Created, Rescued and Kept Alive
Romans 5:1-5
by Jim Westmoreland
How do you think of and relate to God? In our culture we experience more and more the differences in ways of thinking about God. Some people think that God is personal, but for others, they think that god is only an idea or principle, an impersonal force, or the pervasive life-force that is all around us?
For some people God is so far removed from us that he is not bothered by our plight and we should just go on and do the best we can on our own. For others God is willingly manipulated by prayers with the right words to do whatever we want Him to do for us.
Today, we celebrate one of the six principal festivals of the church year, Holy Trinity. The other five festivals are Easter Day, The Ascension of Our Lord, the Day of Pentecost, Christmas Day, and The Epiphany of our Lord. But the festival of the Holy Trinity is different from the others, because it does not celebrate one specific event in the life of Jesus Christ or the church. Instead, it celebrates the way the historic church has come to speak of the mystery of God as revealed in the Bible.
We observe this day as Trinity Sunday. When we speak of the Holy Trinity, we mean that we worship one God, who reveals himself to us in Three Persons or personalities: as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As we observe these days as we move through the Christian calendar each year, they are occasions for both worship and teaching. It is remarkable how illiterate many people are today about foundations of the Christian faith. Too many don't want to be bothered by theology or with history, but there is a serious nutritional price to pay when we refuse to be aware of and learn from the past or when we refuse to engage in any serious theological reflection and reasoning.
This understanding of the Trinitarian God arose very early in the life of the church, and yet there is not any direct teaching about the Trinity as a doctrine in the Bible. The Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed were composed in the first few centuries of the church's existence. While our church does not impose any person's or council's statement of faith on another believer, it is instructive to realize that the councils that wrote these creeds were doing it to answer questions that were being raised about the Christian faith.
One of the earliest problems for the early church was created by Marcion who was eventually expelled from the church in AD 143. Marcion didn't like the First Testament, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, which made up the Jewish scriptures. He said that the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament were not the same. The God of the Old Testament was the "creating God," but he was harsh, cruel, and incompetent. Marcion contrasted this creating God with the God of Jesus, who was nothing less than love and grace. Marcion also said that Jesus was not the Messiah and that he was not human, but only appeared to be human. Marcion was a popular and influential preacher and attracted many followers.
And so, religious leaders of the day gathered together to ask, What do we believe? We live in day when popular religion offers people whatever they want. It is a time when you can believe anything you want or almost nothing at all and still claim to be Christian.
As I mentioned earlier, the bible does not teach the idea of the Trinity directly. In the New Testament we see the things that led the early disciples to be thinking of God in different ways that led to the description of God as a Trinity, a three in one. The passage known as the "great commission" in Matthew 28:19-20, ends with what we commonly refer to as Trinitarian language saying we are to baptize "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." Jesus frequently spoke of His relationship with the Father. He told His disciples that his Father had sent Him, and He told them that He and His father are one, saying, if you have seen me, you have seen the father. In Jesus later ministry and especially during His appearances to the disciples after His resurrection, Jesus spoke of the One who would come after Him who would be an advocate, a comforter, a teacher and an empowering presence.
When we hear others say that they don't believe in the God of the Old Testament, what does that mean? And some only believe in Jesus and others only talk about the Holy Spirit. What do you believe, and how do you come to those beliefs?
Our text from Romans, the fifth chapter, talks about "having peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." It talks about how "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been give to us."
God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, all are intertwined around the nitty gritty part of living-how to deal with suffering and disappointment, how to endure and remain faithful in following Christ, worshiping God and serving others.
The talk about the Trinity became a way to describe how all of these experiences of God came together. Jesus and the first disciples came out of Judaism, which devoutly believed in one God. The first prayer that every child learns and repeats daily for the rest of his life is known as the shema, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one" from Deuteronomy 6:4.
Many Jews have rejected Christianity because of the Trinity, saying that Christians believe in three gods, which is an affront to Judaism. Historically, the answer given to the charge of having three gods and to those like Marcion who would deny that Jesus is Messiah and God is to affirm the God who has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we study the Old Testament, we see many names were used to name or to describe God, including the name that was never spoken. God was known as El, mighty and strong, Elohim, a plural form of El, El Shaddai, God All Sufficient, Adonai, Lord and Master, Jehovah or Yahweh as the writing for the name that was not spoken for God, Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will provide, Jehovah-Rophe, the Lord who heals, Jehovah-M'kaddesh, the God who sanctifies and makes whole. He is also known as Shepherd, Judge, King, Holy One, Savior, Spirit, Deliverer and many other names. Regardless of the name used or the way He was known at the time, He was always thought of as One God.
We, too, affirm the oneness of God, and it is through our experiences with God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit that our faith touches us most personally. A living faith that changes our lives and gives us strength to deal with suffering, to endure and to grow in our capacity to love our children, our parents, family and people around us is not the result of logical argument as much as it is the result of a spiritual relationship. We gather each week to worship a God who has created us in His image, who has rescued and redeemed us from our sins and shortcomings, and who keeps us alive through the Spirit that lives in us. We acknowledge that all of life is a gift, and that we live our lives as one who is tending someone else's garden.
These gifts of God which come from God, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, all point to the wonder of Paul's last statement in verse five. This love of God which is poured out in our hearts comes to us, "...through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."
There is something here that affects every moment of our lives. There is power here that can affect your daily life. Here it is:
God, the Holy Spirit is a permanent inner, Divine Guest in the life of the believing person! The activity of the Holy Spirit (who is God within us) is no more and no less than our involvement with this inner guest.
What if a guest came to your home and received little or no attention from you? How many ways has this story been experienced in our lives in which we have been a guest or maybe a customer and we have been ignored?
A father shares this story. "My six year old daughter was invited to a friend's home, but the friend wanted only to watch television. When my daughter came home, I asked, 'did you have a good time?'
'No,' she answered.
'No? Why not honey, what did you do?'
'Nothing,' she replied.
The father commented that his daughter did not have a good time and her relationship with her friend was not nourished in the least because the friend had no time for her.
God, the Holy Spirit is a guest within our hearts and would like to grow and nourish a relationship with us that will result in the growth of peace, grace, hope and love in our lives.
In the Trinity we affirm that God has created us and gifted us with all of our talents and abilities. He has reached out to us through Jesus to forgive us and rescue us from our own self-destructive habits and attitudes. And, He keeps us alive by His continuing presence, the Holy Spirit, loving us, not on our merits and worthiness, but by His grace He loves us in spite of our shortcomings. And, because we are loved and forgiven, we have Hope, and we are continually being molded into the image of God given to us in creation. Amen.
Century Christian Church, June 3, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org
