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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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The Holy Trinity |
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Revelation
4:1-11 Trinity
Sunday May
18, 2008 The first half of the Church calendar takes us through most of the major doctrines of the Christian faith. Advent brings us face to face with the doctrine of God the Father and His purpose to save. Christmas is about the incarnation, God with us. Epiphany is about the global vision of God, whose Kingdom transcends the boundaries of race and nation. Lent is about the doctrine of sin and our need for God to act on our behalf if we are going to be saved from wrath. Holy Week, especially Good Friday, is about the atonement for our sin made by Christ Himself on the cross. Easter is about the resurrection of Christ and His victory over sin, and even death itself. Ascension Day is about the exaltation of Christ to His Throne in Heaven where He rules His Kingdom, and also intercedes for us as our Great High Priest and Bishop. Whitsunday, or, Pentecost is about the advent of the Holy Spirit, our Comforter who is Christ with us, as Christ was God with us. And then, today, we come to Trinity Sunday, which is about the Great One God Who Is Three Persons, and the Three Persons of the God-head which is One God. The Collect for Trinity Sunday reminds us that it is by grace that we are allowed to acknowledge, that is, to know about, to be allowed to understand the mystery of the Trinity. All knowledge of God is given to us by His grace, and is the most valuable knowledge we can possess. What value is the knowledge of science or finance or technology without the knowledge of how to be rid of the awful burden of our sin and guilt before God? And every insight into the great drama of our redemption is a great privilege, and every insight into the Great Mystery that is God is a great privilege. Things have been revealed to us in Christ that angels longed to know for eons. Let us value this knowledge and let us worship God. The second half of the Church Calendar emphasizes our response to the great truths we learn in the doctrines. Doctrine, by the way, or theology, is simply the telling of the great drama of redemption, the Mighty Acts of God who would not leave us in our sins and misery because of His never-ending love. Our response, then, is faith. It is faith in Christ as Saviour, and it is faithfulness to Him as Lord. So the Church Calendar follows the same pattern Paul used when he wrote many of his Epistles. The first part of them teaches the church the essential doctrines of the faith; the second part tells us what these doctrines mean to us in our everyday life of faith. And the dividing line between these two emphasis in the Church Calendar is Trinity Sunday. This is very appropriate, for the doctrine of the Trinity is the start and the summary of all Christian doctrine. In it all other doctrines are included, and without it none of the others make sense. Therefore, I want to use our time together this morning to take a brief, and, necessarily, shallow look at the Holy Triune God. The first Person of the Trinity is God the Father. Why does God call Himself, Father? Because “Father” conveys two very important attributes of the First Person of the Trinity; authority, and love. A father is an authority figure. This is well known by people who have known their human father. He may have been a kind and loving man, or he may have been abusive, or he may have been some combination of both, but one thing we knew about him was that he had authority in our lives. He had authority to make decisions for us. He could tell us what we were having for dinner, what time we were going to bed, whether we could have a dog or not. And he had the power to enforce his authority. Thus, when God refers to Himself as “Father” He is telling us that He is the highest authority in existence. He has authority in our lives, and He has the power to back up His authority. The second thing the word “Father” means is “love.” Fathers are supposed to love their children. In fact, they are supposed to love their children more than they love themselves, and they are supposed to sacrifice themselves for the good of their children. Sacrifice is the definition of love. So when God calls Himself “Father” He is telling us that He loves us the way a human father should love his children. Of course, human fathers are weak and sinful. So, sometimes they love themselves more than they love their children. Their love is flawed, even as they are flawed. But God’s love is free of the flaws and weaknesses our human fathers had. God loves us without fault and He loves us without measure, and He loves us without end. He loves us perfectly. He is the perfect Father, and He does perfectly for us all the things a good Father should. He provides for us. He protects us, and, at the same time, He lets us grow and spread our wings, sometimes even forcing us to do things for our own good, the way an earthly father takes his hand off a child’s bicycle letting him learn to ride it himself, even though it means he will crash a few times in the process. Most of all, He raises us. Our Heavenly Father raises us, and in the process of raising His children He is preparing us to take our places in His Kingdom as princes and princesses of Heaven. The second Person of the Trinity is called the “Son.” This refers to His relationship to the Father. There is an authority structure even in the Triune God. One Person is the Father, another is the Son. The Son is not called “Son” because He is a God who came into being by some form of “birth.” “Son” does not mean there was a time when He did not exist, then He was “born” and came into existence. The Son, like the Holy Spirit, has always existed with the Father. God has always existed as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The name “Son” means that Christ is the heir of the Kingdom. It means the Father has willed to put all things under Christ, which is another way of saying He gives all things to Christ. In ancient Israel, the family inheritance went to the sons. They were the heirs. The daughters’ inheritance came through their husbands. First-born sons, especially, inherited a double portion of the inheritance, and also the headship of the family. The first-born son of the King inherited the Kingdom. This was not meant by God to be sexist. It was meant to teach us about God. And we can see how this applies to Christ. He has inherited, as the “First-born Son,” all things, including headship. He is the Lord of Creation and the Head of the Church. Human ministers are but His servants. The Son is the heir, the Crown Prince. Thus, the Father has given all things unto Him. You can see this symbolized in the family. God has ordained it to teach us about Him. That is the reason He ordered it the way He did. It is a living parable of God. The family structure and all the good things the family is and strives for are perfectly actualized in God. The third Person of the Trinity is the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit. Why does He call Himself the Spirit? Because a spirit has no body, and is not bound by time and space as a physical body would be. The name “Spirit” teaches us that God is everywhere at once. But the two things I want to emphasize about the Spirit today are His presence and power. Here I am talking about His relationship to us, for the Holy Spirit is the presence of God with us. Christ literally and physically rose from the grave and ascended into Heaven. But He did not leave us alone. The Holy Spirit is Christ with us. The Spirit has always been in the world. He was there at the beginning of our time. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” (Gen. 1:2). And we read of various times when the Spirit came upon people, such as the prophets. Thus Isaiah said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” (Is 61:1). And in a sense the Holy Spirit was the presence of God on His people, even in the Old Testament era. But in the New Testament He is not on His people, He is in them. So God is present in His people in the person of the Holy Spirit. He is the presence of God. The Holy Spirit is also the power of God with us. It is by the Spirit of God that we are enabled to live the Christian life. It is by the Spirit of God that we are enabled to understand the Bible. It is by the Spirit of God that we are enabled to believe in Christ. He is our ability, our power to do these things. Now I know I have not talked about the Spirit very much. I did last week and I will again. My purpose today is not to give a full presentation of each person of the Trinity, but to say that the Trinity is real. God is One yet Three. And God is Three in One. Now I want to briefly summarize the part each Person plays in the redemption of our souls. It is the Father who intends to save. It is He who has purposed to save His people. It is He who formed the plan of salvation. It is He who looked down through history with the intent to save lost and fallen sinners. Even before the foundations of the world were laid He laid the foundations of the plan to save us. The Son purchased our salvation. It is He who left the glory of Heaven to suffer and die on the cross. It is He who stood between our souls and the wrath of God. It is as though the wrath of God were coming at us through a bolt of lightning, and the Son stepped in front of us and took the jolt in His own body, and died in our place. He secured our salvation. The Spirit applies salvation. He is the “Lord and giver of life” according to the Nicene Creed. He applies salvation first by what we refer to as the Call of the Spirit. The Spirit calls you to come to Christ. The Spirit calls you through the Bible. He enables you to understand it. He enables you to see your sin and need of the Saviour. And He enables you to trust in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. He applies salvation secondly by the process of sanctification. By this I mean that the Spirit enables you to overcome sin, and to grow in your ability to know and obey Jesus in the every day affairs of life. In other words, the Spirit is at work in God’s people helping them become more like Jesus. So every Person of the Trinity is actively involved in our lives as Christians. No part of God is left out or uninterested. Thus it is very fitting that we end the Church calendar emphasis on the doctrines of the faith by talking about the Holy Trinity, and that we start the emphasis on Christian living by talking about the same Trinity of God. The Trinity is the high tide of doctrine, and the source of our redemption and sanctification. And so, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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