Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church     
 
Pastor Tim Janiszewski - "God in Three Persons"

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Messages of Grace

(Past Recorded Sermons) 















 
This Sunday
June 1, 2014

Sermon Title:
"Life to the
Power of Three"

Scripture:
Genesis 1:1-3,
26-27
Matthew 28:18-20 2 Corinthians 13:14


Picture of Pastor Tim
May 29, 2014

 

Dear MLEPC Members and Friends:

 

The word "Trinity" is quite familiar to those of us who come from a Christian background and participate in the Church. We use it to refer to God when thinking about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The traditional Christian calendar includes a "Trinity Sunday"--this year occurring on June 15th. Of course, many churches bear names such as "Trinity Presbyterian" or "Church of the Holy Trinity," and I myself am a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And in fact in Washington, PA, there is a Trinity High School. Even the Science Fiction thriller The Matrix featured a primary character who is named Trinity and who in love breathes life back into the dead body of the One who comes to save the human race from bondage.

 

Allow me to ask, if someone outside our faith asked you to explain the Christian belief in the Trinity, could you do so? How would you do so? Before reading on, pretend that someone is in the room with you and give it a try, at least in your mind. . . . Did you find it difficult to do? If so, don't worry, I imagine you are in good company.

 

Before giving pointers on how to talk about the Trinity in a biblical and orthodox Christian way, consider the two mistakes made about the subject. The first and most common is that of being implicit "tri-theists" or believing actually in a small community of three Gods. These Three are the closest of friends and work amazingly well together; however, we really think of them as a set of Gods with the Father taking the highest position, the Son just below Him, and the Spirit in the third spot. We come close to being polytheists with a pantheon of three. This is the criticism sometimes leveled against Christianity by Muslims. In fact, writing the Koran in the early seventh century, Muhammad appears mistakenly to have thought that the Trinity consisted of the Father, of Mother Mary, and of their offspring Son, Jesus. Having a male God with His female consort Goddess mating to give birth to a Son God sounded awfully much like what the pagan religions would have cooked up, so Islam rejected it. To this day in traditional Islam, the Christian idea of the Trinity is considered to be "shirk" or idolatry. But when Christians rightly speak of the Trinity, they're not polytheists with three Gods; rather, they continue to be monotheists who believe in one God.

 

The other major mistake is that of thinking of one God, who at various times reveals Himself in the form of the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit. A single God is behind the three different manifestations that are shown to the world at various times. So, we may see God as the Father over here and then as the Son over there, and finally as the Spirit at still another time and place. Perhaps you can see that this error falls on the flip side of the coin of the tri-theist mistake. Here, God's singularity is preserved, but we really don't have God as three in any real and permanent way. Actually, this view is called modalism or Sabellianism in theological studies, and it was condemned as a heresy by the early Church back in the fourth century.

 

So, if tri-theism and modalism are two common wrong turns, how can we stick to the straight and narrow with the Trinity? Here is a set of affirmations that orthodox Christians have made which help to describe the Trinity without claiming fully to explain such a great mystery.

 

--There is only one real and true God.

--The Father is this God.

--The Son is this God.

--The Spirit is this God.

--But the Father is not identical to the Son.

--The Son is not identical to the Spirit.

--The Spirit is not identical to the Father.

--Nevertheless, together, these three are the one real and
   true God.

 

In other words, God is one Being with three centers of consciousness or "persons." This sense of God as one in three and three in one is difficult to grasp.

 

Many have tried to identify illustrations or examples that imperfectly help us to think about it. For instance, the sun sends forth rays of light that produce heat as three distinct aspects that nonetheless are part of a single reality. Some consider that an organic element can appear as a solid, a liquid, and a gas. In fact, in laboratories scientists even can get a single element to exist in all three states at Once in a controlled environment. Perhaps the most famous illustration is that of the three leaf clover, which is one leaf in three segments. Legend has it that St. Patrick used the clover to describe the Trinity to the Irish when establishing Christian faith among them.

 

Hopefully, this helps us better to know and understand the Trinity and therefore to know and understand our God. May it equip us to be prepared to share with others in our great joy as we follow "God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity."

 

Pastor Tim  

 

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