Trinity Sunday
Dear friends in Christ. Today we rejoice in and celebrate that great mystery that God, in grace, has revealed to us, His dear Christians—the great mystery of God; Who He really is. This distinguishes Christians from all the other religions of the world. To us God has told us Who He really is—He is the holy Triune God, one God yet three distinct Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. None of the other religions of the world worship the true God because outside of Christianity, the holy Triune God is not recognized, believed and confessed. Other religions will perhaps recognize the Father, but not the Spirit or the Son; other religions will not confess that Jesus is the Son of God—eternal, almighty God—and yet also true man. Because only Christianity recognizes and confesses rightly who God is, Christianity alone is the one true saving faith. And so, yes, it does matter what a person believes. It is a matter of heaven and hell.
Is it, then, a feather in our cap, something we can be proud of in ourselves, that we know and worship the true God rightly? Hardly! It is purely God’s grace that He has revealed Himself. It’s not that we are somehow better, more worthy, more enlightened than others. Instead, it’s that God has had mercy on us and revealed Himself to us so that we know Him rightly. As with all festivals of the Church, so also with Trinity Sunday—it is a festival remembering God’s grace to us.
What makes Trinity Sunday different, though, from the other festivals of the Church is that while the other festivals of the Church remember an event—like Jesus’ birth, His transfiguration, His resurrection, His ascension, etc.—on Trinity Sunday we remember and celebrate a doctrine/ teaching.
It is not as if the doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine we take off the shelf, dust off, and remember once a year. Instead, it is the root of all the other festivals; it is underlying every act of God for our salvation. For example, the Father sent the Son to be our Savior from sin, death, devil and hell. And for the Son to become true man, He had to take on human flesh and blood in the womb of St. Mary and as the angel St. Gabriel told her [Lk. 1.35]: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.” The Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is at work, all three distinct Persons working together because they are the one true God. So too the work for our redemption was the work of the Holy Trinity. The holy apostle writes [Hb. 9.14]: …Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God… Or like Jesus said right before last Sunday’s text [John 14.16-17]: “And I will pray the Father, and He will give You another Helper, that He may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth.”
This doctrine of the Trinity is everywhere in our liturgy. Pay attention to the Gloria in Excelsis and you’ll find all three Persons worshipped. Whenever in the liturgy you have a set of three, that’s a Trinitarian reference—like in the Kyrie or the Benediction in the communion liturgy. Of course, the liturgy begins with the Invocation: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And that is a glorious reminder to us of our baptism, where we were baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Our baptism is our beginning of our new spiritual life in the one true God, the holy Triune God. May we daily and often remember our baptism, making the sign of the cross on us and saying these words: the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells Nicodemus, a religious leader of the Jews, and us the vital necessity of holy Baptism, baptism into the Triune God: Unless one is born of the water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Jesus’ words should not have come as a great surprise to Nicodemus because the work, gift and blessing of Christian baptism was already foreshadowed in various events in the life of the Israelites—as in the crossing through the Red Sea [1 Co 10.1-4]; and in various ceremonies of the Jews like circumcision [Col. 2.11-12], the consecration of the OT priests [Ex.9.24]; and the Lord foreshadowed/ proclaimed it through St. Ezekiel in our text. As we examine our text, we will see the blessings of baptism: it cleanses us from sin, gives us a new heart and will and leads us into a life of good works.
1. In verses before our text, the Lord is speaking comfort to the Israelites. Because of their sin against Him He allowed an enemy nation to come and take them out of their land and bring them into captivity/ exile. The Lord is promising the Israelites grace and a return to their homeland, not because they are so good and worthy but because He is merciful and faithful to them. What is important for us, is that when God brings Israelites back to their land, that’s so the Savior, Jesus, can be born in Bethlehem and die in Jerusalem; so that all the prophecies could be fulfilled. And on top of that, the picture of the Lord gathering all these Israelites, these exiles, and returning them to their homeland is a picture of how the Lord will gather people from all over the earth into His Church.
When the Lord brings the exiles back to their homeland, what does He say? I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses… Now, carry the image forward. When the Lord gathers people from all over the world into His Church, what is necessary? How does He do it? I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses… The sprinkling of clean water and a cleansing from uncleanness—what a beautiful picture of holy Baptism—and what it works and does!
Notice the words: I will sprinkle clean water on you. Who is doing the work in baptism? Not us! Not the people! But God! Baptism is God’s work: I will sprinkle clean water on you. That’s one reason why we baptize babies—God, not the person, does the work. Baptism doesn’t require us to have reached a certain age/ to have come to a certain level of reason and understanding. Why? Because God does the work. I will sprinkle clean water on you. The very faith that baptism demands/ requires is the very faith that God Himself creates and gives in baptism. Baptism is not a work we do for God but a work He does for us. I will sprinkle clean water on you.
That’s why we can always be certain that our baptism is valid and “takes.” If our baptism depended on us and our level of faith, we would forever be uncertain because. How do I know I truly believed? How do I know my faith was strong enough or pleasing to God? Praise be to God that baptism is His work: I will sprinkle clean water on you. That’s why we can be sure of our baptism.
Be sure of what baptism gives you—I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses… Baptism is a merciful and gracious act of God in which He cleanses us from all our uncleannesses; that is, in Baptism He forgives us our sin and declares us righteous. But how can a holy and righteous God who must punish sin actually forgive us our sin in baptism, sprinkle us clean from all our uncleanness? Jesus! Jesus came and as the sinless God-man obeyed God’s law for us. God’s holy will has been kept—by Jesus for us. And all the sin that we do, Jesus has been charged with and suffered God’s wrath and punishment. God’s holy Law has been kept and His righteous wrath over sin has been stilled. Because of Jesus, He now in baptism cleanses us from our sin and gives us Jesus’ holiness.
2. To be brought into God’s holy family, we need to be cleansed of sin. And that’s what God does for us in Holy Baptism. But in holy Baptism not only do we receive a cleansing of sin, but in baptism God also changes us. As now members of God’s holy family through baptism, we are different than we were before. The Lord says in our text by St. Ezekiel: And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. As we are all born into the world we all have this heart of stone. We would all continue to have this heart of stone that we were born with unless God comes to us and takes it out, like He does in Holy Baptism. The heart of stone is the result of the sin we are all conceived and born in, that sin passed down to us from our first parents. As we come into this world—as we are before baptism and faith—our mind, heart and will are, our Lutheran Confessions [FC SD II 17] tell us “entirely, evil, perverse and hostile to God.” Such a heart/ mind, St. Paul writes [Rm. 8.7]: is hostile to God. Again, that’s why we see that God has to come to us first in baptism and sprinkle clean water on [us], and [we] shall be clean from all [our] uncleannesses…; and give [us] a new heart, and a new spirit … put within [us]. And … remove the heart of stone from [our] flesh and give [us] a heart of flesh. The necessity and blessing of baptism: we can’t come to God first—we are His enemy—but He comes to us in the water and word not only forgiving us our sin but changing us.
We are born with that heart of stone, one that is impenetrable and stubborn to the will and way of God; one that only wants to be a slave to self, sin, and devil. But the holy Triune God comes to us in baptism remove[s] the heart of stone from [our] flesh and give[s] [us] a heart of flesh, that is, a heart that is living and not spiritually dead; one that is soft and ready to be worked on by the Holy Spirit and to be guided by His power into a life of faith and good works. It is a heart that has a sensitive conscience and when it examines one’s life and is convicted of sin then it desires God’s forgiveness for that sin.
3. When in Holy Baptism we are given that new heart and that new spirit, that is, when original sin, that sin we are born with, is cleansed, we are renewed in newness of mind. Now, as Christians, we want to do the will of God—and not serve self and sin. That’s because not only does God cleanse us from our sin in Holy Baptism, and take out our old dead heart of stone and give us a living, soft heart of flesh, but in Holy Baptism He also gives us the Holy Spirit. Our text: And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. In other words, God doesn’t just give us the start to that life of full spiritual life and faith and then leave us to our own devices. Instead, besides the forgiveness of sins and our new heart and spirit, that heart of flesh, the Holy Spirit is also given us in baptism. The Holy Spirit is working in us so that we, our new self, created in us in baptism, want to do the Lord’s will and actually carry it out [Ph 2.12]. He is the true power in our new life.
That’s why another blessing of Holy Baptism is a life truly rich in good works. That we walk in [God’s] statutes and [are] careful to obey [His] rules is not the natural result of our free choice but by our new self, created by God in us at baptism, working with the Holy Spirit Who was given us in baptism. Yes, we will still sin as baptized Christians, perhaps even grievously, but we do so unwillingly and sorrow over sin and seek the Lord’s forgiveness for that sin and the strength of the Holy Spirit to fight against that sin; to turn from evil and to do good. Good works, striving to live that life in accord with the Lord’s will, is part and parcel of our life as Christians because in baptism we have been created for good works and given the Holy Spirit that we may do them.
How blessed it is to be baptized into the name of the Triune God. In baptism not only does He cleanse us from our sin, but He creates in us a new heart that wants to do His will and He gives us His Holy Spirit to lead us into and keep us in that life of faith and good works. INJ Amen.