Triune Blessings

Triune Blessings

Trinity Sunday

Collect of the Day: Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; We beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

Homily Text: 2 Corinthians 13:14 (21^st Century KJV, p. 320) The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

Women are incomprehensible. I do not mean that we men do not understand them all at, but that we cannot fully understand them. Women confront us with mystery.

This morning we confessed that there is one eternal God who eternally is three Persons. One way the Athanasian Creed expands this is by confessing that God the Father is incomprehensible, God the Son is incomprehensible, and God the Holy Spirit is incomprehensible, yet there are not three who are incomprehensible but one Incomprehensible.

We can say that the doctrine of the Trinity itself is incomprehensible. It’s not that we do not understand what we mean when we confess God is three Persons, one God, but that we can never fully wrap our minds around what it means. God’s Triune nature is far beyond what our finite minds can grasp.

In 2 Corinthians 14:17 St. Paul makes the Trinity very practical, by pronouncing upon God’s people a blessing from each of the Persons.

.   1. The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ

1.1. Paul blesses us with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace is not one thing, but the whole of Christ’s work of salvation for us. We will understand grace better if we first understand ourselves better.

·         We are sinners, who were born in sin, who are naturally in rebellion against our Creator, who please ourselves rather than God, who transgress God’s will in our thoughts, our affections, our words, and actions. That is why we often say that grace is unmerited favor. Grace is not something we can earn, or make ourselves ready to receive, or cooperate with. We might better say that grace is de-merited favor. It’s not just that there is nothing about us to merit grace, but that we have earned the very opposite of grace – judgment and condemnation.

·         There is a text in this second letter to the Corinthians where St. Paul describes Christ’s grace: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might be made rich” (8:9).

o   Christ demonstrated his grace towards us, by becoming poor when he was rich. He was rich in his equality with the Father, rich in[BS1]  inter-Trinitarian fellowship with the Father and the Spirit, rich in heavenly glory, power, and authority, rich in his full Godhood.

o   Yet he was willing to become poor - not by giving up his Godhood, but by taking humanness to his Godhood. He became one with us in sharing our sin-weakened, mortal humanity and by submitting himself to all the trials and temptations of this life – like us in every way but sin. He lived a perfect life. Then he submitted himself to being condemned by man’s judgment. He went to the cross, where he submitted himself to something worse - God’s wrath against sin. As St. Paul puts it in Romans, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

o   And why? So that we who were poor, weak, and ungodly, might be made rich – rich in sins forgiven, rich in righteousness before God, rich as adopted children of God, rich as fellow heirs with Christ of eternal life and glory.

1.2.  St. Paul wants this grace to be with us – always, continually, without interruption, because it is only by grace that we can live with confidence and die in peace knowing our sins are forgiven, and we are reconciled to God.

2.      The Love of God

2.1 When we read the word “God” in the New Testament, it means almost always, “God the Father” in distinction from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Paul blesses us with the love of God the Father.

2.2 When we read the Bible, we find an almost unbelievable, thing. God the Father loved us from eternity, and his love for us is the reason Christ came to die for us. In Romans St Paul says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). Christ did not make the Father love us. Rather, because God loves us , he sent Christ to die for us. When we were still sinners, in rebellion against the Father and deservedly under his wrath, the Father already loved us. When we were unlovable, when there was nothing in us to attract the Father’s love and everything to repel it, he already loved us.

2.3. In the Bible love is never just a feeling and is never expressed only in words. Love will always express itself in loving action. St. John wrote: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 St. John 4:9,10). God the Father sent his Son into a world in rebellion against him, into a world that, if it could, would reach up to heaven and pull him off his throne. He sent him to be the propitiation for ours sins – the sacrifice that by bearing God’s wrath against our sins, turned that wrath away from us, so that we could be reconciled to the Father.

2.4. The love of the Father for us is not fickle, but steadfast, unchanging, and constant. St. Paul also tells us in Romans: ^“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:38,39). If God loves you, he cannot stop loving you, and you cannot make him stop loving you. You may wander away; you may fall into grievous sin. You may suffer consequences. The Father may discipline you. But he will not stop loving you. He will always find you and draw you back with ropes made of love.

2.5. Paul wants us to know that the love of God is always with us. Whatever, happens, we should be able to say, “I have a Father in heaven, who loves me always, and, if he did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for me, how will he not with him graciously give me all things?”

3. The Communion of the Holy Spirit

3.1. Paul blesses us with the communion of the Holy Spirit. The word “communion” in the New Testament is a translation of a Greek word you may have heard – “koinonia.”  That word means “to share” – to share in something with someone else. Holy Communion is an excellent example of the meaning. We share in the bread and wine. But we do not do it alone. We share in the bread and wine with our brothers and sisters in Christ. This word is often translated fellowship.

3.2. The Holy Spirit is the Creator of fellowship. Pentecost each year reminds us that Christ pours out his Spirit on his church, each of us and all of us together. The Sprit is the One who connects us with the Father and the Son. It is the Spirit who, when we partake of the holy bread and wine with faith, joins us to Christ and all the blessings of his death for us. We have fellowship with the Holy Spirit who dwells within us all, and the Holy Spirit gives us fellowship with the Father and the Son.

3.3. But the Spirit is also the Creator of the fellowship we have with one another. Because we are joined to God, we are joined to one another. We don’t create this fellowship. The Holy Spirit creates it and entrusts it to us. St Paul tells us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) We maintain our fellowship despite any differences, such as personality and political differences. We maintain fellowship despite offenses we may experience. We share in each other’s lives: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another” (Romans 12:15,16). St. John tells how practical our fellowship should be: “But if anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:17,18).

3.4. St. Paul wants us to be assured of the communion or fellowship of the Holy Spirit so that we will know we are have fellowship with God and can live in fellowship with one another.

St. Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. When you read 2 Corinthians, it is a little surprising that the letter ends this way. No church other than the church in Galatia caused Paul more pastoral grief than this one. Some in this church had hurt him badly. But Paul blesses them all with the grace of Christ, the love of God, the communion of the Spirit. If these blessings were for the Corinthians, they are for us, too. The bread and wine of Holy Communion are pledges that we have the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Spirit.

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