Self-Donating Triune God

Listen here.

John 3:1-17

Do you believe in God? Well, do you?  Whew!  Good.  I was worried for a moment.  Which God do you believe in?  If your answer is just, generic … “God!” that doesn’t cut it.  You’re not a Christian if you just say “God.”  Which God?   

You’ve got to be specific.  Biblically precise.  Biblically faithful.  The First Commandment expects you to fear, love and trust in God above all things.  So, which God is it?  Which God do you fear, love and trust with all your heart?  Your answer makes all the difference – the salvational difference or the hellacious difference.  Better get it right because of what is at stake.    

There is only one God.  Yes, that’s right!  THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD! That’s it.  “Hear of Israel:  The LORD our God is one,” (Dt 6:4).  And we worship one God in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  “Make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Mt 28:19).  The true God is one in three or three in one!  One God – Three Persons. 

This is the biblical teaching and is essential to Christianity and being a Christian. “We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity neither confusing the Persons nor dividing the substance,” (Athanasian Creed).  The Father is God.  The Son is God.  The Holy Spirit is God.  And yet there are not three gods but one God!  Tri-une.  Tri = three; una = one.  Trinity!              

The Triune God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is about a living relationship.  First, there is the communion WITHIN God, i.e. each Person of the Trinity intimately relates to the other. Here is what I mean.  The Father begets His Son from eternity. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son …” (Jn 3:16).  The Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and Son. “But when the Helper [the Holy Spirit] comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father…,” (Jn 15:26). That means that God is never alone.  There is the communion WITHIN God.

But there is also a communion WITH GOD.  Or God’s relationship with you.   Kuhlman likes to put it this way:  it’s one thing for God to be God but it’s another thing for God to be God FOR YOU and to act as God FOR YOU!  God is a self-donating God.  Donating Himself FOR YOU!  So, together as One, the undivided holy Trinity creates, redeems, and holies you. Each divine Person doing His personal thing, yet always as One. 

Here I want to pause for just a moment and reflect on the heart of Christianity as it relates to the holy Trinity.  Growing up in Wyoming, I was constantly told by other well-meaning and well-intended Christians that in order to be saved I needed to do something.  I needed, they said, to give my life and heart to God.  And when I did that I would be saved.  My salvation, then, was essentially up to me.  God was waiting for me to do something. 

That’s not biblical Christianity.  Biblical Christianity is just the opposite.  And it’s this.  Are you ready?  God gives His life and heart TO ME and TO YOU for our salvation in the incarnation, life, suffering, death and resurrection of His Son Jesus the Christ!  Ephesians 2 categorically promises:  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ … For by grace you have been saved … and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”      

It couldn’t be more clearer.  Now, let’s run with more of God’s salvational giving.  Since you are baptized “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” you have been given entre into the triune love and life of God. In addition, branded with the divine and saving triune Name of God in holy baptism, you have been reborn from above to be a faith-er.  So, now the Father is YOUR Father. Jesus the Son is YOUR Brother. The Spirit is YOUR Advocate, Guide, and Friend. The Triune God is God FOR YOU!  He promises to act as God FOR YOU!  So, you are a member of God’s family! You live in triune communion with God – WITH the Father, THROUGH the Son, and IN the Holy Spirit.  This is God’s relationship with you and FOR YOU. 

So, if you’re picking up what I’m throwing down, God, the Triune God, loves you.  Jesus preaches it this way and it bears repeating:  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”    God’s love for the world in His Good Friday-ly crucified-on-the-cross-Son is also FOR YOU!  Took all your sin too!  Answered for all it with His divine Blood as well.  And as you believe as a faith-er, so you have.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.