Trinity Sunday 2021 - The Possibility of Knowing God
Readings - Romans 8:12-17 and John 3:1-17
Preached by Joshua at St John’s 30th of May 2021
The French thinker Voltaire famously quipped “In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favour ever since.”
It is quite easy for us to make a god in our own image, a god of our own liking and one that suits our needs.
When it comes to talk about God, we make many assumptions about who God is and what God is like that come from our own stories, upbringing, worldview, and histories.
Pastor and writer, John Mark Comer puts it well, saying:
“Often what we believe about God says more about us than it does about God. Our theology is like a mirror to the soul. It shows us what’s deep inside.”[1]
Our views about God are a mirror to the soul. That’s an interesting thought – the idea that sometimes what we believe about God is what we want to believe or what we project onto God.
For example, if we view God primarily as a divine being that is on our side and who will make our life prosper – when we encounter suffering; when someone close to use dies, or when our career falls apart, or when we get sick – we will find ourselves questioning this “god” – or perhaps no longer believing in this “god” because he didn’t come through for us.
Or maybe we have had a negative interaction with someone who was a “religious person” who was cruel and harsh toward us, treating us badly and then using the Bible or quotes about God to justify their cruelty. We might then grow up with a view of a “god” who is sadistic, and who is just waiting to punish us or hurt us.
Or perhaps, we come to thinking about God with a worldview that is mostly governed by the empirical – by what we can observe or experience by our senses. We want to see the hard data on God because we are not so sure if we can even trust that He exists, let alone loves us.
We all bring ourselves to the table and our stories to the table when we gather to talk about God, and to think about Him – essentially, to do theology.
This is normal. It’s always been the case. But it helps to notice it.
Especially in our current cultural climate – because we live in a world where we are encouraged to amplify the subjective.
We are actively encouraged to trust our feelings and intuitions.
We live in a “if it is true for you that is great” kind of world.
But amongst all of this we must ask – how can we know anything about God and who God is?
Where do we go to get to the heart of it all?
We need revelation. We need something beyond ourselves.
For us to know God truly, we need God to reveal Himself to us.
We can’t start with our own thinking and speculation.
Today, in our church calendar we celebrate Trinity Sunday.
Trinity Sunday is a time when we reflect on who God is as revealed to us by Scripture.
The doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (essential beliefs of the Anglican Church) put it this way: “There is but one living and true God, ever- lasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
In Trinitarian belief about God the one and three are both held together – if we go too far one way or the other, we end up with something different from Trinitarian faith.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not intended to be an abstract thought, but rather it is an articulation of how God has revealed Himself to us in Scripture.
The point isn’t merely to “understand” or “comprehend” this. Rather, the invitation on Trinity Sunday goes further.
When we contemplate the Trinity, we recognize how God has reached out to us so we might know Him and worship Him. Ian Paul shows how we experience the Trinity saying:
“We experience God as transcendent, as Father over all. We experience him as involved in the world, as the Son who came to redeem us. And we experience him as present with us, immanent and empowering, by the Spirit.”[2]
As we consider the Trinity, we are invited afresh to see God as God has revealed Himself, and to clear out the clutter of any idols or gods we have made in our own image.
This is deeply important, because if we get it wrong we end up worshipping false gods, little ‘g’ gods made in our own image.
Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian from the 20th Century made a big deal of God’s self-revelation.
His theology was shaped a lot by the time and place he was writing.
Barth was writing and pastoring in a time in which the German church was under the sway and influence of the Nazi Party. Many in the church vowed allegiance to Hitler alongside their Christianity and couldn’t see the conflict.
This was perhaps one of the greatest recent collective examples of a god made in one’s own image. Allegiance to Hitler trumped allegiance to Jesus, and great damage was done to the reputation of God’s church and Jesus in the false witness and idolatry that unfolded as the church compromised and collaborated with Nazism.
Karl Barth’s theology was formed in this context as he rejected all attempts of the German church to make god in their own image.
Barth, talking about this said:
“The doctrine of the Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian…” (p. 301)
“One may sum up the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity briefly and simply by saying that God is the One who reveals Himself.” (p. 380)[3]
Barth’s point in many ways is that we don’t get to make this Christian stuff up. God is revealed to us, and that is how we know who God is.
God is revealed to us supremely in Scripture, in the unfolding narrative of God at work in the world. Here we see a God of love who seeks the good of the world, bringing hope.
Of course, this vision of God revealed in Scripture stands in contrast with and in opposition to the philosophy of Nazism. This is a stark and obvious example but it is clear to see.
There are all sorts of more subtle ways that we bring our own views to who God is. The point made by Barth and countless other theologians is that if we want to know who God is we must go to Scripture because this is where we see the story of God revealing Himself to us.
And today we heard readings from Scripture which speak of this way in which God reveals Himself.
John 3 – Nicodemus and his questions…
In John’s Gospel, Nicodemus the Pharisee comes looking for Jesus in the middle of the night.
He has lots of questions and wants to work out who Jesus is.
In that conversation in the middle of that dark night Jesus says to Nicodemus:“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
Perhaps looking for straightforward answers, Nicodemus becomes baffled. What is all this talk of new birth about?
Rather than simple answers to his inquiry about Jesus, Nicodemus receives an invitation to life with Him.
In this passage we see the Triune God at work.
God the Father, so loves the world, that he gives His only Son Jesus Christ to save the world from sin and death through being lifted up on the cross and raised again to life. The Holy Spirit bears witness to this and brings about a new life, or new birth in us by drawing us into relationship with Him.
We see God at work in John chapter 3 – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Romans 8 – Life with God.
In our reading from Romans 8, Paul unpacks this theme of what it means to be born again - to know God and be invited into relationship with Him.
In this passage again we see God at work – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We see similar language to that of Jesus in John.
In John, Jesus speaks of being born again. Jesus talks about being born of the Spirit.
Paul, in Romans, uses the metaphor of adoption to talk about what it means to be invited into relationship with God.
It’s like being adopted into a family, where we learn to cry out and call God our Father. Paul says:
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
A Christian is a child of God. That is one simple way of putting it.[4]
We might want to argue, since all people are made by God and loved by Him aren’t we all children of God simply by existence?
The Bible teaches that we are all made in God’s image, and we are all loved by Him, but it doesn’t use this term of being “children of God” for all people. This term is set aside to speak of those who have been born again – as John 1:12 puts it: “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’
Galatians 3 likewise says that we are all children of God through faith. (Gal 3:26).
We become children of God by being born anew through faith in Jesus Christ.
Earlier in his letter to the Romans, Paul has written about how all have us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one is exempt.
Sin describes the break in relationship between us and God. We were created for life with Him, but as we see the biblical story unfold we see stories of how people go out on their own to live their lives without God. Sin describes the state we find ourselves in as we turn from God.
We see throughout the Bible people turn to make gods in their own image to fill the void and to make sense of their lives. In the Old Testament we hear about false gods like Baal, Asherah, and Moloch.
As well as these obvious idols of wood and stone, we see people serving their own interests and acting like gods on their own, or setting created goods above love of the Creator – the very common ones are money, sex, and power.
In fact, some Christian thinkers see idolatry, the worship of false gods as the core or fundamental sin in the Bible.
Amidst all of this, God keeps on appearing to show his love and goodness.
As Paul puts it in chapter 5 of Romans:
“…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Romans 5:8b-11)
Through Jesus Christ, we are reconciled with God the Father. We are set free from sin and its consequences – death, and we are welcomed into relationship with God and invited to experience eternal life.
The Holy Spirit bears witness in our lives to this beautiful truth.
The Holy Spirit prompts us and reminds us of who we are as children of God because of what God has done through Jesus.
Our thinking about God and how we understand God is grounded in how God has revealed himself to us as love – in the story of God at work: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Like I said earlier, this is more than abstract – this truly matters. We discover in today’s readings the invitation to life with God.
We discover a God who loves us enough to reach out to us and to make us part of his family. We meet a God who takes the initiative to set things right, to make a new way, and to rescue this broken and hurting world.
We are invited to find our true identity in being God’s children, in knowing his love for us.
From this, our lives will be utterly transformed.
Paul knows this and because of this he implores us in Romans to not live according the flesh, but rather by the Spirit.
When Paul talks about the flesh he is talking not about skin and bone but about our sinful and selfish desires which draw us away from living with God – Loving Him and others.
To live not according to the flesh is to let go of all the idols we hold on to and worship our heavenly Father instead, and to live in the Spirit is to trust the witness of the Spirit speaking into our lives telling us we are loved by God.
I love the way that Donald Miller puts it. He says:
“Imagine how a man’s life would be if he trusted that he was loved by God. How could he interact with the poor and not show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money because money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really.” – Donald Miller “Searching for God Knows What”
We don’t just need to imagine this.
We can know God and his love for us.
We are not left wondering. God has revealed himself to us.
We are invited simply to respond, to turn our hearts to Him in faith, as the Holy Spirit points the way.
[1] John Mark Comer, “God Has a Name”
[2] https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/the-trinity-is-not-our-social-programme/
[3] https://www.sdmorrison.org/5-great-quotes-from-cd-i1-karl-barth/
[4] J I Packer, Knowing God, Chapter 19 speaks of adoption and the biblical concept beautifully.