Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, approached Jesus one night to learn the gospel from Him. Jesus begins at the beginning. “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” There must be a rebirth, a second birth, for anyone who who wants experience God’s kingdom. It isn’t enough to be a child of Abraham, a ruler of the Jews, or a righteous man in the eyes of others. Rebirth is required. But Nicodemus doesn’t understand. “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” he asks. He’s stuck in fleshly thinking that can’t understand the things of God. While Jesus speaks of a rebirth, a second birth, He describes this birth as being one from heaven. The word translated again can also be translated from above, and Jesus uses the word with both meanings in mind. To see the kingdom of God, one must be born a second time, yes, but that second birth is not like the first. Just as no one decides to be born of their parents, no one decides to be born again from above because the rebirth comes from above, not from below. Jesus restates what He had just said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The rebirth from above is one that happens by water and the Spirit. Not water on one occasion and the Spirit on another, but water and the Spirit together, as when God created the heavens and the earth and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Gen 1:2). The Lord had promised in Ezekiel 36[:25-26] to cleanse Israel of their sin and idols with the sprinkling of water, and by the water give them a new heart and a new spirit, for “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Jesus speaks of this new heart and spirit given in baptism, this rebirth, when he tells Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Jewish males, on the eighth day of their lives, received the outward, visible mark of circumcision so that everyone, themselves included, would know they were members of Israel. But the rebirth of water and the spirit would marked Jew and Gentile alike, not with an lasting, outward mark, but with new hearts and spirits. Just as you cannot see the wind with the eyes of flesh, so you look at the reborn and tell it by sight. One hears the wind. One sees its effects in the trees. One hears the sound it makes as it passes through different places. So it is with those who are reborn from above by water and the Spirit. One will see the effects of the Holy Spirit working a new spirit within the reborn. The effects of the new spirit and heart grow as the reborn die daily to sin (1 Cor 15:31), since they have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal5:24). One will hear the effects of the Holy Spirit as their conversation grows more and more into what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers (Eph 4:29), putting aside the corrupt speaking of the world, and growing more and more into speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs as the apostle says (Eph 5:19). As the wind’s presence is known by its sound and its movements, so it is with the baptized, they are known by their words and deeds. The first birth of the flesh accomplishes none of this. Being a fleshly birth it only gives birth to sinful flesh. But when sinner are reborn by the Holy Spirit and water, they are reborn from above as new creatures, as children of God.
When Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?” Jesus teaches Him about His authority to teach this. “Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” The we is Jesus and God the Father. He said in John 8:28, “As My Father taught Me, I speak these things” and in John 12:50, “Whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak.” The earthly thing of baptism, being reborn by water and the Spirit—the Holy Spirit—is God the Father’s word and will for mankind. Jesus teaches this because He is the One who came down from heaven. He tells Nicodemus that He is God the Son, eternally begotten of His Father, whom the Father had taught all things, not in that there was a time when He didn’t know the Father’s Word, but in the sense that the Father gave Him all things that were His own by begetting Him from eternity. He is the Word of God, after all, who was with God, and who was God (Jn 1:1) from eternity. He has descended to earth, assumed human nature so that He might teach these things of God the Father to Israel—and then to the Gentiles—so that all may be born again from above and enter God’s kingdom.
Then Jesus adds that the One who descended from heaven and who will ascend to heaven again must be lifted up. He says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” To be lifted up in this sense means to be lifted up on the tree of the cross because that’s what Moses did with the bronze serpent. In Numbers 21 when Israel complained, the Lord sent fiery serpents and whoever they bit died. When Israel repented—and only when they repented—did the Lord tell Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live” (Num 21:8). As the serpent was lifted up on the pole so that all who looked to it in faith, trusting the promise God had attached to it, so the Son of Man would be lifted up on the cross, so that all who look to Him in faith would not perish from the serpent’s bite of sin, but have everlasting life. The Son of Man must be lifted up to atone for the world’s sins, to acquire perfect remission of sins and perfect righteousness so that the Holy Spirit can apply them to sinners in the gospel, in baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. The Son of God descends to earth to assume flesh and die for the sins of the world, so that all who are reborn from above by water and the Holy Spirit may ascend with Him and dwell with Him there.
It is in the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit—as Paul calls it in Titus 3:5—that we see most clearly the doctrine of the Blessed Holy Trinity, which we celebrate today. We confess the faith of the Athanasian Creed because we believe them, because which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he will perish eternally. We believe with our hearts and confess with our mouths, but we do not fully understand, nor can we as finite creatures. We believe there is one God who exists in three persons and the three persons of the Godhead are uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, and almighty, so that in this Trinity none is greater or less than another, even though the Father who is unbegotten begets the Son and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. We believe and confess this to be the catholic—the universal, that is,—Christian faith because this what Holy Scripture teaches us about the One God who is three distinct persons, each fully divine, each fully God. And although the three persons work inseparably from creation, through redemption all the way until the consummation of the age, it is chiefly in baptism, our baptisms, where we see the Trinity’s work the most clearly. We are reborn of water and God the Holy Spirit. He rebirths us by applying the benefits Jesus earned at the cross to us and creating faith in us that receives these benefits, so that we become children of God the Father, younger brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ—the Son of God by nature—and temples of God the Holy Ghost. The Triune God rebirths us from above so that we receive a new heart and new spirit, which show forth to ourselves and the world not as external mark, but in our life and conversation.
Dear baptized saints of God, we live amongst many who deny the Triune God. Many religions deny Him officially in their public statements of faith. These religions cannot offer any salvation because what they believe in an idol. Others deny the Triune God functionally, in practice, by only ever speaking of a generic “god.” Still others deny Him by overemphasizing one person of the Godhead. But the catholic faith which was the apostles preached and preach to the Last Day through their writings is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, meaning we worship God the Father who sent God the Son into the world in human flesh to bear our sins and be our savior, so that He might give us God the Holy Ghost to give us faith and rebirth us in baptism, so that we become children of God the Father. In short, we worship the one God who baptized us, who has given us new hearts and new spirits, and who has promised everlasting life to all who believe and are baptized. Let our lives be one of continual confession and praise of the Blessed Holy Trinity, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen”(Rom 11:36 ).
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
