Isaiah 6:1-8; Genesis 1:26-27
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
Sometimes when I’m talking with folks who don’t come to church or who have stopped coming to church, they will try to reassure me that they still believe. They still believe in God. They’re not like those foolish atheists; they just don’t see a need for organized religion, or they don’t trust the legitimacy of the Bible, or whatever. But they’ll always try to justify themselves by saying that they still believe in God. I think next time I hear that line, I’m going to respond to them by saying, “Congratulations, you’ve just attained the faith level of demons!” Demons aren’t atheists, either, right? They believe in God. James 2:19 says, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!”
More than once the Bible speaks of coming before God with fear and trembling. We need to return to that starting point again. We need to be like Isaiah in the Old Testament reading who thought he was a dead man in the presence of God. “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Merely believing that God exists is not Christian faith. All creation bears witness to the existence of the Creator. And our own conscience teaches us that there is a moral Law and One whom we are accountable to, Romans 2 says. Christian faith begins with repentance, an acknowledgment of the woe that we deserve, and the Spirit-worked desire to turn away from the sin that brought that woe. Coming before God is no casual thing. As Isaiah experienced, it literally shakes things up.
So Christian faith begins with repentance, and most importantly it continues with turning toward God, looking to Him for mercy and help, calling on His name. Which brings us to the focus of this Holy Trinity Sunday: who is the true God whom we are to turn to? What is His name? For the term “God” can and does mean any number of things to any different number of people. “God” for a Hindu or Muslim or Jew or Buddhist is something much different than for a Christian. Most Americans will say that they believe in God, but that God is often just a generic and undefined being. The true God is certainly more than just the “man upstairs.” Who is the God you believe in? Who is the one and only true God?
It’s not without reason that the seraphim cry out three times in praise of God, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory!” The one true God is a threefold God, the Blessed Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit–one God in three persons. It is this God who in the beginning said, “Let us make man in our image.” Or as we heard in the reading, “Who will go for us?”
Scripture makes it clear that there is only one God. Deuteronomy 6 says, “The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Isaiah 45 says, “I am God, and there is no other.” Unlike the pagan religions which have many gods connected to different parts of creation, Christianity confesses only one God, who has created all things, and who is Himself outside of creation.
But the Bible also clearly teaches that this one God is three-fold. Three distinct persons are referred to as God in the Scriptures. And therein lies the mystery. For it’s not as if the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each 1/3 of God, so that when you put them all together, you’ve got the one true God. But neither is it true that there are three Gods or even three different forms of God. No, each of these persons are fully divine, and yet they are so perfectly united and joined together in love that there is only one God. That is the mystery of the Trinity.
It is well worth our time to stop and ponder this mystery. For meditating on the nature of God and who He is and what He has done for us is, in fact, the very heart of worship. Faith delights in contemplating such things. We will be happily spending all of eternity dwelling on this God and thinking on the rich depths of the wisdom and beauty the Lord.
The doctrine of the Trinity is actually quite practical: The better we understand what God is like, the better we’ll understand what we’ve been created to be and to do. For man was created in God’s image, right? Mankind was made to be a reflection of God’s being. So understanding Him is going to tell us something about ourselves.
Keeping in mind that God is a Trinity, listen to Genesis 1: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Notice what God created when He made man in His image. Did He make a single, androgenous, self-contained being? No, He created a relationship of persons who together formed a oneness and a unity. When God made man in His image, He made a single human nature with multiple persons.
God is and always has been a personal being, one who by nature always relates to another. Even before the creation of man, there was a relationship of persons within God. God is Himself a community and a unity of persons. And that is precisely why the creation of man wasn’t complete until Eve came on the scene. So to be created in God’s image is to be made to be in a certain kind of relationship with other people. God is a relationship of persons. Man, therefore, is also a relationship of persons.
An early church father, St. Augustine, gives some helpful thoughts on the Trinity. He began with the verse, “God is love.” Now love, he said, isn’t something which involves only one person. In fact it has three aspects: the one who loves, the one who is loved, and the love itself. Augustine equated these three aspects of love to the three persons of the Trinity. So, for instance, at the baptism of Jesus, the Father’s voice came from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son,” and then the Holy Spirit came to rest on Him. The Father is the One who loves, the Son is the One who is loved, and the Holy Spirit is the Love itself, that love being an actual person. So within God there is a relationship of outward reaching love that draws the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together in a perfect unity.
That’s why it’s just not right to lump modern-day Judaism and Islam into the same category as Christianity and call them all monotheistic, as if we all worship the same God. We don’t. The Trinity is of a very different nature. The Christian God of the Old and New Testaments is very different from those who have rejected Jesus as the Son of God. Jesus said, “He who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.” If you think about it, the other so-called monotheistic religions cannot have a god who is love within Himself. For love by its very nature requires more than one person. The Muslim Allah cannot be a god who is love; for he’s all by himself. Poor guy is lonely. Only Christians can say, “God is love,” the blessed Holy Trinity.
We can see from this, then, just how highly God has exalted marriage, that He made it the first relationship to reflect His image. Adam was the one who loved, Eve was the beloved, and together they shared in a love from God that drew them together as one. Marriage also is a Trinitarian thing, the third part usually being concretely represented in the children God gives. To be created in the image of God, therefore, means that we are to be reflecting divine, self-giving love–not only in marriage, of course, but in all our relationships–the kind of love that caused God to create us in the first place, a love that seeks to extend itself and reach out and give and sacrifice in order to draw others into a harmonious unity and a God-pleasing oneness.
Now, understanding that such is the image of God, we must admit that as we look at ourselves and the world around us, it’s often difficult to see that image being reflected in our relationships. We should not forget or ignore the fact, therefore, that since the creation of Adam and Eve, mankind has fallen into sin. The image of God has been corrupted and broken in us. We no longer reflect who He is. And that, at its essence, is what sin really is–a degrading of our Maker by failing to mirror His goodness, a rebellion in thought, word, and action against the nature of God, in whose likeness we were intended to be. God is loving and self-giving, we are often self-centered and proud. God is characterized by unity and oneness, we are often characterized by division and a stubborn attitude of self-sufficiency and self-will. Such a corrupted image of God is doomed to eternal separation from Him.
Fortunately for us, it is in God’s nature to love even the unlovable. As we heard in the Gospel, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” And Romans 5 says, ‘God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” You might say that God was just being Himself when in His love He initiated His plan to rescue you. In the sending of Jesus, God was reaching out in a complete and ultimate way in order to draw you back into unity with Himself. On the cross Jesus received the full judgment for your corrupted natures. And then by His resurrection from the grave, Jesus restored the image of God to your humanity. Therefore, all who are joined to Christ by faith share in that restored image and are made right with God. That’s what Baptism and Holy Communion are all about. You are baptized into Christ. You are fed with His very body and blood; that burning coal from the altar, aglow with the divine life of Jesus is put to your lips. And your iniquity is taken away and your sin purged. Through those means, God makes you one with Christ and recreates you in His likeness. As Colossians 3 says, “(You) have put on the new nature [of Christ] which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” We look forward, therefore, with eager expectation to the second coming of Christ, when that newness will be fully revealed in us, when the vestiges of our corrupted natures will be forever destroyed, when we will perfectly reflect the image of God and fully share in the unity of His love.
So, you see, to reflect upon the doctrine of the Trinity is not just a once-a-year exercise in intellectual gymnastics. It is rather to meditate on the God who is love and who is life for us all. To begin to understand God is to know what you were created to be by the Father and who you are in Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit. It is to be drawn into the Father’s love given you through His Son, poured out upon you by the Holy Spirit, so that you may share forever in His divine life. Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity. Let us give glory to Him, for He has shown mercy to us. For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things; to Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.