How mysterious and strange is our God. Often, He makes little sense to us, and His ways often run afoul of our common sense. Think of Christ’s Incarnation. Think of baptism, that God the Holy Spirit uses water and the Word to plant the seed of faith into our hearts and bring us into His family. That doesn’t make sense. How can wine be Christ’s blood and the bread His body? Think of the Trinity? If that doesn’t blow your mind, nothing will!
Throughout the centuries, many in the Church have struggled with these truths, trying to understand them. And trying to explain what we often cannot explain has led many into error and heresy. That’s why we have such a profusion of Christian denominations. Each, even including the so-called non-denominational churches, has found its own way of denying or explaining away truths that we cannot grasp.
We cannot grasp God. We cannot understand Him, not fully. The best that we can do is to believe, by Holy-Spirit given faith, what God chooses to reveal to us. He calls us to confess who He is and His truth to the world, even if we cannot fully understand it.
The Apostle Paul tells us, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how fathomless his ways! Who has known the mind of the Lord?” Paul teaches us a needed truth. We learn that we shouldn’t let human wisdom or feelings guide our understanding of God. No, we learn about the Trinity, the Three-in-One God, from God. For the truth of the Triune God is beyond our reason, far beyond the reach of our fallen minds to understand.
And since our minds are fallen, we can, and often do, come to fallen conclusions that do not touch the truth. For example, some look at creation and somehow decide that it is a random, blind accident. Some think that we are merely the product of evolution.
If some of us in the feebleness of our minds can err about God and His creation, how little then can we understand and grasp God Himself? Indeed, no one can know of the great mystery of God’s nature unless the Holy Spirit reveals it to us.
God the Holy Spirit teaches this about God in His divine substance, being, and essence: There is one God. He is one, an undivided and divine Majesty. Yet, this one God has three Persons: the Father, the Son born of the Father in eternity, and the Spirit, who goes forth from the Father through the Son.
Human reason alone cannot discover this about God. God must reveal it to us in the ways He chooses to do so.
Yet, many in this world do not believe this revelation of, and about, God. They, instead, judge according to their own wisdom, and so consider the Christian’s declaration of the Trinity to be nothing but a foolish error. They say that we Christians must be imbeciles for believing as we do. Oh, many can believe in one God–but they cannot wrap their heads around one God in Three, and Three in One. And so, they refuse to believe what they think is some monstrous lie.
Yet, we must not congratulate ourselves because we believe the Triune God is the one, true God. We did not arrive at such belief because of our wisdom. We’re as foolish as the rest of humanity. We have only received this right teaching of God by His undeserved gift, from His gracious Word and Spirit.
Although we humans are foolish, in our fallen hubris, we think that if God exists, we must be able, somehow, to understand that God. And simply because we are Christians doesn’t mean that we are above this fallen tendency, this idea that we can know God based on our own heart and mind.
Consider a man who doesn’t believe and trust in the Triune God. But you know him and like him. And so part of you thinks that surely God will allow him into heaven. Our sinful minds think it’s unfair that only those who believe in Christ receive eternal life.
And so our sinful flesh decides, from what it wants to be true, that many paths exist to reach God. The flesh says that all gods are, at their core, the same. Our sinful flesh wants to open heaven, even to those who reject the true God, for, after all, that is what our sinful flesh would prefer.
This is not about the foolishness of them, of others, or abstract sinners out there. For your own sinful flesh is full of the same foolishness, which wants to twist God’s truths to your own ideas and feelings. After all, there are over 30,000 Christian denominations. So, how do we know what is true anyway?
So usually we just pick and choose the “truth” we like. This foolishness of our fallen nature is destructive. For the sinful mind rejects the truths of God and even the true God Himself–if God Himself does not stop you on such a self-destroying path.
When it comes to God, leave behind your own wisdom. Get rid of it. Throw it away. Instead, follow God’s Word. If your common sense leads you to a conclusion about God, apart from His revealed Word, don’t trust it. Trust what the Word of God reveals. For if something isn’t true, then it can doom and destroy you.
The God beyond your understanding is the God who saves. He defies common sense and human logic. Yet, He is the only One who gives life to us fallen, sinful creatures. All other so-called gods are only delusions of death.
The true God is one. Yet this God says in Psalm 2, “You are my son; today I have become your father” (Psalm 2:7). So God the Father speaks. Yet, He speaks of Another, who is the Son. So, this Son must be distinct from the Father. Yet, this Son tells us, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). So they are one, yet they are distinct.
The Father is distinct from the Son. And we, fallen mankind, are reconciled to the Father because Another, whom God the Father sent, did the reconciling. The gracious Father, perfect and flawless in His love, wanted us to be brought back into His merciful favor.
So the mystery deepens and leads to another mystery. To reconcile you to God, Jesus Christ had to become fully human. And so Jesus brought the human nature into the Godhead. He became a Man, not just for 33 years, but even into eternity. This mystery is also beyond our understanding.
Then comes even another mystery, which also seems foolish to our fallen minds. This Christ, the most-precious, holy, and innocent Man, received the condemnation that you and I deserve, because of our sins, from His Father. And so Jesus’ cross of death becomes a mystery. For Jesus, who is sinless, and cannot be sinful, became sin itself for our salvation and died for us. How can that even be possible? Yet, this second Person of the Trinity died. God died.
Of course, the Father didn’t die. Yet, Jesus the Son of God in human flesh, did die on the cross. And so His blood, the blood of God, is more precious than gold, for only His blood is the cleansing agent that makes you holy, making peace between you and the Father.
And so the Son, who is also perfect love, made peace between God and man. Jesus is the only go-between because He is a member of both parties. Jesus is both God and Man, so both God and man could be reconciled.
Yet, there is a third Person to this God. He is distinct from the Father and the Son. The Father said in Joel 2:28, “I will pour out my Spirit on everyone.” So, God the Father, who poured out His Spirit, poured out that which belongs to Him. Yet, that Spirit is separate from the Father since He is the One who pours Him out.
Indeed, only God can reveal Himself. As we heard from the Apostle Paul, “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” That’s a rhetorical question. None of us can know the mind of the Lord. Only God knows the mind of God. And so only the Spirit can bring you to true faith because He is also true God.
From His endless love, God the Father sent His Son. The Son reconciled you to the Father. The Father sent His Spirit through the Son. The Holy Spirit then points you to Jesus. For only Christ died to reconcile and save you. And the Son, Jesus Christ, brings you to the Father. Your salvation can only take place if all three are God and if all three are one. Such is the unity and separateness of God and how each Person of God works to bring you into the life of the Holy Trinity.
Only the working of the Triune God saves you. Your life is in Him. That’s why when you are baptized, you are baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). Those who bear His Name enter the paradise of eternity with God.
Who can understand all this, where it all fits together perfectly? No one but God can fully understand this. Although we only understand God, in part, we do believe and trust in Him. And we cling to this God, for only in Him do we have eternal life. Amen.
