Romans 11.33-36 + John 3.1-15
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
“We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.” This is the full revelation of who God is that we have received from our Lord Jesus Christ. He taught us throughout His earthly ministry that God was His Father. He didn’t mean this in a figurative sense. God the Father truly begat a son from eternity, though in a God-befitting way, not a human men beget sons. And as human sons are of the same essence as their fathers, so God the Son is of the same essence as His Father. The Jews understood this perfectly well. In John 5:18 they wanted to murder Him because He said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.” God’s eternal son took on human flesh in the womb of the virgin Mary and entered into our world as a man. The apostle John tells us, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (Jn 1:18). God the Son becomes man to reveal God the Father to us, so that we might have eternal life. Jesus says while praying in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Jesus doesn’t mean He isn’t God. He says this to teach us that God the Father is His source, His begetter, and—according to His human nature—His God.
Christ also taught us that God the Father has a Spirit, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father (Jn 15:26). In the Western church we say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, as well, since He is called “the Spirit of Christ” in Romans 8:9 and “the Spirit of His Son” in Galatians 4:6. Like God the Son, God the Spirit is God from God. He is not a created thing. Nor is the Spirit begotten from the Father—otherwise the Spirit would also be God’s son—but proceeding from the Father. The Spirit, like the Father and Son, is a person, not an appendage of God. The Spirit creates. The Spirit helps. The Spirit comforts. The Spirit testifies of Jesus. The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God “(1 Cor 2:10). The Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Rom 8:26). The Spirit can be grieved. He can be rejected. He can be blasphemed, too. The Holy Spirit bears witness to Christ, so that men believe Christ and His teaching about the Father.
We ought to never think that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is an academic abstraction. Nor should we think of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as an optional belief, as if belief in a generic “God” will do. Far from being an abstraction, far from being optional, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the saving message of the gospel. God the Father send God the Son to take up our flesh, life perfectly righteous and make perfect atonement for our sins, so that all who believe Him might have eternal life. Eternal life is knowing the true God and His Son. And such knowledge—such faith—is only created and sustained in the heart by God the Spirit. You can’t have the gospel with the Trinity because the gospel is the work—not of an abstraction or generic god— but the work of the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity: One God in three persons and three persons in One God.
And so that the revelation that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit less abstract, the Triune God concretizes this for us in baptism. He does it first at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River. When Jesus comes up from water, the heavens were opened. The Spirit descends in the form of a dove and remains on Him, while God the Father speaks from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Throughout the Old Testament there were hints that the one God consisted of three persons. God’s Word and Spirit were often personified Moses and the prophets. But God saves the full revelation of Himself as one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity for the New Testament, so that He may attach the full revelation of His identity with the gospel and baptism. So that we see the importance—the necessity—of the doctrine of the Trinity, Christ sent His apostles into the world to baptize all nations “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” so that baptisms are performed in the stead of the Triune God and we understand God to be the one doing the baptizing, and so that we know and believe we are baptized into His name and doctrine.
This is what Jesus teaches Nicodemus in today’s gospel lesson. “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus understands this in the natural sense of being born a second time and inquires how a man can be born when he old? “Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” But this being born again, this rebirth, is not physical. It is spiritual. One is born again of water and the Spirit Jesus says. The Spirit rebirths people through water because their first birth is a fleshly birth, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh. The first birth from our mother is one of flesh in which we inherit the corruption of sin from Adam and Eve, the sinful flesh which cannot fear, love, or trust in God, and which desires to sin. But that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The second birth of water and the Spirit is the Holy Spirit’s work, by which He brings forth a new creation, in which the passions and desires of the sinful flesh have been crucified, and which lives in purity and righteousness before God. Only God can do this, and this precisely why Jesus calls baptism a birth of water and the Spirit. This new birth is not a new physical birth that can be seen. Like the blowing of the wind, you will only hear the sound of it as the new creature lives in righteousness and holiness.
Jesus goes on to teach us about this baptism of water and Spirit. “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.” Baptism originates, not with man, but with God. It comes from God, which Jesus alludes to when he says, “unless one is born again,” the word again having the nuance of “from above.” One must be born a second time “from above,” by the Spirit of Christ, the One who descended to earth in human flesh, was lifted up on the cross to atone for the sins of the world, and ascended back to the Father so that He might send His Holy Spirit. Having been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we know the true God. We have eternal life, knowing the true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent. Having been born “from above” by the Spirit we set our minds on things above, not things of the earth. We seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God (Col 3:1-2). Since our life is from above, we daily live with that life and those things in mind.
Through the gospel and baptism, we have a fuller knowledge of Him than the saints of the Old Testament. “Many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it” (Lk 10:24). Nevertheless, we do not know God perfectly in this life. As Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Cor 13:12). The doctrine of the Holy Trinity reveals God to us as so that we may know Him and be saved, and we look forward to knowing Him as we are known. But this doctrine also reminds us that God is beyond our comprehension, and that we can only comprehend Him to the extent that He revealed in His Word. As we cannot comprehend God apart from His word, we cannot comprehend God’s works apart from His word. When We look at the world and do not see God’s hand at work and comprehend His doings as He rules over the nations, we say with the apostle, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! “For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has become His counselor?” “Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to him?” For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.” We know from His word that He rules all things. We know from His word that He fills all things and puts all things under His feet. We know from His word that He works all things for the good of those who love Him. Just as His revelation of Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is for our salvation, so is what He has revealed in His word about His works, so that regardless of our comprehension, we may worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, live as those He has rebirthed from above, and leave that which we do not understand to His mercy. Amen.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
