John 3:1-17; 14:6-17, 25-27
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I have an interesting question for you today: Who is God? That would seem an odd question to come before a Christian congregation and ask. Yet, the answers (emphasis on the plural) would surprise you. You would be surprised at the effect who we say God is has on our lives together as Christians. “Who is God?” is one of the two most pressing questions churches must struggle with at their very core to remain vibrant. The second question is “What has God done for his creation in, through, and as Jesus Chris?”. How we answer that question also has profound implications for our life together as Christians.
So, who is God? In the 4th Century during those huge Church councils that left us the Nicene Creed one of the authors of the Creed Gregory of Nazianzus answered that question quite emphatically. He boldly proclaimed: “When I say God I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” He was saying God is Trinity. God is the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 1 John 4:8 says that “God is love”. If God is love, then God in God’s self must be a relationship for love requires relationship. Therefore, the Trinity is three relational beings (persons) who love and give themselves to and for one another so utterly that they form each other’s person-hood and are one in being. That is Christianity’s confession of who God is.
It sounds weird, but let’s think about ourselves. I am a unique person who exists in relationships. I cannot be who I am apart from the core relationships I have had in my life. I am who I am as the result of all the relationships I have and have had in my life. In similar manner, God the Father cannot be God the Father without God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God the Son cannot be God the Son without God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And, God the Holy Spirit cannot be God the Holy Spirit without God the Father and God the Son. God is not God without the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit giving themselves to one another so utterly in mutual love that they are the same and are one. This is hard for us to grasp as we live in a world that bends inordinately towards individualism and self-realization. Yet, life is pretty bankrupt when lived apart from significant relationships.
Back to Gregory, why was he so emphatic in stating this? Well, in the days of Nicaea, Christianity was in a bitter dispute. There was a man by the name of Arius, an elder and teacher in the church around Alexandria, Egypt who had a very significant following. They came to be known as the Arians. Arius taught that God is just God, an unknowable Creator with a moral will who must be obeyed by his creation or else. He emphatically declared that Jesus was in no way God and that he was just a man who showed us how to live according to the will of the Creator God who would never in anyway ever dirty his hands with human “being”. To Arius, Jesus was not in any way God.
Well, the Arians were in the majority back then, evidence to the historical fact that at any given time over the centuries the majority of Christians are being swept away by errant understandings of who God is with the result that the Church has not been and acted Christ-like, but quite the opposite. In fact, it is Arian theology about God almighty that provides the theological undergirding for the white supremacy we call Arianism practiced by the Nazi’s in WWII and it persists among Christians today. When the Church does not understand God the way God has revealed Godself, we, the Church, do some horrible things.
Back to the 4th Century, Gregory of Nazianzus was Bishop of Constantinople in Turkey and he had a friend named Athanasius who was Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Incidentally, both of these men, who are now saints of the church, spent quite a lot of time in exile during this controversy because, as I mentioned, the majority of Christians labelled them heretics. In response to the Arians and their denial of Jesus' being God Athanasius is famous for declaring “the unassumed is the unhealed.” He meant that if Jesus was not God become human by taking on himself fallen human flesh, then humanity is not healed of sin and death. If Jesus was not God the Son become fully human, then the Trinity has not taken humanity unto and into Themself to heal it of sin and death with the Trinity's own indestructible life.
For Gregory and Athanasius what the Trinity had done for us in, through, and as Jesus Christ was to reconcile us to himself (2 Cor. 5:20), heal us of Sin and Death (1 Cor. 15), and make us to be partakers of God’s very own nature. The Apostle Peter says as much at 2 Peter 1:3-4 which reads: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (ESV).
Gregory and Athanasius believed as did the Apostle Paul (not to mention all the Apostles and Jesus himself) that the Trinity has adopted us as God’s own children and this adoption wasn’t merely a legal adoption (a paperwork legal transaction). Rather, God has made us to be blood family with himself and each other by Jesus God the Son becoming human and the Holy Spirit freely given to indwell us making our adoption effectual.
Paul says this at Romans 8:12-17 “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (ESV).
Paul again says as much at Galatians 4:4-7: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (ESV).
To Gregory and Athanasius, the followers of Arius and his unitarian idea of God were simply still living according to the flesh. The Arians were simply dutifully trying to live according to the moral will of an unknowable Creator whom they called God. They were not living by the Spirit. They were dreadfully unhealed in their hearts, stuck in dogmatism and legalism, all the while thinking themselves to be the ones who had it right. They were concerned about obeying the will of God by their own effort rather than being changed in their very being by the presence and power of the Trinity.
The Arian Controversy, as it is called, revolved around whether or not God who is holy, pure, and unchanging would get his hands dirty by really getting involved with us. The Arians said no and that the Christian faith was all about knowing the Creator God's moral will and being obedient to it. Gregory and Athanasius on the other hand emphatically said yes and more so that the Trinity had indeed taken human being into his own being and healed it. For the Arians Jesus was only a man, a very special God-empowered man, who only showed us what the moral will of God was that we might live accordingly so as to not suffer the Creator God's wrath. But for Gregory and Athanasius, God the Son truly and fully became Jesus the man and took human being into the Trinity's Being to heal it. The Triune God had indeed gotten his hands dirty with humans and it changed actual human being. Humans are now indwelt by God in a permanent way unknown before Jesus. In this act of new creation humanity is becoming healed of sin and death in the same way that Adam's disobedience caused humanity to sin and suffer death.
Paul writes of this in Romans 5:10-19 “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned - for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous” (ESV).
To sum up, the answer to question two “What has God done for the Creation in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth?” is that by God the Son becoming human as Jesus of Nazareth and living, dying, rising, ascending, and yet to return, humanity has been and will be healed of sin and death to live as God’s children and the Holy Spirit is working now in and through you and me to make this obviously and experientially effectual. We are blessed now to partake of the life of the Trinity, as members of their family so to speak, that we might be a blessing to the community in which we live and beyond.
To make this somewhat practical, we must say that what the Trinity has done by Jesus and the Holy Spirit is restore God’s image in humanity. The Trinity is a communion of persons working in us to create community in God’s own image. Therefore, Jesus’ one and only commandment, that we love one another as he has loved us, is of the utmost importance for who we are as congregations and why we are here. As the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom the Father has given us, we bear their family resemblance. By the way we love one another we proclaim not only that Jesus is Lord and Saviour, but also that the one true God is Trinity – the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that our primary task is to build community among ourselves and with the community around us according to Jesus’ command to love.
This means that the sincere giving of oneself in Christian community is not optional. Being able to give loving community to the community beyond ourselves expecting nothing in return – no money in the plate, no bums in the pews – is our way of being in the world. The Trinity has called us to be community in his image in the world. We have to be that community and we will, if the Trinity is our God and we are careful to not let other understandings of God hamper the Trinity’s healing and transformative work in us.
So, I leave you with the question we started with: who is God? Amen.
Please Click Here For Worship Service Video
I have an interesting question for you today: Who is God? That would seem an odd question to come before a Christian congregation and ask. Yet, the answers (emphasis on the plural) would surprise you. You would be surprised at the effect who we say God is has on our lives together as Christians. “Who is God?” is one of the two most pressing questions churches must struggle with at their very core to remain vibrant. The second question is “What has God done for his creation in, through, and as Jesus Chris?”. How we answer that question also has profound implications for our life together as Christians.
So, who is God? In the 4th Century during those huge Church councils that left us the Nicene Creed one of the authors of the Creed Gregory of Nazianzus answered that question quite emphatically. He boldly proclaimed: “When I say God I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” He was saying God is Trinity. God is the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 1 John 4:8 says that “God is love”. If God is love, then God in God’s self must be a relationship for love requires relationship. Therefore, the Trinity is three relational beings (persons) who love and give themselves to and for one another so utterly that they form each other’s person-hood and are one in being. That is Christianity’s confession of who God is.
It sounds weird, but let’s think about ourselves. I am a unique person who exists in relationships. I cannot be who I am apart from the core relationships I have had in my life. I am who I am as the result of all the relationships I have and have had in my life. In similar manner, God the Father cannot be God the Father without God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God the Son cannot be God the Son without God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And, God the Holy Spirit cannot be God the Holy Spirit without God the Father and God the Son. God is not God without the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit giving themselves to one another so utterly in mutual love that they are the same and are one. This is hard for us to grasp as we live in a world that bends inordinately towards individualism and self-realization. Yet, life is pretty bankrupt when lived apart from significant relationships.
Back to Gregory, why was he so emphatic in stating this? Well, in the days of Nicaea, Christianity was in a bitter dispute. There was a man by the name of Arius, an elder and teacher in the church around Alexandria, Egypt who had a very significant following. They came to be known as the Arians. Arius taught that God is just God, an unknowable Creator with a moral will who must be obeyed by his creation or else. He emphatically declared that Jesus was in no way God and that he was just a man who showed us how to live according to the will of the Creator God who would never in anyway ever dirty his hands with human “being”. To Arius, Jesus was not in any way God.
Well, the Arians were in the majority back then, evidence to the historical fact that at any given time over the centuries the majority of Christians are being swept away by errant understandings of who God is with the result that the Church has not been and acted Christ-like, but quite the opposite. In fact, it is Arian theology about God almighty that provides the theological undergirding for the white supremacy we call Arianism practiced by the Nazi’s in WWII and it persists among Christians today. When the Church does not understand God the way God has revealed Godself, we, the Church, do some horrible things.
Back to the 4th Century, Gregory of Nazianzus was Bishop of Constantinople in Turkey and he had a friend named Athanasius who was Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Incidentally, both of these men, who are now saints of the church, spent quite a lot of time in exile during this controversy because, as I mentioned, the majority of Christians labelled them heretics. In response to the Arians and their denial of Jesus' being God Athanasius is famous for declaring “the unassumed is the unhealed.” He meant that if Jesus was not God become human by taking on himself fallen human flesh, then humanity is not healed of sin and death. If Jesus was not God the Son become fully human, then the Trinity has not taken humanity unto and into Themself to heal it of sin and death with the Trinity's own indestructible life.
For Gregory and Athanasius what the Trinity had done for us in, through, and as Jesus Christ was to reconcile us to himself (2 Cor. 5:20), heal us of Sin and Death (1 Cor. 15), and make us to be partakers of God’s very own nature. The Apostle Peter says as much at 2 Peter 1:3-4 which reads: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (ESV).
Gregory and Athanasius believed as did the Apostle Paul (not to mention all the Apostles and Jesus himself) that the Trinity has adopted us as God’s own children and this adoption wasn’t merely a legal adoption (a paperwork legal transaction). Rather, God has made us to be blood family with himself and each other by Jesus God the Son becoming human and the Holy Spirit freely given to indwell us making our adoption effectual.
Paul says this at Romans 8:12-17 “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (ESV).
Paul again says as much at Galatians 4:4-7: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (ESV).
To Gregory and Athanasius, the followers of Arius and his unitarian idea of God were simply still living according to the flesh. The Arians were simply dutifully trying to live according to the moral will of an unknowable Creator whom they called God. They were not living by the Spirit. They were dreadfully unhealed in their hearts, stuck in dogmatism and legalism, all the while thinking themselves to be the ones who had it right. They were concerned about obeying the will of God by their own effort rather than being changed in their very being by the presence and power of the Trinity.
The Arian Controversy, as it is called, revolved around whether or not God who is holy, pure, and unchanging would get his hands dirty by really getting involved with us. The Arians said no and that the Christian faith was all about knowing the Creator God's moral will and being obedient to it. Gregory and Athanasius on the other hand emphatically said yes and more so that the Trinity had indeed taken human being into his own being and healed it. For the Arians Jesus was only a man, a very special God-empowered man, who only showed us what the moral will of God was that we might live accordingly so as to not suffer the Creator God's wrath. But for Gregory and Athanasius, God the Son truly and fully became Jesus the man and took human being into the Trinity's Being to heal it. The Triune God had indeed gotten his hands dirty with humans and it changed actual human being. Humans are now indwelt by God in a permanent way unknown before Jesus. In this act of new creation humanity is becoming healed of sin and death in the same way that Adam's disobedience caused humanity to sin and suffer death.
Paul writes of this in Romans 5:10-19 “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned - for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous” (ESV).
To sum up, the answer to question two “What has God done for the Creation in, through, and as Jesus of Nazareth?” is that by God the Son becoming human as Jesus of Nazareth and living, dying, rising, ascending, and yet to return, humanity has been and will be healed of sin and death to live as God’s children and the Holy Spirit is working now in and through you and me to make this obviously and experientially effectual. We are blessed now to partake of the life of the Trinity, as members of their family so to speak, that we might be a blessing to the community in which we live and beyond.
To make this somewhat practical, we must say that what the Trinity has done by Jesus and the Holy Spirit is restore God’s image in humanity. The Trinity is a communion of persons working in us to create community in God’s own image. Therefore, Jesus’ one and only commandment, that we love one another as he has loved us, is of the utmost importance for who we are as congregations and why we are here. As the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom the Father has given us, we bear their family resemblance. By the way we love one another we proclaim not only that Jesus is Lord and Saviour, but also that the one true God is Trinity – the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that our primary task is to build community among ourselves and with the community around us according to Jesus’ command to love.
This means that the sincere giving of oneself in Christian community is not optional. Being able to give loving community to the community beyond ourselves expecting nothing in return – no money in the plate, no bums in the pews – is our way of being in the world. The Trinity has called us to be community in his image in the world. We have to be that community and we will, if the Trinity is our God and we are careful to not let other understandings of God hamper the Trinity’s healing and transformative work in us.
So, I leave you with the question we started with: who is God? Amen.
