The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
You’ve confessed now a couple of times, in the Creed and the Psalms, that we believe, and rightfully so, that God is Triune: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and that God is the creator of all things, both in heaven and on earth. A galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems, all held together by gravity. The Hubble telescope looked at a patch of space for about 12 days, and in that 12 days they were able to catalog at least 10,000 galaxies of all shapes and sizes and colors. Some scientists think there could be as many as a hundred billion galaxies in the universe.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” So we confess in the Apostles’ Creed that the first person, God the Father, is the creator of the heavens and the earth, of the things visible and invisible to us, the things on the earth below and the things in the heavens above. God created all things, the Creed teaches, and in so doing He demonstrates just how utterly God He is. It’s evidenced by the galaxies in the universes, so distant, so large, so amazing. Humanity is only just beginning to scratch the surface of what we’ve learned and know of the created order.
And today is Trinity Sunday. It’s the day that the church, for century after century, going back to the early church, from about 280 to about 680, created these creeds as a way to fend off heresies that had arisen in the early church. You see, it’s always a temptation for human beings to try to explain God’s mysteries away. Baptism doesn’t really wash; it’s not really the washing of regeneration, it’s not the birth of a Christian, the creation of a new nature, it’s not the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; it’s a symbol of what we do. Or the Lord’s Supper: “This is my body, this is my blood.” Well, they’ve got to explain that away too. It’s all a metaphor; it’s not to be literally understood. The doctrine of election, the doctrine of atonement: one doctrine after another in the Christian faith is a mystery, and like all mysteries, you can only say so much about them.
Today is Trinity Sunday, and the assigned Gospel reading for the festival of the Trinity is just five Bible verses: Matthew 28:16-20. But these five Bible verses contain a variety of theological subjects, all of which have been unpacked and commented on throughout the Christian centuries. Among the topics: Christ’s authority over both heaven and earth; the promise of Jesus’ presence with His people until the end of the age, the promise that points to His divine and human nature, the two natures of Christ, fully human and fully divine; verse 19 is an explicit reference to the Trinity, and it seals the Bible’s teaching regarding the Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And each one of those statements you just recited in the Athanasian Creed can be broken down as a point of attack against heresies that had arisen in the early church, that confused the people about the nature of who God really is.
There’s a lot of baptismal theology, by the way, in these five verses. Standing behind all these topics is the reality of the atoning sacrifice on Good Friday and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, as the stage upon which He stands and now prepares for His ascension, as He gives the Great Commission to the disciples, to the first generation of New Testament pastors. Finally, there’s a command to the church to go out into the world and to make disciples by baptizing them and by teaching them, listen, everything that Christ Himself has commanded. It is a comprehensive command. We aren’t to skip one jot or tittle. We aren’t to simply teach those doctrines that are comfortable to us, but rather the whole law and the whole gospel.
The doctrine of the Trinity is the greatest mystery in a religion filled with mysteries, and a great many have stumbled over the doctrine of the Trinity. They tried to explain the Trinity in a way that makes sense to simple human reason, or to conform with already established philosophical axioms or theologies. In so doing, they either create or fall into heresy, or they outright deny the Bible’s teaching that God is Father, God is Son, and God is Holy Spirit, a Trinity in unity, a unity in Trinity.
You see, the Christian faith fundamentally is full of mysteries, and we in the 20th and 21st century, we don’t like mysteries. We like the kind that are solved in 20 minutes on a TV show. But we don’t like the mysteries that are presented to us in the Christian faith, and we always feel compelled that we have to explain them away, teach them in such a way that it makes sense, and twist our explanations so that all things work together as we think they ought to work. We have a name, by the way, for these mysteries in our tradition: we call them articles of faith. Articles of faith are things we believe and confess to be true for one fundamental reason: because God’s Word declares them to be true. That’s it.
From the very beginning of the Christian faith, mysteries have always been a focus of conflict and controversy. The Trinity was among one of the very first doctrines to be contested, which is why the early church produced these three creeds: the Apostles’ in the second century, the Nicene and Athanasian in the third and fourth centuries. The three creeds were the attempt to fend off heresies and re-establish a right understanding among worshiping Christians. That is, they were written to become part of the liturgy, just like the Old Testament was written to become part of the liturgy, and the New Testament was written to become part of the liturgy. These simply weren’t written in an abstract, theoretical sense. The Epistles and the Gospels, the Old Testament, Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, were written to be spoken and taught in the worship service. That’s where Christians, Old Testament ones and New Testament ones, went to be instructed. They went to church, and what did they hear? Bible verses. And what did they recite? Bible verses. And what did they sing? Hymns rooted in mysteries, that is, in the Bible’s teachings. These creeds are biblically grounded statements of faith, dedicated to God’s self-revelation.
So I’m going to give you a little apologetic defense, Christian defense advice. When somebody asks you how and why you believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you have just one simple answer: that’s who God revealed Himself to be. Ask the question so that the person asking it, or mocking your faith, feels the weight of it: “What, you don’t know? It’s how God reveals Himself to us. We don’t discover Him; He claims us.” That’s how it works. That’s the economy of God’s salvation. The creeds are biblically grounded statements of faith, dedicated to God’s self-revelation as Trinity, and to each person’s chief work in the economy of God’s salvation.
In Article I, the Augsburg Confession offers a kind of condensed version: “There is one divine essence which is called and is God, eternal, without body, without parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the maker and preserver of all things, visible and invisible. Yet there are three persons, of the same essence and power, who are also coeternal: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Then it adds a note: the term “person” the church fathers use as the fathers have used it, to signify not a part or quality in another, but that which subsists of itself. That is, each person of the Trinity is still fully God, not a third of it, not a portion of it, but God Himself.
So what does all that mean? It means that God the Father is completely God all the time, not just part of God. It doesn’t mean that God the Father turns into the Son of God in Jesus Christ, and once Jesus is all done, then God morphs into the Holy Spirit, and now we’re in the age of the Holy Spirit. Anybody that ever makes an argument like that, it’s called a heresy; it’s called modalism. The Trinity is its own singular plurality: three in one, one in three.
We get a taste of the Old Testament doctrine of the Trinity in the creation story in Genesis 1:26: “Let us make man in our image.” God speaks to Himself in the plural, “us.” In Hebrew, Yahweh Elohim, and the Elohim part at the end is a plural ending in the Hebrew language. In the Old Testament, God is in fact referred to or addressed as or called Father 12 times. In the New Testament, that number explodes: God is referred to, addressed, or prayed to as Father 250 times. You see, in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of the heavenly Father, we are given the most comprehensive and complete self-revelation of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
When it comes to God’s revelation, we are taught some fundamental truths. God has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no other God to be known beyond that, and there’s nothing else to say beyond three in one, one in three. That’s what we believe and we confess, for one reason: it’s an article of faith. God’s Word declares it to be so. End of conversation. It’s kind of like having old-fashioned parents: “Because I said so.” That was supposed to be the end of it.
All three persons of the Holy Trinity work together to rescue you from sin, death, and the power of the devil. The Triune God is a gracious and loving God, and all three persons of the Holy Trinity are living and active in the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. All three persons are living and active in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church. As our theologians say, there is no work undertaken by one person of the Trinity in which the other two persons do not participate. The Triune God saves us by becoming one of us, by coming to us: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Where is He to be found? Jesus is speaking here about the church; that’s the context. He’s given the church the mission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” That’s how you make a disciple. He comes to us and is always with us in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church.
At the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him not to set aside Mary, but to make her finally and ultimately his wife. He tells Joseph to give the baby a special name, Jesus, because this child will save His people from their sins. The angel reveals to Joseph that Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” Thirty years, the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, in a great mystery, grew in wisdom and stature. Imagine that: the Son of God had to learn His own Word as He grew.
Then one day Jesus appeared at the Jordan River. John was baptizing the great multitude who came to him out of repentance. Then John looked up and saw Jesus wading into the water and said, “No, no, no, I’m not baptizing You; You should baptize me.” But Jesus insisted, saying that they, John and Jesus, needed to fulfill all righteousness. So John does as Jesus commanded. He’s baptized the Son of God. And as God the Father speaks, His voice thunders from heaven, and He says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” And the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove. There you have it: in the River Jordan, at Jesus’ Baptism, we see the Holy Trinity at work. The Father speaks, the Son is baptized, the Spirit descends. And that’s the same thing that happens in the moment of Holy Baptism, when we bring an infant or a 99-year-old man to the baptismal font: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are doing the same thing. They are there, speaking, baptizing, cleansing, forgiving, adopting into the family. The Holy Spirit is being poured in and creating a new nature.
Three years go by: three years of preaching law and gospel, three years of forgiving sin, three years of healing the sick and feeding the hungry, three years of training men to be pastors. And all this was followed by Jesus being hung on a cross and dying as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world. On the morning of the third day, the Son of God is raised. It was asked: what does it mean, “God raised him from the dead”? Or did Jesus raise Himself? Who raised whom? Yes, you got the answer right: they all did. The Father was there, the Son was there, the Holy Spirit was there. No work is done in singularity by the Trinity; it’s always the three.
The Apostle Peter points this out in his sermon this morning: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” Again we see God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit at work on Pentecost Sunday, in the very first New Testament sermon. All three persons are present; all three persons are working. And so it is in this very moment.
What does it mean to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Well, in regard to God the Father, being baptized into Christ means that we have been made children of the heavenly Father, not in an abstract sense, in a very deeply personal sense. Paul wrote, “You have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!'” You should know by now, Abba is a personal and affectionate word for father. In Galatians 4:6: “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!'” Therefore you’re no longer slaves, but a son; if a son, then an heir through God. Being baptized into the Father means that God our Father hears our prayers. He knows our needs. He does all things, permits all things, uses all things for our good, Romans 8:28. Our heavenly Father knows everything about us, and yet still loves us the same. He provides for our every need in everything, in daily bread. He forgives us our sins for Christ His Son’s sake. And all this He does, as the catechism says, not because of any merit or worthiness in us, but out of His fatherly goodness and mercy.
In regard to God the Son, being baptized into Christ means that we have been given the propitiation for our sins, the one mediator between God and man. He is able to empathize with our weakness, for He was tempted in every way but remained without sin. Being baptized into Christ is synonymous with being baptized into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus, the incarnate God, the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, has become our brother. He became our brother first by taking on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He remains our brother by virtue of our adoption in Baptism. In the water and the Word, we have been made to look like Him, that is, holy and righteous, wearing our baptismal robe, Christ’s righteousness itself. We have become His brothers and sisters because we hear His Word. Jesus said in Matthew 12:48, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
In regard to the Holy Spirit, being baptized in the name of God means that the Holy Spirit has been poured into us, and now we have the Helper, the Comforter, the Sanctifier, the Spirit of God who leads us into all truth and brings us to Christ. As the water and the Word goes out, the Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and you yourself. “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” There you go: Trinity at work again.
This is what it means to be baptized into the Triune God. We are sons and daughters of the living Father. We are blood brothers and sisters to the living Son. And we are temples of the Holy Spirit. Think of this: the God who made the universes and the galaxies by the billions made you into the image of Jesus Christ. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit has created you, first in the womb of your mother, but second and more importantly, in the waters of Holy Baptism, in the gift of faith in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church. You are now a galaxy unto Christ. Amen.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.