The Power of the Trinity By Reverend Denes House

Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

As I was preparing for this sermon, my wife came across an e-mail that I thought was appropriate and funny. It seems a teacher asked her students to sum up Socrates’ life in four lines. One student wrote: Socrates lived long ago. He was very intelligent. Socrates gave long speeches. His friends poisoned him. Some time in the third century after Christ, a boy was born to the wealthy and prominent couple, Theophanes and Nona of the town Patara in Lycia. He was their only son, and they dedicated him to God in gratitude. His uncle, Nicholas, after whom he was named, was the Bishop of the Church in Patara, instructed him in the faith, and he grew strong in the Lord.

Nicholas served the Lord with a passion, and when the Bishop of Myra in Lycia died, Nicholas was called by God to take his place.

Bishop Nicholas continued to do good among the poor. When he learned of three young girls in Myra who wanted to get married but had no dowry, he secretly gave them the money that they needed. When the son of a local innkeeper died suddenly, Nicholas called on God to raise him to life, and He did.

Have you ever heard of Nicholas?

I know what you’re saying - his name rings a bell!

I’ll bet you have. Later on, he was declared a Saint by the church, and his example of generosity spawned a caricature which is known the world over. St. Nicholas, St. Nick? I’m talking about the REAL Santa Claus!

During persecutions of the church under Roman emperors Diocletian and Maximian, St. Nick was cast into prison, but even in prison he preached the Word of God.

In the year 325, the church gathered together a council to straighten out some critical doctrinal issues that had arisen in the church. St. Nicholas was a part of the Council in Nicea.

During the discussion, a pastor named Arius stood up to take a controversial and unbiblical position on an important issue. St. Nicholas confronted him publically, and in the heat of the debate, hauled back and decked Arius cold.

Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s tough for me to imagine a doctrine that would be so important as to get Santa Claus all riled up like that!

What could be so ciritcal to the heart of the Christian life that such a good, kind, saintly man would get so angry he would strike down a person who preached heresy against it?

It was the Doctrine of the Trinity.

The Trinity?

The Trinity?

Isn’t the Doctrine of the Trinity just a dry theological debate that matters to just a few old guys with thick glasses in a dusty old room somewhere?

What is so important about the Doctine of the Trinity that it caused Santa Claus to strike with a mighty fist?

We’ll talk about that in just a few minutes. But let me assure you from the beginning that you can no more do without the Doctrine of the Trinity in your spiritual life than you can do without a heart in your physical life.

Just like your heart, which you may never see but is vital to the continuing life of your body, the Doctrine of the Trinity lies just underneath virtually every part of the Christian Life. Suffice it to say that if God were not Trinity, none of us could be saved.

Refer people to handout.

But first, we need to get a clear picture of just what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches.

If you’ll look on the back of your bulletins for a minute, you’ll notice that at the bottom there are a series of bulleted statements that reflect the core beliefs of this church. The second one reads this way: “We Believe there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” That is a great statement of this doctrine. Let’s take a few minutes to unpack it.

First - “We believe...” WHY do we believe the statement that follows? How is it possible for us to truly know anything about God? Isn’t God too awesome, too mighty, too DIFFERENT for us to ever know anything about Him at all?

I hear the story all the time of the blind wise men who were wandering in the desert and came across an elephant.

They felt the beast with their hands, each touching a different part, and they went away arguing what the elephant was like.

One touched the tail, and said it was like a rope.

One touched the leg, and said it was like a tree.

One touched the side, and said it was more like a wall.

One touched the ear, and said it was like a fan.

One touched the trunk, and said it was like a snake.

They all went away convinced they were right, but were all in a sense wrong.

Aren’t we all like blind wise men, all discovering a part of what God is like, but none of us really having a way to get to the full truth?

The problem with this story is that God is not an elephant. An elephant couldn’t care less if you knew the truth about him, and has no way of communicating it with you even if he did.

But God is not an elephant. God deeply wants us to know the truth about Himself, and is fully capable of expressing that truth to us. The way that God does this is by revealing truth about Himself to us.

It’s true, God is infinite, unlimited, and we are finite, limited. We can’t discover who God is on our own. But He is more than able to reveal it if He wants to. That’s why I love that song we sang this morning - Our eyes, ears, and minds cannot perceive or conceive of the greatness of God. But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit.

How has God revealed Himself to us? Supremely and most importantly in the person of Jesus Christ the living Word of God, and also incredibly in the Bible, the written Word of God.

Let’s go a little further. “We believe there is One God...”

One of the first and most essential things God revealed about Himself is that THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD.

In Deuteronomy 6:4 the prophet Moses declares, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Jews call this verse the Shema, and it is the cornerstone of Judaic thought about God. The Lord is One.

The doctrine that there is only one God is called MONOTHEISM. Mono- means “one” and Theos means “God”. “Monotheism” is the belief that there is only one God.

The book of Isaiah expounds on this in what is probably the most intensely monotheistic passages in Scripture, Isaiah 45:21-24:

“Declare what is to be, present it - let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me. Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone are righteousness and strength.’”

You don’t need a road map to figure out what that passage is saying, do you? There is only one God. How many? One. Are there any others? No. Who else comes close? Nobody. One. Uno. Un. God is God and God alone. I can almost picture God pausing at the end of this and asking, “Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

As inheritors of the Old Covenant, Christians are also MONOTHEISTIC. We believe there is One God.

Let’s go on. “We believe there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: God the Father...”

We’ll come back to the “eternally existent in three persons” part in just a few minutes. Who is God the Father?

In the Old Testament, God talked about Himself as Father, and referred to Israel as His Son. It was not common for Israel to refer to itself in that way, but the thought was throughout the Scriptures.

But the name “God the Father” gained new significance when Jesus Christ showed up on the scene.

Jesus took the description “the Son of God” and used it of Himself in a unique way, as though God was His Father in a way that did not apply to everybody else. Like when he said in Matthew 11:27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

And before Jesus’ birth, the phrase “The Son of God” was given to Him as a title from on high. (Luke 1:35)

Jesus revealed that there was more going on when God was referred to as “Father” than was previously suspected. And this leads us to the next segment of this doctrine, “God the Son.”

Jesus did some amazing things, for a man.

Jesus forgave sins. In Mark 2:3-12 He forgives and heals a paralyzed man. Now, Isaiah 43:25 and the rest of the Hebrew scriptures said that only God could forgive sin. Why? Because like Psalm 51 tells us, all sin is ultimately sin against God. But here Jesus was, bold as brass, forgiving peoples’ sins as though they were sins against HIM! The same thing happens in Luke 7:36-50, when He forgives the sins of a harlot who annoints His feet. People murmur - “who is this that even forgives sins? No one can forgive sins but God alone.” And Jesus demonstrates His authority to forgive by also turning around and healing their diseases.

Mighty peculiar.

Jesus made other startling claims: In John 8:58 He says “I tell you the Truth, before Abraham was born, I AM.” He’s saying, remember Abraham, who lived 3000 years ago? Well, I was around before he was. Not only that, the phrase “I AM” was considered by Jews to be a sacred name for God. It was how God identified Himself to Moses at the burning bush. That name, “I AM” is so Holy that even today Orthodox Jews don’t dare to write it out, or speak it, for fear of blaspheming His Holiness. And here’s Jesus, using it to refer to Himself. No wonder in the very next breath, people are picking up rocks to kill Him with!

In John 14:6-11, Jesus said another few startling things.

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him.’ Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered, ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I speak to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing His work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves

If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father?
I am in the Father and He’s in me?
Nobody can get to the Father except through me?

In fact, in John 10:30, Jesus flat out says, “I and the Father are One.”

Finally, Jesus promises His disciples that He will send God’s Holy Spirit to them from Heaven when He ascends to be with His Father.

This would have been the last straw. The Hebrew Scriptures portrayed God’s Holy Spirit as the power that God used to do His mighty acts. And here Jesus is claiming to have authority to send this power?

It was clear that Jesus was claiming something more for Himself than just that He was a good teacher who taught people to be nice to each other. Jesus was claiming to be God Himself, in the flesh.

I’ll be honest with you, that was a revolting idea for a whole lot of people in those days. It still is for Jews and for Muslims a revolting and blasphemous claim. But there it is.

What are we going to make of it?

Oh - Jesus did one more thing. He predicted that He was going to die, and that God would vindicate Him - would put His stamp of approval on all that Jesus had said, done, and claimed, by raising Him from the dead.

And guess what? That’s just what happened. Within a week of making some of those claims, Jesus had been crucifed. And within three days of His crucifixion, God raised Jesus from the dead, triumphantly proclaiming Him as Lord, as God over all.

What could Jesus’ followers do but accept that this was the Truth? That God had revealed something new about Himself in the person of Jesus Christ?

Immediately, they began to worship Jesus as God Himself in the flesh. We see Doubting Thomas falling down at the frshly-risen Jesus’ feet in John 20:28 and declaring Jesus is “my Lord and my God!”

One of the oldest pieces of writing we have in the New Testament, one of the fragments of text judged to have come to us from right after Jesus’ resurrection, is Philippians 2:6-11. Philippians is one of the earliest books of the New Testament written, and in this segment, the author Paul is quoting from a well-established church hymn. Here’s what he says:

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped (or held on to by force), but made Himself nithing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled Himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.”

Does that sound at all familiar? This hymn that Paul is quoting takes Isaiah 45:21-24, what we just talked about as the most intensely monotheistic passage of the Bible, and applying it to Jesus! There is only One God. Jesus is God.

Yow!

That is so amazing and unexpected that it boggles the mind.

But what about the last segment, “God the Holy Spirit”?

Well, for this next thread of the story, we need to go back just a bit in time. You remember, like we noted earlier, Jesus, just before He died, promised to send the Holy Spirit of God to dwell in and empower the disciples.

That was one of the things that showed Jesus was claiming to be God Himself. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would be a “another comforter of the same kind” as Jesus Himself. Jesus was the disciples’ comforter, but Jesus would soon be dead, resurrected, and ascended into heaven, but Jesus did not want to leave them alone. So He promised them the Holy Spirit as another comforter of the same kind.

If you want to look it up later, this is all in John 14, 15 and 16. What do we learn there about the Holy Spirit? At one point Jesus says He would send the Spirit, at another He says that the Father would, so it appears that the Spirit is sent by the Father and Son together. In fact, Jesus says in the same breath both that the Holy Spirit would come to them, and “I will come to you.” A couple of seconds later, He says that both He and the Father would come to them! We learn that the Holy Spirit, who comes in Jesus’ name, would bring Jesus’ peace to them, and remind them of everything Jesus had said. In the same way as Jesus had told them that He Himself spoke nothing to them but what He heard the Father speaking, He said that the Holy Spirit would speak only of what He had heard from the Son. And Jesus says that the Spirit would be able to communicate the Glory of the Father and the Son to the disciples.

There’s a whole lot more there, but suffice it to say that Jesus made a whole lot of claims about who this comforter would be.

Fifty days later, the disciples were hunched together in the upper room, and BAM! The Holy Spirit descended on them, filling them up with His presence and power such that they immediately began bubbling over with miraculous praises, and immediately began speaking the message of the Gospel in languages that they did not know.

And they noticed something weird. Just like Jesus had said, they recognized that the presence of the Holy Spirit was just like the presence of Jesus. They realized that the Holy Spirit was God Himself, just like Jesus was.

But wait! I said earlier that the Hebrew Scriptures portrayed the Holy Spirit as the power that God used to do His mighty acts.

But the Doctrine of the Trinity says that the Holy Spirit is a person. Where did we get that?

Throughout the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit is described as being greived, lied to, rejoicing, and many other characteristics that imply personality - that the Holy Spirit is not just an impersonal force, but a person who can be related to. You can’t greive a thing or a power. You can only greive a person.

Let me stress at this point that the Church believed all of these things - there is only one God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, all from the start. In Jesus, God had revealed Himself in His fulness, and new light was shed on the Old Testament revelation. The Old Testament is like a dark room full of furniture. When the light of the New Testament is shined into the dark room, all the things that were always there but unseen become visible.

So, the early church looked back at the Old Testament, and began to see hints of the Tri-unity of God that had not previously been clear.

For example, in Genesis and many other places in the Old Testament, God refers to Himself in the plural - “Let us make man in our image,” God says. There are a few places where two separate individuals seem to be addressed as “God” or “Lord.” These references are in your handout

There’s a strange passage in Genesis, chapter 18 that is confusing unless you know about God’s tri-unity. Abraham receives a visit from three strangers, whom Abraham addresses collectively as “Lord,” and who seem to speak with one voice. The passage explicitly identifies the three visitors as the presence of God.

Check it out sometime, it’s fascinating. And there’s more, if I only had time to go into it all.

So the Church saw that God didn’t change His nature with the birth of Jesus, that God had been this way all along, that in Jesus the fullness of God had simply been revealed.

And they all lived happily ever after. For a little while, at least. It wasn’t long before questions started popping up as people tried to understand what this tri-unity meant, and what the implications were of it. Pastors started teaching their congregations, and some of the things they said were not quite right. It was clear that the Church needed to come together, and address the different teachings that were popping up everywhere.

That’s where our Santa Claus story comes in. Arius the pastor claimed that God the Father was eternal and uncreated, but that God the Son, Jesus, had a beginning and was created by God in Genesis 1:1.

The Council of Nicea ended up declaring Arianism as heresy, and vindicating St. Nick’s zeal for God’s Truth. Remember that the doctrine of the Trinity is so important that Santa Claus was willing to duke it out with anybody who violated it!

Let’s cover that middle section of the doctrine, and then briefly look at a few reasons why the Doctrine of the Trinity is so critical.

But I want you to remember this: throughout the Church’s history, this doctrine has been regarded as a supreme mystery, as it attempts to do justice to the self-revelation of the nature of God Himself! Along the way, the Church has had to remind itself that the farther we try to go in explaining this doctrine, the greater the possibility for error. And since the last thing that we want to do is give false teaching about who God is, the less said, the better. As pastor Earl Palmer, a friend of a friend of mine, is fond of saying, “better to be lean than luxurious” on this topic. The closer we stay to what God has revealed about Himself, the less we speculate, the closer we will probably be to the Truth.

We’ve seen the story of the development of the Doctrine of the Trinity. Why has it been such a hard road? There are lots of reasons, but I think the most significant is that the Doctrine of the Trinity is God’s revelation of the inner life of God - what goes on inside the Godhead. Before Christ, people saw God from the outside, and saw only His unity. But in Jesus we are called to share in the Divine Life, to have the same relationship with God that Jesus shares. The same intimacy that lay behind Jesus’ statement that He and the Father are one, and that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father is extended to us, finite human creatures that we are. Jesus told His disciples that He would send His Holy Spirit to live within them. “On that day,” Jesus said, “you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:20)

The amazing thing about the Doctrine of the Trinity is that because God is Trinity, we can share in the intimate, inner, Divine Life of God. That’s what Jesus draws us into. Amazing!

“We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons...”

A lot of people object to this, saying that it is illogical. “You’re claiming at the same time that there is ONE God and that there are THREE Gods. You’re saying that 1+1+1=1. That’s illogical!” You’re right. Saying that 1+1+1=1 IS illogical. But saying that 1 apple + 1 apple + 1 apple = 1 fruit basket is NOT illogical. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not exactly analogous, but the illustration points out the essential difference between what the Doctrine states and the objection that is raised.

The Doctrine of the Trinity says that God is One in His essence or nature, but that He exists in Three Persons. One nature, three persons. In other words, not one and three of the same things, but one of one thing and three of another sort of thing.

Put another way, we have to distinguish between WHAT Jesus is, and WHO Jesus is. Jesus is God. That’s what He is. But Jesus is God the Son. That’s who He is. In the same way, the Father is God - what - and He is God the Father - who. The same for the Holy Spirit. One what in three whos. We believe God is one essence in three persons. You can’t have a personal relationship with a WHAT. That’s called idolatry. But you can have a personal relationship with a WHO. That means that to come to know God is to get to know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

At this point, a lot of people start bringing out analogies from the physical world to give an example we can think about to help us understand the nature of God.

Some of the most popular are the three phases of water - solid, liquid, and steam. Or an egg with shell, white and yolk but all being one egg. Park, reverse and Neutral, three gears in one transmission. Length, width and height. Plain m&m’s, peanut, and rice crispy m&m’s. Body, soul, and spirit.

Tertullian, an early Church Father who lived before the Council of Nicea, liked the analogies of the sun, its light, and its rays; the source, the river, and the canal; and the root, the shoot and the fruit - all parts of one plant. Making analogies for the Trinity is not a new thing, and I hear new ones all the time. The trouble is, every analogy is flawed in some way. God is beyond our ability to comprehend. His nature is a mystery to us. He is infinite. We are finite.

But God has not called us to understand Him! He has called us to enter into a relationship with Him. And that, I fear, is where all analogies ultimately fall short. They present God as a thing to be studied rather that as a person to be known. And while we need to understand what we can about this God who wants to be known, we need to accept that He is beyond our total comprehension, and that the only things we can know about Him are those things that He has revealed about Himself in relationship with us.

The real point of the Doctrine of the Trinity is not to figure it out, memorize it, and then walk away. The Doctrine of the Trinity is God revealing Himself to us out of a desire to be in relationship with us. He has shown us that in Jesus we can have a relationship with the Living God. You can try to find out all about the Trinity as a Doctrine without ever becoming caught up in the Divine Life. And that is a tragedy.

One God. Eternally existent in three persons.

One last fun bit about the doctrine, and then we will wrap up by asking, “why does any of this really matter to me?”

That is, who raised Jesus from the dead? Was it the Father, the Spirit, or Jesus Himself?

Let’s look at Acts 2:32: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.” This is Peter speaking, and he means God the Father here, as he is talking to a Jewish audience.

Now, let’s look up John 2:19-21: “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple He had spoken of was His body.”

And John 10:17-18: “The reason the Father loves me is that I lay down my life - only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” So Jesus raised HIMSELF from the dead? or was it the Holy Spirit?

Let’s read 1 Peter 3: 18: “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit...”

Who raised Jesus from the dead? Was it the Father? Was it the Son? Was it the Holy Spirit? The answer is, “yes.” The whole Godhead was involved in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In fact, if you look closely at any action of God, you will see all three members of the Trinity working together. In Creation, in our Redemption, in the work God does in our lives day to day, the whole Godhead works together as one.

Jesus said it, didn’t He? “I only do what I see the Father doing.” “The Holy Spirit I will send will say nothing but what I say.”

The early church noticed this and coined a phrase, “The external works of the Trinity are undivided.”

From the outside, when God acts, He acts as a Trinity in concert. Again, it is only from inside, when drawn into the Divine Life, that the Trinity becomes apparent.

I believe it is impossible to know the Trinity from OUTSIDE. In order to know the Trinity, you need to know God through Jesus. That’s why this doctrine makes no sense to so many. But we experience the life of God through Jesus Christ, and so we know the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Okay, so why does this even matter to me at all? Isn’t the Doctrine of the Trinity just a dry theological debate that matters to just a few old guys with thick glasses in a dusty old room somewhere?

There’s a lot of reasons, but I want to focus in closing on three specific implications.

First, Creation.

Why did God create? Especially why did He create humanity?

Some people believe that God created humanity because He was lonely and had nobody to talk to. But what does the doctrine of the Trinity tell us?

God was never alone! Within the Divine Life there is a community of persons who exist in an eternal relationship! And each of those persons is perfect. God lacked nothing in terms of relationship that caused Him to create us. We were not made to fulfil some need on God’s part. So, why did God create?

What do we call the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? What is the nature of that relationship there within the Divine Life? Theologians have a really complicated term for it. It’s called LOVE.

From everlasting to everlasting, God has been involved in the deepest, most intimate love relationship that could ever exist. Within the Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another in eternal love. And it is because of the abundance of that Love that God created humanity. God created us because in the abundance of His Love, He wanted to. He freely wanted to create beings on whom He can bestow His love, and who could be drawn into that eternal fellowship of Divine Love with Him. God’s Love expressed itself in His Creation of the universe and of humanity.

Why is that important? Because that is the purpose that you were created for. That is the meaning of your life. To be drawn into an eternal relationship of love with God. That is why you exist! People spend their whole lives looking for the Meaning of Life, they kill themselves over despair at not finding it, and do all sorts of selfish things to fill the void caused by not fulfilling their purpose in life, but there it is. We were created to be in eternal relationship with God. That’s His desire, and deep down it’s yours, as well. Is God calling you today to be drawn in to His Love?

A second implication of the Doctrine of the Trinity - Community.

Like I said earlier, God was never alone. From all eternity, God has been in a relationship of love.

When God creates the world in Genesis 1 & 2, we see an interesting pattern. God creates and then He says, “it is good.” It’s like a rhythm - it is good, it is good, it is good, it is good, it is very good, it is not good. Whoa! What does God say is not good? Genesis 2:18 - “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Now where do you think God got that idea? That’s right! God is eternally in community, and He created humanity in His image. It makes sense that beings created in God’s Triune image would need to be in community. That it would not be good for humans to be alone.

My good friend Jim McCullough put it this way: “Christianity avoids both individualism & collectivism: we assert that we are each unique and created in the image of God but that our God is communal!”

And in Christ, God has called us to be one together in the Body of Christ, the church. People, church is more than just a bunch of people who decide each Sunday whether or not they feel like getting together. The Church is so much more! In a strange, mysterious way, when we gather together as believers, we are the Body of Christ. Jesus is present in the gathering of His people in a way that He is not present when they are apart. God has called us to be in community.

And that community must be characterized by the same thing that characterizes the life of God Himself - LOVE!

That means that when we have tough choices to make, we don't have to face hard decisions alone. That means also that when we have tough choices to make, we are responsible to each other for our decisions. That means that it is in fact irresponsible for us to make decisions without considering each other.

That means we are here to minister to each other, to meet each others’ needs, to care deeply and intimately for one another. When a brother is sick or in need, it is our responsibility and our joy to care for him and meet his needs. Because we are one body, the Body of Christ, united by the Holy love of God.

We are a community because we are created in the image of God, and it is not good for us to be alone.

It’s hard to apply that on Sunday mornings. Where can we experience community like that?

I’ll tell you the truth, for me it has been through Sunday School, in playing softball, and in the Men’s fellowship. That’s where I’ve been built into the life of this community.

For you it might be Home Bible Fellowships, or the singles’ ministry, or the couples’ ministry. Today we’re seeing the beginning of the college & career ministry. Some small group setting where you can invest in the lives of other people and they can invest in you.

How about you? Have you tried to go it on your own? have you neglected the needs of others in the Body? taken advantage of others? Lied about others? Ignored others? How have you structured your life so that you are a clear and accurate image of the invisible God who deeply cares for and loves His own?

The final implication I want to bring out is in the area of Conversion.

The story of the Gospel is often presented as being the story of a willing innocent victim, Jesus Christ, paying the price for our sins and suffering the punishment that we deserved in our place. And that’s true.

But how can God ever be considered JUST and GOOD if He punished an innocent person, no matter how willing, in place of we who are unspeakably guilty? It’s great for Jesus to offer, but how could God punish an innocent person in place of the guilty and still be just?

On a more cosmic scale, it’s like the medieval concept of the “whipping boy.” When the prince or princess disobeyed, the nanny didn’t dare discipline royalty! So they would bring in a kitchen slave and whip the slave in front of the prince or princess, to show them that their actions had consequences.

Not only doesn’t that work, it is horribly unfair and unjust! How could a good God use the innocent Jesus as our “whipping boy”?

But that’s where the identity of Jesus is so critical. Jesus is God Himself, in the flesh. Fully and totally God in every way, in no way inferior to the Father or the Spirit. When Jesus gave Himself on the cross for us, it was God Himself paying the price that we owed. If Pastor Pat crashes into Pastor Brad’s car, I can’t say to him, “I forgive you.” Only the person who is wronged can forgive.

And if Pastor Brad says “I will pay the price for the damage done to my car,” then the debt is truly paid.

If Pastor Brad grabbed Rick Poppke and made him pay the bill, that would be unjust. But there’s nothing unjust about paying the bill himself! In fact, that’s the only just way that Pastor Pat could get out of paying the bill.

Because of our sin, we deserve eternal separation from God. But God Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ stepped in and took the price on Himself.

It’s interesting. You know how earlier I said that God was never alone? That’s true except in one place. Just before Jesus died on the cross, He cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” then screamed and died. For one brief moment, Jesus experienced what it was like to be completely, utterly alone and separated from God. That is the price that you and I would have had to pay. But Jesus did it for us. He paid our bill.

Can you imagine what it would be like for one who has eternally enjoyed the richest relationship of love to suddenly and incredibly be separated from that relationship?

No, of course you can’t. No one knows that pain but Jesus.

And in place of the price we would have had to pay, the risen Jesus invites you and me to enter into the eternal love relationship with God that has existed since before the Creation of the world. What a deal. But as Tiff Shuttlesworth said each night during his crusade, God has voted for you, the Devil has voted against you, and you cast the deciding vote.

Will you accept the forgiveness and love that Jesus offers, for which you were Created by a loving God, finding your true purpose and the meaning for your life, will you join in community with the Body of Christ, and care for each others’ needs, or will you reject His offer and suffer the penalty that Jesus willingly accepted on your behalf?

Could we bow our heads and close our eyes for just a minute. I’d like each of us to take a minute to pray silently in our hearts to the Triune God. Ask God - “what are you saying to me today? What do you want me to do about what I’ve heard?”

wait.

I am not a part of the Body of Christ. I do not share in the Divine Life. I need Jesus to forgive me, and lead me into relationship with the Almighty God.

Someone will come to you.

Everyone stand.

I am saved, but I do not feel like I am following God’s purpose for my life, and I need to reconnect with Him.

I need to commit myself to being part of the community of believers in the Body of Christ.

Or maybe God has said something else that He wants you to do. If you’d like to pray about it, to seal your commitment and ask for God’s help to follow through, the altars are open.

Anyone else who would like to be part of the Body of Christ and support those who have come forward to pray, come behind them, and pray with them, and show them that they are not alone.

My Info:

To E-mail click on the address:househld@borg.com

The Banner Co-op Exchange Free Advertising & Cash To Promote Your Site! Join Here!