Sunday May 30th, thoughts going in...

1 Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Also through Him, we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, 4 endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. 5 This hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. (Rom 5:1-5, HCS)

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday again—the Sunday that we recite the world’s longest creed (Athanasian), and the Sunday that DOCTRINE tends to triumph over expository preaching—which is to say that regardless of what the texts of the day actually SAY, it’s the preacher’s job to make them say something about the Trinity.

Well, as I’ve often said in the past, the very word “Trinity” is a word coined by man to reflect the innermost mystery of God. And by “innermost mystery,” of course I mean something that simply cannot be fully explained or understood. It can be CONFESSED as an article of faith; we can, should, and do confess with the Church that “we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.” But confession is not the same as comprehension. Thankfully, we as finite creatures are not called upon to comprehend the innermost mystery of God. In the words of the “other” great catechism from the Reformation era, “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” (Westminster Shorter Catechism). Glorifying God begins with saying correct things about him, whether we fully comprehend those things or not.

Still, there has to be more to Trinity Sunday than just confessing the correct dogma about the Holy Trinity, otherwise we’d just gather…recite the Athanasian Creed…and then go home. (some might advocate for this anyway!). The proper lessons of the day vary with the three year lectionary, but the reading from Romans this year does a pretty nice job of giving us something to think about this Trinity Sunday. A working title for my sermon would be something like: “EXPERIENCING the Holy Trinity, past/present/future.” In other words, right out of the chute, we maintain that while it may not be possible to comprehend the Trinity, this is how we experience the Trinity:

PAST: Therefore, since we **have been** declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (v1).
One of the reasons I’ve chosen the HCS translation for this week’s text is because I like the way “justified” has been translated herein. The HCS goes with that wonderful Protestant rendering of having been “declared” righteous—as opposed to “made” righteous. Still, “dikaiwthentes” (the Greek aor pass part) deserves some unpacking. The term conjures up the image of the law court. To be justified is to be vindicated; to be declared to be ‘in the right.’ Strangely, this declaration exists independent of facts/realities to the contrary. I suppose in one sense, the grace of God **could be equated to Chicago politics, whereby legend has it that the guilty go free all the time! Yet, that’s not **really God’s system. In corrupt human institutions the guilty go free all the time because they’ve paid off the right person; or because they’ve got some dirt on the judge. In God’s system the guilty go free; the guilty are declared to be in the right; because JUSTICE has been done—but done, rather, in the name of love and voluntarily by God’s only Son, Jesus.
The result of this justice being done is that “shalom” (peace) exists with God. This peace is more than just an absence of hostilities (which means that to the extent that we experience hostility in life it’s not from God or God’s fault)—it also means a “wholeness”; a “right relationship” exists…providing, of course, that we respond in faith to the Gospel.

PRESENT: Also through Him (Jesus), we have obtained access by faith into this grace **in which we stand**, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
When we think of the Holy Trinity, rather than a dry dusty DOGMA that got argued about in the mists of ages past, we should think of RELATIONSHIP. The way we experience the mystery of the Trinity in our OWN LIVES, on a DAILY BASIS, is through a living relationship. It is, in the words of this passage, the “grace in which we STAND.” Grace, in this sense, is like a room into which Jesus has ushered all those who believe. It is a PLACE characterized by the presence of God through Christ. This is a PRESENT life in real, yet mystical, relationship with Christ in his Church. We experience it when we partake of the sacramental life of the Church; we experience it in our prayers and in Bible reading.

FUTURE: And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, 4 endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. 5 This hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. (vss 3-5).
Paul sets a tension in these verses. On the one hand, there is the reality of affliction. Yet on the other hand, the presence/reality of affliction is not proof of God’s abandonment or for that matter of God’s neglect of ultimate promise/vindication. The presence of the Holy Spirit given to us is meant as both a guarantee that affliction can be used to produce a positive result, but also as continued source of HOPE—which will always lead to a discussion reminding us that hope/elpis in the biblical sense is a much stronger word than that which we typically use. Hope/elpis in the biblical sense is the CONFIDENT EXPECATION that God will follow through with all of his promises. In other words, that in spite of the present affliction, the story will end correctly. This too is by grace.
It is a grace that God the Father declared sinners to be “in the right” through the loving sacrifice of God the Son in the PAST. It is a grace that God the Son continually provides a place of loving relationship for us in the PRESENT. And it is a grace that God the Holy Spirit keeps our hope (our confident expectation) alive even in the face of affliction—that one day our declared vindication will be the ultimate reality.
THIS is how we EXPERIENCE the Holy Trinity!

Cheers,

TM