“The Triune God’s Work For You”
John 3:1-17
6/7/09
The other day I was watching the Science Channel,
because there was a program on there that had something to do with
stars. The universe has always fascinated me. Even as a
child I was very interested in the planets of our solar system.
Now I’m intrigued by the mysteries the astronomers are constantly
discovering and trying to unfold with today’s advanced technology
in space exploration. Some of the mysteries remain unsolved,
while others are unravelled, but only after years of research and
observation.
Today, however, we are given to ponder the mystery
of all mysteries - the Triune God, the Creator of all other mysteries,
the Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible,
our Redeemer and Sanctifier. And if His creation takes eons to
study and investigate, how much more He Himself. Well, obviously
we’re not going to cover everything there is know about the Holy
Trinity in a 15 minute sermon. The fact is, you and I will never
know everything there is to know about God. We’ll
constantly be learning of Him even in heaven. The Bible itself
doesn’t give us everything there is to know about Him. But
what it does give us, it gives in order that we might know what this
God has done for our salvation. And that above all is what the
Triune God wants us to know about Him. Yes, it’s exciting
to study His handiwork in creation. The beauty of the Grand
Canyon or Yosemite can even evoke songs of praises to God, as in the
case of David who exclaims, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is
your Name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the
heavens.” And the Apostle Paul tells us that we can even
know certain things about God from our observation of His creation -
things like His eternal power and His divine nature. But
God’s creation will not give you the Gospel. It will not
tell you whether this God who made you loves you or hates you. It
will not tell you that God sent His only-begotten Son in human flesh to
give His life on the cross as the sacrifice for your sins nor will it
tell you that God’s Holy Spirit now delivers that salvation to
you through the Word and the Sacraments. The only way you can
know of God’s work of salvation on your behalf is by hearing that
good news proclaimed to you - something you don’t get from trees,
mountains, or oceans, but you do get it from the Word of God.
Which brings us to today’s text in the Gospel
according to St. John. Though there is much to be said about God,
yet here in these 17 verses John lays out for us in a short, concise
way everything we need to know in a nutshell about the Triune God and
what He has done for our salvation. The setting is a conversation
at night between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus. The
occasion arises because Nicodemus has been fascinated by Jesus’
miracles. Such miracles are a clear sign to Nicodemus that God is
with Jesus. But Nicodemus doesn’t have the whole
picture. It’s a mystery to him. So Jesus reveals the
mystery. He does this by telling Nicodemus about the God who is
working through all these miracles. He shows the Triune God at
work as each person of the Trinity does His part in saving us, His
fallen creatures.
He begins by talking about the work of the Holy
Spirit. It’s interesting that Jesus begins with the Spirit
(often referred to as the third person of the Holy Trinity).
Usually, as in the creeds, we begin with the Father, the first person
of the Holy Trinity. This is the order given to us by the Lord
when He commands His Church to baptize; we are to be baptized in the
Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But
here in John 3 Jesus starts with the Holy Spirit, then He talks about
His own work, and then at the end of His conversation with Nicodemus He
speaks of the Father’s work. Why does He do it this
way? Because the knowledge of God and the way we are brought to
Him must start with the Spirit’s work, beginning with a second
birth, a birth from above, a birth given through water and the Spirit.
Jesus begins where Nicodemus is (and where you and I
are for that matter) in our sinful condition. Like Nicodemus, we
were born of flesh from our mothers’ wombs.
“Flesh” here doesn’t refer to our flesh and bones (or
our physical body), but to our sinful nature, the thing that has
infected both our bodies and our souls. To be “of the
flesh” is to be a sinner. It is to be opposed to the things
“of the Spirit,” that is the Spirit of God and His
work. To be of the flesh is to be an enemy of God and therefore
to be under God’s condemnation. It is to live in the
darkness of sin, living according to the lusts of the sinful nature,
with the result that before God you are dead in your trespasses and
sins. And this goes for everyone. Even the saintliest of
persons is by nature, according to the word of God, a sinner, worthy of
God’s temporal and eternal punishment. In this condition no
one can know God, no one enter into the kingdom of God, and
there’s nothing that any of us can do about it ourselves.
What we need is a new birth. Jesus calls it a
rebirth or a birth from above, and just as we could not give ourselves
our first birth, so we cannot give ourselves this second birth.
It is the birth that comes by water and the Spirit, the birth given
through Baptism. There you who were once born of the flesh are
now born of the Spirit. You have a new nature, the result of the
Holy Spirit’s blowing and breathing into you new life, the life
of Christ. Through the Holy Spirit’s work in Baptism you
are brought to Jesus. The Holy Spirit’s work is to deliver
Him and His gifts to you. This is what He breathes into you
through this washing of water and the Word. Just as God breathed
the breath of life into Adam so that he became a living being in the
beginning, so with this new beginning in Baptism God breathes the
breath of new life in you as the Holy Spirit does His work of giving
you Jesus and the benefits of His work. Jesus in turn brings you
to the Father. But in order to know the Father you must know
Jesus.
Jesus is the Father’s only-begotten Son.
He was sent to reconcile you to the Father. He did this by
putting Himself where you are, becoming the sinner of sinners in your
place, and then by offering Himself up as the sacrifice for your sins
on the cross, only to rise again from the dead on the third day, so
that all who look to Him in faith might have eternal life. Here
in His conversation with Nicodemus He points to an O.T. example of this
when He tells of the account of the bronze serpent which Moses set up
in the wilderness. The Israelites were grumbling against God and
against Moses, so God sent venomous snakes among them who bit the
people, so that many of them died. When the people came to Moses
and confessed that they had sinned, Moses prayed for the people and God
told him to erect this bronze serpent upon a pole, so that whoever was
bitten could look at that serpent and live. With this living
picture, God was previewing what His Son would do on the cross for all
people who had been bitten by the poison of sin. As the Apostle
Paul puts it, “God made [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us,
so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Jesus allowed Himself to be bitten with the poison of your sin.
He sucked it up into His body in the waters of His Baptism. He
allowed it to put Him to death, as it had put you to death. And
yet, by way of His resurrection from the dead, He has become the
antidote to sin. Now He gives the promise to you who look to Him
in faith that you will have eternal life. Even though you will
still die physically, you will not remain in the grave. The new
birth you received at your Baptism will have its end in your
resurrection and recreation on the Last Day. In Jesus the effects
of the Fall have begun to be reversed. The miracles of Jesus with
which Nicodemus was so impressed were signs that Jesus was the cure for
the damage that sin has caused. Sickness, disease, and even death
itself, all the wages of sin, have all been overcome through
Jesus’ death and resurrection. This antidote is what the
Holy Spirit delivers to you as He breathes through the Gospel, your
Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper today.
But there would have been no Son lifted up on the
cross and no Spirit sent to deliver Him and His gifts to us if the
Father had not sent the Son out of His love for us. It is
extremely good news for us that the Father loves us and doesn’t
hate us. Only those baptized into Christ can know that God is
love. Though He threatens the world with wrath and punishment, He
does this not because that’s what He wants for the world, but
that they might confess their sin, look to the Son He has sent for
them, and be saved. The sending of His Son is the ultimate
expression of God’s love for His fallen creatures. The
“so” in John 3:16 not only describes how much God loved the
world, but how He loved the world and demonstrated that love. God
loved the world so, i.e., in this way, that He gave His only-begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal
life. Elsewhere, John writes, “In this the love of God was
made manifest among us, that God sent His only-begotten 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.” It was not that we were lovable
in any way. God did not look down from heaven and smile upon us,
because we were so cute and adorable. As the Apostle Paul writes,
we were enemies of God at one time. “But God, being rich in
mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we
were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with
Christ...” God loves the unlovable - sinners, those who
hate Him - and He demonstrated that love by sending His Son, Jesus to
suffer the wrath that we deserve in our place, so that we who believe
in Him and are baptized into His Name might not be condemned but have
eternal life. No one can know the Father in this way except
through Jesus. To know Jesus is to the know the Father. And
no one can know either the Father or the Son except by the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity remains a mystery to us in many
ways. We will never be able to completely fathom its
depths. As it is, we have only even begun to scratch the surface
of the mysteries of the universe, let alone the mysteries of its
Creator. But what we can know for certain is what this Triune God
has revealed to us in His Word about His love for us and what He has
done and continues to do for our salvation. Through Jesus we are
given to know that the God who created us does not want us to perish in
our sins, but because of His love for us, which is as high as the
heavens are above the earth, He sent His only-begotten Son to remove
our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. This
salvation He has delivered to us through ministry of the Holy Spirit
who has given us new birth in the waters of our Baptism and continues
to feed us on the Word of God and our Lord’s body and blood, so
that we might look to Him for eternal life. This Triune God is
the One who created you, redeemed you, and sanctifies you. Having
received the birth from above by water and the Spirit along with the
faith to believe in Jesus, you have been brought into God’s
kingdom now, and you will live and reign with Him in His heavenly
kingdom forever. Amen.