Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit with power upon the disciples. As the disciples proclaimed the wonderful works of God in their own language, but Jews from all over the world who spoke different languages all heard them speak in their own language. It is like if I preached a sermon in English but a Frenchman listening to it would hear it as if I were speaking French. That is just one example of the many wonderful and powerful happenings on the day of Pentecost. The disciples received power as never before. Jesus had told them to stay in the upper room until the power came. The power of the Holy Spirit descended on the Day of Pentecost. Pentecost has been called the birthday of the church. So I was sick last Sunday and didn’t have an opportunity to preach on Pentecost Sunday. But today the Sunday after Pentecost is called Trinity Sunday. Today is Trinity Sunday. It gives us an opportunity to study one of the most difficult themes of the Christian faith, the concept of one God in three persons. The famous hymn concludes by saying, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” So what does it mean when we speak of the one God as being in 3 persons? And what difference does the Trinity mean to us? What is the big deal about it? Why should we care if we worship one God as the Jews and Muslims do, or one God in 3 persons as Christians do?
The concept of one God in 3 persons is a difficult thing to understand. If it is so difficult to understand, why bother with it at all? Why do we have a special day in the Christian year to celebrate something we don’t understand? Let us try to understand what the Trinity is, how God works in the Trinity, and what it means to us. Christians have been accused of believing in 3 Gods. Most of the religions in the world only worship one God. But there are some factions in the Christian church who reject the idea of a Trinity. Unitarians do not believe in the Trinity. They accept God the Father but do not recognize the Son or the Holy Spirit as being God. You will never see a cross in a Unitarian Church. There are some other sects in Christianity who also do not recognize the Trinity. One of the most famous preachers in the world, T.D. Jakes comes from a church that does not recognize the Trinity. I love to hear T.D. Jakes preach. He has a particular knack of applying scripture to daily living. His ministry has helped thousands of people. But you will never hear him talking about the Trinity. Trinity speaks of God as being one entity but expressed in 3 persons.
We speak of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We very seldom find all three spoken of together in the Bible. One such place is our NT text today in 2 Corinthians 13:13 which speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. The basic definition of the Trinity is that the one being of God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They share the same essence of substance yet they are 3 distinct persons. The thing we must remember is that God has always been God.
I was at a funeral yesterday and the preacher talked about the eternality of God. God was there before the world began. But the Son was there before the world began. The Holy Spirit was there before the world began. Jesus didn’t just get started at Christmas. He is from everlasting to everlasting. The Holy Spirit didn’t get started at Pentecost. The Gospel of John in chapter one speaks of Jesus as the Word who was involved in the creation of the world. When the Bible in Genesis talks about a wind sweeping over the face of the waters, it is talking about the Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have always been God. God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will always be God.
The best way to define the Trinity is to say what the Trinity is not. It is not one person with three different identities. For instance, one person can be a husband to his wife, the father of his children, and the son of his mother. But that is not like the Trinity because it talks only about one person in three different roles. The Trinity is talking about three persons in one. Or a person can act in three different capacities or different roles. For instance, one person can play several roles in a play. He may wear a different hat or have a different costume for each character. But that is not what the Trinity is. The Trinity is talking about 3 different persons. Or God is like a heavenly board of directors made up of 3 equal partners, each of which has a distinct responsibility. So one partner handles production, another partner handles sales, and another partner handles customer relations. But that is not what the Trinity is like either. The Trinity talks about one person. Or God is like a pitcher in a baseball team. There will be a starting pitcher, but after a while, a relief pitcher comes in, and later the closing pitcher takes over. There is only one pitcher in the game at one time. But that is not what the trinity is like because there you have 3 different persons acting as pitchers. Or we can use the frequent analogy of water, which can be liquid, or ice when it freezes, or steam when it boils. But that illustration still falls short of describing the trinity.
The trinity is a mystery. It cannot be explained by human and finite minds. But I’m satisfied with the mystery. If God is God, high and mighty above us, we cannot know all about God. There is always something we cannot know about God because God is greater than we are. Nobody but God can know the mind of God. Stop trying to figure God out and start believing that he knows what he is doing. I don’t want a God that I know everything about because that kind of God would not be God. You can’t figure God out. Just start trusting in him. Some people with too much education and sophistication say, “I won’t believe in God unless I understand everything about him.” If you knew as much as God did you would be a god yourself. That’s what got Adam and Eve in trouble. They wanted to be as wise as God and know all about God. But all we have to do is to trust him and watch him work on our behalf. Do you know that in some parts of the world where people are not as sophisticated and educated as we are, miracles are happening every day? Healings are taking place and there have even been stories of people being raised from the dead. But God is doing miracles in those places because the people don’t have any better sense than to believe God. Even Jesus couldn’t do some great things in Nazareth because of the disbelief of the people.
So, some people reject the concept of the Trinity because they don’t understand it. They figure that if they don’t understand it, it can’t be that important. But on the practical side of it, we can see some benefits and lessons about how God works in the trinity. God does his thing within the parameters of the trinity. The important fact to know here is that all of God is involved in everything God does. Repeat that. The three basic things God does are creation salvation and reconciliation or redemption, and renewal, and transformation. We usually associate creation with God the Father, salvation and reconciliation with God the Son, and renewal and transformation with the Holy Spirit.
But what we want to see today that there is a unity in the things that God does. All of God is involved in everything God does. All of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is involved in creation. All of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is involved in salvation and reconciliation. All of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is involved in our renewal and transformation. We cannot separate what God does. When God does his thing all of God is involved in it. What one person of the Godhead wills and does, the other two also will and do. Jesus said I and the Father are one. I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. The three persons are indivisible. You cannot separate one from the other two. You cannot separate the persons of the Godhead.
Sometimes we hear of Jesus Christ dying on the cross to pay for our sins because God was angry with us. But the love of Jesus evidenced by his death on the cross was also expressed in the love of God. God hasn’t changed. Some people say they don’t like the God of the Old Testament. He’s too angry or too cruel, or too vengeful. But God hasn’t changed. He is the same God he always was, and he is the same God he always will be. Because you don’t understand his ways doesn’t say that he has changed. God is unchangeable, immutable. The Godhead is unchangeable. There is no difference of opinion. The persons of the Godhead work in perfect harmony. There is order, mutual agreement, and peace. The way God works within the framework of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has been called the Social Trinity. The Social Trinity speaks of the 3 persons of the Godhead being united in a loving relationship. Here we get to the practical point about the Trinity. To say that God is a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to say that God is social in nature. God does work all by himself but within the context of the 3 persons of the Godhead. Since we are made in the image of God, we are likewise social in nature.
The way the persons of the Godhead work can be a model for us. Incidentally, I recently heard a prominent pastor of one of the largest churches in Detroit say on TV that women were not made in the image of God. But God made Adam in the image of God. Adam refers to humanity as a whole, male and female. Adam refers to the whole human race. So God made Adam, man and woman in the image of God. You know why some preachers say you women were not made in the image of God. It is so they can keep you subservient to man. If you were not created in the image of God, they don’t have to consider you as equal to a man. Don’t let any preacher tell you that you are not made in the image of God. We all, male and female, are made in the image of God. But the lesson we can learn from the Trinity shows that if God is social in nature, we are also social in nature. The way the persons of the Godhead interact with one another within the framework of one God shows how we are to relate with one another.
In our New Testament text in 2 Corinthians, Paul was encouraging the church to get along together. There was a lot of tension and conflict in the church at Corinth. Some had even rebelled against Paul himself. There was conflict also among the members. So in the final words of this letter, Paul is encouraging them to get things in order, to agree with one another, to live in peace with one another. Then he ends the letter by referring to the persons of the Godhead, the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. This is one of the few places in the whole Bible where the persons of the Godhead are mentioned together. Some have pointed out that this is the only epistle that Paul ends this way. Could he be suggesting that the model of harmony and community in the Godhead should be a pattern for their behavior toward one another? If that was the case, we can apply that to ourselves today. Can’t we all get along? We are different people with different ideas. But can’t we all get along. We make up a little bit of a Trinity ourselves. We are different from each other yet we are one in the Body of Christ. We are social people even as God is social. We are the only religion in the world that stresses the relationship between the persons of the Godhead. That’s one of the reasons the Trinity is important. God does his thing in perfect harmony and peace. Why can’t we get along? We don’t have to understand all the inner workings of the Trinity. But can’t we all get along. We can use the relationship between the persons of the Godhead as a model as to how we should be relating to each other.
Rodney King, the man who was beaten by police in Los Angeles 20 years ago, said, “Can’t we all get along?’ That’s what Paul is saying to the church at Corinth. Can’t we all get along? We can never duplicate the perfect harmony and unity of the Godhead, but we can try to get along. If there could only be some unity in our community, in our city, and in our country. If there could only be some unity in our family relationships. Can't we all get along? Some families are fighting and striving with each other. Sister against brothers. Sisters against sisters. Can’ we all get along? God does his thing in harmony, peace, and love. Can’t we get along? Can’t we get along in our homes, in our families, on our jobs, in our churches? Can’t we all get along? God does his thing in perfect harmony. Can’t we get along? Are there any fragmented relationships in your life? Can’t we all get along?
There used to be a commercial on TV advertising Jamaica which had as its theme a song by Bob Marley which said let’s get together and feel alright. One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel alright. Let the knowledge of how God does his thing through the Trinity encourage us to get together and feel alright. If we could all get together wouldn’t it feel alright? Start now patching up the broken relationships in your life. Let’s get together and feel alright.
If we are Christians, we are going to feel all right when we gather with the saints by the bank of that river in glory. When the saints go marching in, we will feel all right. When the roll is called up yonder, we will feel all right. When we all get to heaven, we will feel all right. When circles of relationships will be unbroken in the sky, we will feel alright. Why not get along now? Why not get together now and feel alright? Why not get together in the here and now and feel alright? By and by we will get together and feel alright. Why not get a head start on it right now. God does his thing in perfect harmony. Can we learn a lesson from how God does his thing in the Trinity? Can we get along with one another? Can we get together and feel alright!
