Why the Trinity Matters (Matthew 28:19; Lord’s Day 8)
We are baptized into the name—singular—of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Believing in the Triune God is what makes us Christian. This sermon by Dr. Daniel Hyde meditates on why the Trinity matters: its urgency, since to deny the Son is to deny the Father; its mystery, one essence in three distinct persons, revealed in Scripture; and its vitality, because only a Triune God can share his own eternal life and love with us in fellowship.
God has spoken in his Word. Let us confess its teaching in the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 8, questions and answers 24–25.
Q. 24. How are these articles divided?
A. Into three parts: God the Father and our creation; God the Son and our deliverance; and God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.
Q. 25. Since there is only one divine being, why do you speak of three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
A. Because that is how God has revealed himself in his Word: these three distinct persons are one, true, eternal God.
A couple of months ago we were blessed to participate in Esther’s baptism, which reminds us of our baptisms. Baptism is a naming ceremony. Jesus commands us to be baptized “into the name of God,” meaning, his name is placed upon us and we become part of his family. And as we know, we are baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). Listen to that closely again: we are baptized into the name—singular—yet three are named: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our baptism reveals the name and nature of who our God is. It’s basic to what it means to be a Christian to be Trinitarian.
This morning in the teenagers’ catechism class, Mr. Stares reminded us that believing this Triune God is what makes us Christian. Since the Trinity is the most foundational truth of what we believe as well as what we do as Christians, I want to meditate with you tonight on Why the Trinity Matters.
The Urgency
The first reason it matters is its urgency. If you turn over with me to 1 John for a moment I’ll demonstrate this. In 2:18 John says “it is the last hour” of human history and the way we know this is that “many antichrists have come.” And in verse 22 he explains what these antichrists deny: “who is the lair but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?” They denied that Jesus of Nazareth was the anointed Messiah of Israel. Then he says, “This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:22–23). So, notice it’s deeper than denying Jesus is the Savior. To do this is to deny God the Father. And to deny God the Father is to deny God the Son.
This is so urgent for our comfort and salvation as verses 24–25 go on to say: “And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.” And finally, he goes on in chapter 4 to say, “Do not believe every spirit, but test he spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (4:1). The true prophet preaches “that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (4:2), in other words, that the Son of God was sent into the world. By whom? By the Father. Without the Father, there is no Son; if he is the Son he must have a Father.
The Trinity has been an urgent message since the beginning of the church’s existence.
The Mystery
And this leads us closer to the heart of the matter, which is the mystery of the Trinity. Let me start by paraphrasing the ancient theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus, who said,
“When I think of the One, I am led to think of the Three; when I think of the Three, I am led back to the One” (On Holy Baptism, 41).
There are no analogies that can adequately comprehend this doctrine; we simply must apprehend it by faith that while God cannot be defined he can be described because of his own self-revelation in the Word (Ursinus, 123). Zanchi said, “no man, no matter how holy and wise, has ever been able to, or ever will be able to, understand by his own intelligence, what God is” (On the Triune Elohim, Eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One and the Same Jehovah, trans. Ben Merkle (1572), 1.1.1).
One essence, three persons
The mystery of our faith is that there is one essence that we call “God,” who exists in three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our Muslim neighbors say this is “irrational.” But it isn’t, because we’re not skewing math to make 3=1. The Three and the One are two different things: essence (ousia) is not the same thing as person (hupostasis).
When we say there is one essence of God we mean he is independent of everything else, doesn’t depend on anything else, and gives existence to everything else (Ursinus, 125–127).
When we say this one God is three persons, we’re saying there are three individual, living, intelligent, incommunicable things the Scripture calls Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Ursinus, 130–132). Essence is what is common to the Three; person is what is distinct to the Three. As an illustration, think of a man who is also a father. A man is what he is, but what he is in relation to his children is what distinguishes him. So it is one thing to be God another to be Father, Son, Holy Spirit (Ursinus, Commentary, 130–131).
Why do we believe such a mystery?
Scripture says there is one God
We are baptized into the one name of this God because “in the beginning God” (Gen. 1:1) and “the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4).
Scripture says this one God exists as a plurality
While Genesis 1:1 says “in the beginning God,” 1:26 goes on to say, “let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This, and other examples, were revealed in a shadowy way in the Old Testament but are now clearly revealed in the New such as Jesus’ institution of baptism (Matt. 28:19).
Scripture says each of these three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are God
We pray to “our Father, who art in heaven.”
We’re saved by Jesus, whom Thomas called “my Lord and my God.”
Ananias and Saphira died because they lied to God the Holy Spirit and not to mere men.
Scripture says these three are distinct persons
The Father isn’t the Son or the Holy Spirit; the Son isn’t the Father or the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit isn’t the Father or the Son. When Jesus was baptized God the Father spoke, Jesus was seen, and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. Therefore, all the works of God are the indivisible works of God, but each particular person has a particular work to do (Ursinus, 119–120).
The Vitality
Big deal, right? I want you to leave tonight not only knowing this as a doctrine, but the vitality of this doctrine for your life. Caspar Olevianus, one of the writers of our Catechism, said that we aren’t merely to know with our minds the history of the words in the Apostles’ Creed “but the heart itself should embrace in genuine trust the promise of God and the realization of that promise in and because of Christ” (Olevianus, An Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, 18).
Because God is a Trinity we can have fellowship with God. The meaning of our lives isn’t intellectualism and knowing all the mysteries of the universe, or materialism and getting all you can while you can, or narcissism and living it up because it’s all about you, or nihilism and since there is no purpose who cares?
Scripture says the meaning of life is to live in the joy and fellowship of the Triune God. In John 10 Jesus said that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father just as Jesus loves us and we love him. Amen.