Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday, 04.06.2023
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let us pray: Lord Jesus, speak to us the very words of our heavenly Father and thereby lead us, by the Spirit of truth, into all truth. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ: Who of the following do you think first coined the phrase?
Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or the discovery more advantageous.
Was it coined by the Portuguese seafarer Ferdinand Magellan who, upon his push out from harbour, circumnavigated the globe?
Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or the discovery more advantageous.
Was it coined by Judy Sullivan, the lead biomedical engineer for the NASA Apollo Moon missions?
Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or the discovery more advantageous.
Or was it coined by the people involved in the Manhattan Project as they were experimenting with nuclear fission?
Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or the discovery more advantageous.
Or maybe it was coined by one of the experimental researchers working in the field of gene therapy?
Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or the discovery more advantageous.
Well, if you guessed one of these people or groups you would be wrong. The phrase 'Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or the discovery more advantageous' certainly fits there vocational callings, but it was church father St. Augustine who first coined the phrase. He coined it in relation to the efforts that the church had to undertake to formulate a true confession concerning the deep mystery on one hand, and the enlightening revelation on the other, of the truth of God as Holy Trinity.
Even St Augustine was challenged in trying to wrap his brain around the mystery of the Trinity. As the story goes,
He was walking along the beach one morning meditating on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. "Three holy persons in one divine essence, equal in divine power, glory, and majesty, yet but one God. How can that be?" he muttered to himself over and over again. While in vain he was trying to search the mystery of the Godhead, he noticed a little child playing on the shore. With a small shell in its hand the child scooped a hole into the sand, then ran to the waves, filled the shell with water, came back, and emptied its contents into the hole. "What are you trying to do?" asked St Augustine. "I am trying to pour the sea into this hole," replied the child. "Oh," exclaimed Augustine, "that is exactly what I have been trying to do. I now realize that I have been standing upon the shore of time by the ocean of the eternal and infinite Godhead and attempting to grasp it with my finite mind."
And despite the best efforts from the great theologians of the church who have utilized countless analogies to try to explain the Holy Trinity, analogies that always come up short of the fullness of truth (because they must, for, "In any similarity there must also be an element of dissimilarity," St Augustine, in reply confessed, as we must:
The Trinity is a mystery which cannot be comprehended by human reason, but is understood only through faith, and is best confessed in the words of the Athanasian Creed, which says that, ‘we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons, nor dividing the substance: that we are compelled by the Christian truth to confess that each distinct person is God and Lord, and that the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one; equal in glory, coequal in majesty.
For that is the gravity of today's celebration. It was the kind of gravity that had St Paul pause while considering the revelation of the mystery of God’s irrevocable call and election of both Jew and Gentile in Christ Jesus. There in Romans chapter 11, he paused and declared in awe and praise (i.e. doxology): ‘Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!' (Romans 11:33a).
So when it came to formulating the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the church, too, must always pause first in doxology, and come to terms with the fact that:
Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or the discovery more advantageous.
So why is the quest for correct Biblical doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity so dangerous?
Well, consider the “1 in 60” navigation rule. If you are just one degree off-course in your travels, then as the crow flies, after just 60kms you will already be 1km off course. If a Boeing 747 departing Melbourne for a London arrival took an incorrect course by just one degree, the captain and co-pilot would be searching for Heathrow airport anywhere as far away as Leeds to the north, Swansea in Wales to the west, Rouen in France to the south, or Brussels in Belgium to the east.
For the correct launching point for any discussion and search for the truth concerning the Holy Trinity is to first start with the revealed Bible truths about ourselves. If we don't start there, Lord knows how far away our final destination will be!
The right place to start is a Biblical diagnoses of the fact that sin is so utterly sinful that anybody can be tempted into having a false or distorted view of the Trinity. Human reason is so clouded by sin, that relying on Reason alone, as do the Unitarians,[1] leads straight on to a misrepresentation of the Scriptures. I do not know how the Unitarians explain away verses like, when God said in Genesis 1:26, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ Or when he later said while peering down at the puny Tower of Babel, 'Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other' (Gen 11:7). Actually I do know! They do not accept anything in the Bible that cannot be comprehended by reason alone! Faith simply gets sidelined.
This is where holding on to the Three Ecumenical Creeds: the Apostles, the Nicene and the Athanasian; those great confessions of the Christian Faith that are so vital to a correct confession and knowledge of truth verses error.
We may not be gross deniers that God is Trinitarian, but we, yes even the LCA can slip-up in its use of language when teaching about the Trinity. I'll give you a recent example that appears in the 2012 LCA publication: 'Grassroots Training: Beliefs Study Book, page 31?' And I quote:
Firstly, as previously mentioned last session; Jesus is the incarnation of God the Father. Secondly, Jesus says that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
End quote. There is nothing wrong with the second sentence that states that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. That is simply a quotation of John 14:6. But, to put a good spin on it - the first statement is lazily written, as it unintentionally promotes the heresy of Modalism. Modalism takes numerous forms, but can be identified by the false belief that God takes on the mode of the Father for some time, then takes on the mode of Jesus the Son, for another amount of time, then takes the mode of Holy Spirit for another allocation of time, (but never at the same time, Father, Son and Spirit). Now, I know that none of the “Beliefs” Bible Study contributors, if quizzed, would actually believe the heresy of Modalism. So I am sure that it was just a lazily constructed sentence! But from this editing error, you will see how easy it is to muck things up and end up promoting error, and therefore potentially lead others into false belief. For Jesus is NOT the incarnation of God the Father. Rather, Jesus is the incarnation of the eternal Word, as John says in the opening sentences of his Gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us’ (Jn 1:1-2,14). Sticking with Scripture alone will avoid a false statement being formulated. And just in case you want to know a Bible passage that categorically refutes Modalism, then go to Matthew 2:13-17, that being Jesus' Baptism. There we see and hear three distinct entities: 1. the voice from heaven, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased;" 2. the Spirit of God descending like a dove and 3. upon the person of Jesus. The three distinct persons of the Trinity are all present in the one frame, not one after the other!
There are also great physical dangers in upholding and confessing the truth. Over the millennia, it has got many Christians killed, from within and without the church. So much more could be said, but now let's consider why the quest for the truth concerning the Trinity is so laborious.
Since everything that God wants mankind to know about himself as ‘one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity’ is contained within the 66 Books of the Bible, on one hand, we must conclude that the search for Trinitarian truth is not so laborious. But, on the other hand, as we have already seen, the defence of the truth is a labour of sorts. We can also add that when the quest for the truth ventures outside of the Bible, than invariably the search will be made infinitely difficult, with philosophy or flawed human deduction having its "two cents worth."
For example – God is our loving heavenly Father. He is the God of all creation who created the world and still preserves us and provides us our daily bread. This is our confession when we say, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.' We only need to use simple reasoning to come to the conclusion that something created needs a Creator. And we can conclude that the Creator provides and preserves everything good around us for our benefit and pleasure. But what "reason alone" cannot do is get a consistent sense of is whether God is always loving.
What if something bad happens: a Tsunami or an earthquake that kills thousands of “innocent” people? We have concluded that God is loving, therefore in the wake of devastation and suffering, using "reason alone," we must also conclude that either God is not always loving, or that God was not involved in any way to cause or prevent the disaster from happening. In the event of a disaster, we naturally enough may also conclude that God doesn’t exist at all, saying to each other, "it was just another case of the victims being in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” But if we remain deists, we would have to conclude that God is not all powerful, and that evil is just having a win. In other words, we would be saying that "good and evil are on equal terms, an equal play-field, and evil claimed the day on this occasion." But then we would be left with the possibility that, "maybe God will win the next battle, maybe he won't." That doesn't sound like an all-powerful Almighty God to me! (People who think this way are called Manichaeans.)
So by nature, and by the devastating events in the natural world, we would never come to the conclusion that God is our loving heavenly Father. We would need something else to inform us that God really is our loving heavenly Father. And only the revelation of the Bible will tell us that; nature cannot do it alone. To get to the point of knowing God consistently as our loving heavenly Father, we must turn the page, as it were, and believe that in the sending of his own Son into the world, to die our deserved death, and be raised to life for our justification (i.e. reconciliation with the Father) is where we truly see God as our loving heavenly Father. For only a loving heavenly Father would make the sacrifice of his one and only Son; a Son who had done nothing wrong, a Son who conducted himself perfectly in every way, all to purchase wayward children from their own demise; children who were at enmity with the Father; children living as his enemies; children who hated their own Father; children hell-bent on having nothing to do with their Father. Therefore, only in Jesus Christ do we see our loving heavenly Father for who he truly is!
And let me tell you: defending the Gospel is a laborious undertaking. The Gospel is so easily replaced, accidentally or intentionally, with numerous false gospels. It’s easily done, and it can go easily unnoticed. For Shepherds of the flock, labouring in the truth, and for the truth, is a calling into a labour of love. But the sobering fact is, is that love demands everything! No one apart from Jesus was willing and able to give everything love demanded! Everything includes death, for the centre of love is death, the death of the Son of God on the cross, as John wrote in his First Letter, ‘In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 Jn 4:10). Speaking the truth in love is frowned upon these days, for when it is done rightly, it is perceived and received as unloving and un-accepting. This is because 'speaking the truth in love' (Eph 4:15) is being redefined all the time in the church to accommodate this world's fleeting and ever changing belief systems!
So lastly, "Why is the discovery of the truth concerning the Trinity so advantageous?
Discoveries in general are advantageous. Negatively speaking, they can be used to exploit the advantage for selfish gain, but they can also be utilized for the common good. When you have the facts, you are always at an advantage. But when you are kept in the dark, you are always disadvantaged. But, working with the truth is working in the light – everything is laid bare. Jesus said, ‘I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness’ (Jn 12:46). And Paul’s commission as an Apostle was, ‘to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in [Jesus]’ (Acts 26:18).
For the real discovery to be had when contemplating the truth of the Trinity, is not at first the discovery of who God is, but rather the discovery of ourselves – who we are in our sinful and lost condition, and then, and only then will we appreciate the cost and the means by which our sins are taken away and discover joy in our new identity in Jesus. For what a discovery it is when our eyes are opened by grace, through faith in God! This might be the 'Understatement of the Year,' but "What an advantage faith in Jesus Christ is!" It’s life changing! Heaven gets opened up to, of all people, sinners! Having just celebrated The Ascension and Pentecost, remember that Jesus actually said to the disciples, ‘Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you’ (John 16:7).
For so many people it’s that unearthing discovery of the full significance of their baptism. For others it’s the next step of faith – to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; God's name marked on our foreheads and chests. That phrase, 'In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' is the most significant, important, powerful, grace-filled, life-giving statement that can be invoked. It identifies our very life in God.
As we search the Scriptures alone and abide in Jesus alone, we grow in the knowledge and assurance of everything that our baptism in the name Father, Son and Spirit promises us and provides us with. In doing so, we also learn along the way, that nothing is more dangerous, nothing is more laborious, and nothing is more advantageous to body and soul.
So may the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and † Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen.
[1] Unitarians strip Jesus of his divinity and demote him to the stature of a man. And they consider the Holy Spirit as merely another name of manifestation of God.