their doubt, their fear, and their slowness to believe. So what do we read in our text: when Jesus approached, He spoke to them. Instead by His Word, the only Teacher of the Church creates and strengthens faith.
He does the same with us today. We won’t/ can’t understand everything but as we gather around Christ in His Word and Sacrament—remember what He says: and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age—He approaches and by His Spirit’s work brings us always to a deeper and fuller understanding of Him and His doctrine. To be sure, we won’t understand it perfectly but we’ll in faith believe it more firmly and see how it all fits together so gloriously!
2. There are consequences to the doctrine of the Trinity. It’s not something we can merely agree with and carry on. Because there is only one true God, that means that it is vital for all people, for their salvation, to know Him and trust in Him for forgiveness of sin and eternal life. Only the Triune God is the God who can and does save people from their sins. That’s why Jesus says: Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to guard all things that I have commanded you. Jesus gives this command because He suffered and died for all people, none excluded. The apostle testifies [1 Ti. 2.4]: God our Savior…desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. The fact that Christianity is the only saving faith is our great motivation to go out and tell people about the true God, the Triune God, and to tell them that Good News about Jesus. The only tools, instruments that Christ gives us to do this, to make disciples, are the Word and Baptism—and those are enough! Here His Holy Spirit is mightily at work.
What a glorious blessing: we are baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We are baptized into the holy Triune God and what a blessed consequence results! We now have the Father as our heavenly Father; we can now rightly pray: Our Father… We, who by our sins were under the curse of sin, death and hell have now been adopted by God in baptism. We have God as our dear loving heavenly Father and have been made members of God’s holy family and have been made heirs of heaven, as the apostle writes [Gl. 4.7]: And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ Therefore you are…a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
As we are baptized also into the Son, we are placed into a relationship with Him. In baptism faith is either created (infants) or sealed (adults). Through that faith we receive the benefits of Jesus’, the Son’s, saving work. All that Jesus won and brought about becomes our abiding possession. Again, St. Paul writes [Gl. 3.27]: For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. Now each time we confess our sins and lay them on Jesus, we return to our baptism and receive the absolution, the forgiveness of sin, and are again covered with His righteousness.
Being baptized into the name of the Holy Spirit means that He is now dwelling in us and guiding us. He gives us His life-giving and sustaining power and presence. He is reminding us of the blessings of Christ for us and assuring us of our heavenly inheritance.
There is no Christianity without the doctrine of the Trinity, for it is the doctrine of God; it tells us who God is—one divine being but 3 distinct Persons. The blessed result for us—through baptism and faith we are brought into fellowship with the Triune God, the one true and saving God. We are His and He is ours. INJ Amen