Trinity Sunday Free Text
Titus 3:4-8 June 11, 2017
Dear Friends in Christ,
Today marks for us the end of the first half of the Church Year, the festival half, the half in which we celebrate Christmas and Lent and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Ascension and Pentecost, and we move into the second half of the Church Year which really has no festivals at all. There are the celebrations of the Reformation and Thanksgiving, but these are not the same as major festivals that celebrate the working of Christ for our salvation.
But as we transition from the very full half of the year with all the activities that work together to teach us of the salvation which Christ has won for us, this second half of the Church calendar has only today, Trinity Sunday, as a festival and celebration of the one true God as a Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And for many people that you might know at work or who live in your neighborhood or are related to you, the main emphasis of this morning, the message of God as one God in three persons is something they cannot comprehend. If you know a Muslim or a Jehovah’s Witness or a Unitarian, they will be quick to point out that God is not a Triune God and that the words triune, trinity and three-in-one do not appear in Scripture. They may even go so far as to point out that there is only one passage in the Bible that even comes close to expressing what we believe and that is Jesus’ great commission to baptize all nations in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet quite clearly, the word Trinity or one God in three persons is not a part of that verse.
Does this mean that they are right and we are wrong? Does it mean that we are wrong to think of Jesus as being true and eternal God? Is it against Scripture to think of the Holy Spirit as an individual person of God, yet still one with the Father and the Son? We will have to admit that this is a hard to understand teaching. It is also true that there are a lot of passages in the Bible that can lead us to agree with the idea of a single God. If we focus our attention on only one or two verses it is easy to see that there is only One God and He is our Father in Heaven.
Take for example the words of Moses in Exodus and Deuteronomy, we would have to agree with the statement of God that says the “LORD your God, the LORD is one.” We would also have to acknowledge the message of Jesus in which time and time again He refers to Himself not as the Son of God, but merely as the Son of Man. And that Jesus did not raise Himself from the dead but that as Paul says, “God raised Him from the dead.”
But before you begin to get too uncomfortable and begin to wonder if maybe we are missing the mark and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Unitarians do have a good point, we need to step back and look at the big picture. For what we find in all of the false religions and in all the false teachings that mislead and misdirect people away from God is a view that ignores the big picture. It is a view that takes a few key passages out of context and uses them to build an entire religion or at the very least an entire false doctrine. They bring you in up-close to a few key verses and they make you believe that there is nothing else to see. They ignore the hundreds of passages in both the Old and New Testaments that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is the great mystery of one God with three distinct persons. They ignore the understanding of the EarlyChurch which agreed with Irenaeus and St. Patrick that even though we have only one God, He has revealed Himself to us in three distinct persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They fail to look at everything that God has given to us in His inspired and inerrant Word.
In order that we might first of all have a clear understanding of this most important teaching, a teaching which defines us as Christian and without which we cannot be saved, we will step back, so to speak, and take a clear look at God as one true God, but a single God who is at the same time three distinct persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all one God, yet still separate from one another.
To put this into a theme for today let us “CONSIDER WHY GOD IS THREE-IN-ONE.” For even though He is just one God, one being from all eternity, we learn that first of all I. IT IS GOD THE FATHER WHO SAVES US. II. IT IS GOD THE SON WHO JUSTIFIES US. III. IT IS GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT WHO RENEWS US. All the time these three persons are one God, the same in power and attributes, but always separate as to their person and work. Now let us look at the work of God the Father, the first person of the Trinity.
In our text for this morning, Paul is writing to Titus with the encouragement of holding on to the teachings of God, especially that concept or idea of the Trinity. For here Paul, speaking by the inspiration of God, gives to us the essence of the Trinity in that each person of our One True God is working of our salvation. Though they are only one God, they each have their task in giving sinners like us the hope of everlasting life.
For consider the first part of our sermon for this morning that tells us the GOD THE FATHER SAVES US. This certain was something that the Old Testament Jews would have readily understood. It is often mentioned the it is God alone who saves us. It is the working of God that saves sinners. It is the LORD, the covenant God, who saves us even as He saved Abraham.
But what does it mean to be saved? I think a lot of us might use that term if we were pulled from a burning building or if we were given CPR after a heart attack. We would certainly understand the concept of being saved because at that point in life were very close to being lost. The life that we have would soon end if not for the help of someone else. Someone else steps in and pulls you from the burning building or administers CPR or gives you the drug that cures the cancer. Clearly we use the idea of being saved when it comes to our life.
And that is the same way that God uses that word. When Paul says to us that “He saved us,” it was in that very same sense of saving our lives. God the Father saw that because of our sins, because of the sin of Adam and Eve that has been passed down to each and every one of us, we are doomed to death. We are in the process of being lost for all eternity. Even from the moment of conception when we view life beginning and everything being ahead of us, we are lost in the eyes of God. Lost to sin. Lost to death. Lost to eternal damnation.
And yet we hear that God the Father “according to His mercy…saved us.” By a plan that set aside punishment for sin and by a plan that would show love even to people who did not deserve it, by His mercy, God saved us. It was the plan of God the Father.
But just what was that plan? Was it simply a matter of ignoring all the wrong that we do? Does the salvation of God mean that we can do whatever we want and God just looks the other way as if He does not care? No, for the Father is also a God of justice. He must punish sin and the punishment for sin is everlasting death and damnation. Yet in the mercy that is His, the mercy that is so great that He is willing to overlook even the worst of sins you might commit, God sent His Son to take our place in death.
And this is something that is of vital importance not only to salvation but also to the doctrine of the Trinity. For Jesus could not have just been a perfect man who took the place of sinful men but He had to be God as well. For the reminder of the Old Testament that only God can save us still holds true. God had to become fully human. God had to be flesh and blood. God had to suffer even as we do to fulfill the mercy of the Father save us.
That is why Paul goes on to tell Titus that “having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” God in His mercy planned our salvation and God in His Grace came and carried out that work by dying in the cross in our place. This brought about the justification or being made right in the eyes of God. The innocent suffering and death of Jesus Christ as true and eternal God means that God the Father who planned our salvation carried it out through the work of Himself as the Son. Not as two separate gods but the One True God who has three distinct persons. One who plans our salvation, one who carries it out, and one who tells us of the great and glorious workings of God.
For that is the work of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. For as true and eternal God the Holy Spirit saves us “through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” Another term for this is called the Means of Grace, because it is the way that God brings us the forgiveness of sin Christ won and truly does save us from eternal death and damnation. For through the simple preaching of the word, through the water and the word of Baptism and through the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit renews us and makes clean before God. Through faith we understand how this is something that God alone does in our hearts and that we cannot by our own thinking our choosing believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him, but rather Holy Spirit calls, gathers and enlightens us to be saved, to be His, to have the hope of eternal life rather than being lost for all eternity.
The purpose of this working of God, this co-operation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is done so that “we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” God wants us to be saved and He did all that was needed. He planned our life eternal. He came to be just like us and die in our place. He comes to us through the Word and Sacraments to give us faith. He saves us as one God with three distinct persons who work together for our salvation.
It is no wonder Paul ends this short section by saying, “ This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.”
These words apply to us as well. We who know of the saving work of God as our one God in three persons should continue on in the works we have been called to do. We should hold fast to His Grace through faith. We should proclaim these truths to others. We should rejoice that we have One God in three persons, a mystery that is truly beyond our comprehension, but it is this simple truth that saves us. Amen.
But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, 5 not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.