The text for our meditation on God’s Holy Word is the second lesson appointed for the day. I bring you grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
This morning we will confess our Christian faith, in the words of the Athanasian Creed—that very long creed that we confess once a year on this Trinity Sunday. We will confess that “we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.” We will confess that Jesus is one Christ “not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God.”
And as we do so, and as the lines of this Creed go on and on, carefully distinguishing between, and defining, the three persons of the Holy Trinity, there is always the temptation to ourselves, “What on earth does this have to do with me?”
Hopefully we will feel a little bit of guilt or unease about thinking that way because at the beginning and end of the Creed we will affirm that those who do not believe in the Faith confessed in the Athanasian Creed—those who do not keep it whole and undefiled—those who do not hold to it faithfully and firmly—cannot be saved-- and will instead perish eternally.
That’s a sobering thought-- and it is meant to be-- for the Creeds deal with the questions at the center of our human existence: who is God- and how can I know him- and what must I believe to be saved?
The Creeds of the Church—the three ecumenical creeds that are the shared heritage of every part of the Church and are confessed by every Christian on earth—answer those questions this way: 1. There is one God in three distinct, yet equal persons and 2. Jesus Christ, the God/Man is the only Savior of the world and 3. we must believe in him and what he has done to be saved.
The truth about the Trinity and the truth about Jesus as they are confessed in the creeds are the two irreducible biblical truths that must be believed for salvation.
In stark contrast to the religious pluralism that is so prevalent in the world today, and especially in our own country, the Christian Church confesses- and has always confessed- that those who do not believe in this one true faith confessed in the creeds—no matter how outwardly pious or kind or religious they might be—will not be saved.
It matters eternally what we believe-- which is why for a lot of Christians, Trinity Sundays makes them a little bit uneasy—they want to believe that these things about God and Christ are true—but the Athanasian Creed in all its careful details seems difficult to understand.
That is why it is important for us to recognize and remember that the ecumenical creeds—even the Athanasian Creed--are simply a summary of what the Bible teaches-- and so long as we believe what is written in the Bible we can be confident that we are abiding in the Truth and will be saved.
Today in our lesson from Acts—which is a continuation of last week’s Pentecost lesson-- we have a beautiful picture of the truths about God and Christ that we confess in the Creeds, that: the gift of the Spirit was given by the Father so that the world could call upon the Son and be saved.
Today we hear the second half of Peter’s Pentecost sermon and it has the same Trinitarian shape: That God the Father knows our helplessness in the face of sin and death and has planned for our salvation—that the Son has accomplished our salvation by his death, resurrection, and ascension—and that the Holy Spirit has called us to faith in Jesus and has joined us together in a confessing community known as the Church where that same faith in the Holy Trinity is confessed and taught and lived out.
We’re not going to look in detail at every verse of our lesson today in the sermon-it’s simply too long. But we are going to see how the truth about God and the truth about Christ confessed in the Creeds-- is not some theological abstraction that has nothing to do with our lives--but is the truth about God revealed in the Bible—truth that changes our lives for time and eternity. Peter preached:
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
If you knew nothing else from the Bible, it would be enough to know what Peter preaches: That God loves you and that he has sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to live and die and rise again so that you might have eternal life through faith in him. Peter goes on to show how even David’s psalms written many years before Jesus teach this simple Good News.
The Bible contains history and poetry and prophecy and guidance for daily living—but every part of the Bible serves this one purpose—to make Jesus Christ known to you as your Savior and the only way to a life with God.
From the very beginning, when Adam and Eve fell into sin and death, and all of us with them, God was not content that even one of his children should not live with him forever --and so before we were ever born—God knew us and loved us and planned for our salvation—and to do that, the Father sacrificed that which was most precious to him—his own Son—so that WE could be his sons and daughters through Spirit-worked faith.
In light of the Holy Trinity’s saving work, let me ask you a question in all seriousness: Since our salvation is GOD’S first priority for our lives—shouldn’t it be ours too—shouldn’t every thing we do and say and hope for and plan for--be done with a view towards strengthening our life with God?
We have all kinds of plans for our lives—all kinds of things that we want to accomplish—so many things that compete for the first place on our “to-do” lists—but God has only one: that we live with him as his children for time and eternity—and everything else that he allows in our lives and accomplishes in our lives is done for that one, loving purpose.
When we live apart from his purpose—when we show with our decisions that we are headed in a direction away from God—when we break our fellowship with him through our sinful choices—what we discover about ourselves is that it is not just Adam’s disobedience that has wrecked our lives and broken our relationship with God—but our disobedience as well. That is why God sent Jesus—to be that obedient Son he desired each of us to be and to restore what we have destroyed by our sins.
Peter’s Pentecost sermon is such a wonderful summary of what Jesus did to save us from sin and death—a summary that is beautifully mirrored in the Creeds: that by Jesus’ birth to the Virgin Mary he was the promised heir of David--that he was crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men—that God raised Jesus from the dead-- and at his ascension the Father exalted him to his right hand where he rules over the world for us.
That is what Jesus has done for our salvation and for the salvation of the world and God has made him both Lord and Christ— our Savior and our master.
The question for us on this Trinity Sunday: Do we believe it? Not just the historical data about Jesus—even the devil knows that is true. But do we believe that this Jesus of Nazareth that the Bible reveals and the creeds confess-- is our one and only Savior from sin and death-- and our one and only king-- who has the right to rule over every part of our lives? Do we believe it-- or do our lives reveal something else? Sadly, often times they do.
Peter began his sermon by talking about how Jesus was crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men but he concludes this way:
“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” “WHOM YOU CRUCIFIED.”
The Jews to whom Peter is preaching, thousands of them assembled for the harvest feast of Pentecost, may have been in Jerusalem for the previous Passover when Jesus died—but many of them were not. Some of them may have raised their voices when the crowds called out to crucify Jesus—but many of them did not. Some of them may have mocked the Lord as he died—but many of them did not.
And yet by their sins they crucified Jesus just as surely as Caiphas and Pilate and the soldiers who drove the nails—and so did we. And to that painful news—our reaction is the same as theirs: When they heard this they were cut to the heart
They were “cut to the heart”. Those words have always been, for me, one of the most vivid phrases in the Bible because it perfectly captures the reaction of anyone who has really seen the consequences of their sins from God’s perspective—not just that we have wronged our neighbor—but that we have offended God and contributed to the death of his Son.
That we can see this painful truth about ourselves is only by the work of the Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sins through the preaching of the law so that we would no longer justify our sins or make excuses for our sins or place the blame for our sins somewhere else—but that we would see the hard and painful truth about ourselves and our own sin-sickness—for that damning diagnosis is where true spiritual healing begins--and just like a patient sitting across from a doctor we want to know what can be done about it. With the Jews that day we ask, “What shall we do”?
And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Repentance and faith. That was sin’s cure for the Jews that day and it is the cure for the people here this day: repentance and faith in Jesus is the only way to salvation-- and wholeness-- and peace with God.
By the power and presence of the Holy Spirit working in human hearts through the preaching of law and Gospel, three thousand people came to faith in Jesus Christ on Pentecost—both adults and children. Three thousand people were given the gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism—the very presence of God in their lives-- convincing them that Jesus was both Lord and Savior and that all of the promises of God were true in him.
The Holy Spirit has been working in exactly the same way for the last two thousand years: through Word and Sacrament convicting people of their sins and convincing them that Jesus Christ is their Savior from sin and death—changing lives for time and eternity.
But the Holy Spirit does even more. He takes that one-on-one relationship that we have with God through faith in Christ and joins us together with every other person in the world who has that same relationship. When we confess our Christian faith in the words of the creeds, we join our voices to that of the whole Christian church stretched out across space and time.
That our personal faith in Jesus draws into the community of the church, is a necessary result of the truth about the Triune God—that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect community with one another and so those people who enjoy fellowship with this one true God-- must also be in communion with one another—bound together in a common, Trinitarian “faith and life” that is lived out in the church.
In that light, I hope that you will give the Athanasian Creed your special attention this morning because the biblical doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the most wonderful and comforting doctrine in the Bible: it tells us of the Father who has known us and loved us from eternity. It tells us of the Son who has saved us by his death and resurrection. It tells us of the Holy Spirit who has brought us to faith and into fellowship with one another in the church. Father-Son-and Holy Spirit. One God in three persons: the Holy Trinity.
And now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
