John 3:1-15 - Trinity
Sunday - May 26, 2013
We
Speak of What We Know
Jesus was once asked by
a Scribe, as recorded in Mark 12, “Which is the first commandment of
all?” Jesus answered by quoting
from Deuteronomy 6: “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God, the Lord is one. And you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.” Jesus almost quoted from Deuteronomy word
for word. But He added something – not
like He added to Scripture – No, but He clarified the meaning of
Scripture. He who Himself fulfills all
of Scripture summed up what it means to love God with your heart, and soul, and
strength by including the phrase, “and with all your mind.”
See, it’s perfectly
accessible to human reason that there is one God.
Even the pagans will admit that there is a
leader of the gods or a first god. Even
the atheists, on a good day, will entertain the idea that there is a higher
power out there. Anyone who has been
wronged and then deprived of justice comforts himself with the natural
conclusion that God will judge. It’s
reasonable. It’s reasonable to seek to
know this God too – to be on His good side.
But it’s not by our reason – it’s not by our mind – that we are able to
approach Him, or come to love Him, or to escape His judgment ourselves. To try and figure out a path to God by
thinking is to try to ascend to heaven on our own. Many people have tried. Many have persuaded themselves that they have
succeeded. But, of course they have not
— because God’s judgments are unsearchable, and His ways are passed finding
out. “For who has known the mind of
the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”
Our natural knowledge
of God’s existence or even of God’s unity or goodness is not enough. We must know God as He reveals Himself to us
in the Bible. If we will be saved, we
must above all know and believe the Triune God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.
To know of God’s existence
is not how we reach God or see His kingdom.
No, but to see His kingdom is to love Him with our whole mind. But how can we do this when our mind cannot
comprehend God? Well, it requires that
we despair of our ability to understand the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity reveals Himself to us. Our understanding does not lead us to faith.
No, but faith embraces what we cannot understand. Faith embraces what God speaks.
And so we turn to God’s
word.
“Hear, O Israel,”
the prophet says. And so Israel, that
is, the Church, listens. We listen to
our teachers. Nicodemus was a teacher of
Israel. He went at night to speak with
Jesus. He did not want to despair of his
ability to understand God, though. In
fact, he depended on his ability to understand.
“Rabbi,” he called Jesus – that means teacher – “we
know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that
you do unless God is with him.”
Nicodemus wanted to be a good teacher.
He sought answers. He went to the
right person. But Jesus did not give him
the answer he wanted, because Jesus did not appeal to his mind. Instead He required that he receive a new mind – that he in fact become a
totally new person: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the
kingdom of God.”
Seeing the kingdom of
God is not the same as figuring out that God exists. It is to see how God saves. It is to see how God rules the hearts and
consciences of His people. It is to live
under this kingdom of grace here on earth.
God does this through Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son. He rules us through the forgiveness of our
sins.
We must be born
again. The word in Greek for “again” is
the same word in Greek for “from above.”
We are born from below. We are
flesh. That which is born of flesh is
flesh. Flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of God. That is why we need
to be born again. Jesus is born from
above. He is begotten from
eternity. But in order to reveal the
mystery of the Holy Trinity to sinners who need to be rescued from their sin,
this God was born again. He who was born
from above came down from heaven and was born from below — incarnate by the
Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. He who
is Spirit took on our own flesh in order that as flesh and blood He might
reveal His kingdom and save us.
When Jesus said that we
need to be born again, He was saying that we need His birth. We need to become children of God and to know
God as He has known Him. God makes us
His children through water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism. There we are joined to Christ who is both our
God and our Brother. There His
inheritance becomes ours, because it is there that our sin becomes His. Our lowly birth, our fleshly lusts, our
inability to gain access to God’s favorable judgment, even our self-righteous
presumptions to approach God by our reason and strength – all of this became
the property of Jesus Christ alone. He
took it away from us even as He took the mind of a servant to serve us. He endured His second birth as the sole
sinner under His own divine judgment in order that we might enjoy our second
birth as God’s beloved sons and daughters, washed in the blood of Him who
obeyed, and suffered and died in our place.
Baptism is not a hoop
that we jump through. No, it is at the
center of our life. Nicodemus came to
Jesus to find out what else He needed to know.
He came to find out what hoop he
needed to jump through. But there was no
hoop. There was no “one more thing to figure out.”
There was only his need to drop everything he thought he could figure out about God and to come
to know God as He reveals Himself in the life and death of Jesus.
When God reveals
Himself as a gracious God, He reveals Himself as the Triune God. If God is not triune, then he is not the God
who sent His Son to take on our flesh and blood and to redeem us from the curse
of the law. If God is not triune, then
what Jesus said and did was of no consequence to us. If God is not triune, then there is no price
paid by God to God for the sin that separated us from God. If God is not
triune, then there is no Holy Spirit who works faith and new life in us to
claim and enjoy the righteousness that Jesus has won. But God is
triune. And this is not just some
academic trivia that we need to know if we want to be saved. This knowledge is not a hoop. Because God reveals Himself as the Holy
Trinity by revealing what He has done to deliver us from the poison of our
sin.
Look at what God
does. He places your failures on
Jesus. He hears your grumblings. “Life isn’t fair. God has not dealt with me the way a gracious
God should. I deserve something more. I am God’s child, so things should go just
fine for me.” God hears it. He hears it from the back of your mind and
from the depth of your heart. And just
as He sent serpents to His ancient people Israel to make plain to them the
reality of their own sin and well-deserved death, so also He speaks the hard
words to us that Moses still preaches today: “You shall have no other gods
before Me. You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” You shall.
But you don’t. Instead we love
the things that our fleshly birth entitles us to. And if this does not reveal to you the poison
of your sin, the poison that the devil has injected in you from your sinful
birth, if this does not reveal to you your need for God to take your punishment
away, then you will not look to where God punished His only Son, as He was
lifted up for the world to see on the cross of hellish pain.
But, dear, Christian,
if it does – if the law that tells you to love Him and so also love your
neighbor, if the law that requires that you be pure and holy despite the lusts
of the flesh and the foolish thoughts of the mind that constantly tug us in the
wrong direction, if the law reveals to you that you are but flesh, then see
your flesh suspended here like a serpent on a pole. See how God has dealt with sin. See where He requires death in order that He
might give you life. This is where the
Spirit blows.
No, Baptism is not a
hoop that we jump through. It is a
portal into heaven that we are led through, because it is a portal into the
death of Christ who was raised by the glory of the Father in order that,
through simple water and God’s sure promise, we might be raised as new
creatures who know our God.
We know Him as
triune. We know Him as He wants to be
known. We know Him as only the Spirit
can teach us to know Him. We know Him as
our dear Father who is at peace with us because Jesus has won that peace. And we find it in the name by which we were
baptized – the name that we call upon still to open our services here. There is no other god. Thank God.
The only God who is is the God who has done what no mind could have
figured out.
But our minds still
like to figure. And our thoughts lead
our hearts, souls, and all our powers away from the clear promise of
Jesus. “How can these things be?” we ask.
I’ve had Baptist friends who have asked, “How can a little baby believe?
Oh, no. We shouldn’t baptize children.” But the better question is: “How can anyone believe?” How can anyone ascend to God unless He first
be born from above?
We don’t look to our
own thoughts to come to faith in Christ.
So neither do we look to our own thoughts about God to keep our
faith. Instead we listen to Him. We don’t look to the signs that proved to
Nicodemus that Jesus was a teacher come from God. Even the pagans can be persuaded by
these. Instead, we look to the sign that
proves that we are children born of God.
He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.
Hear, O Israel. Listen, O Christian Church. The Lord our God is one. He is one with you through the sign of water
and the word that binds you to the sign right here that Moses once lifted in
the wilderness. Here is your death. Here is your life. Here is the peace that surpasses all
understanding.
With our hearts, by the
forgiveness that Jesus has won, we learn to cherish His words. With our souls, we find life in Him who
poured His soul into death. With our
strength, we confess our utter weakness and cling to Him who alone is mighty to
save. Because of what we know— because
of what we have been taught to confess about God, His birth, our birth, we see
the whole law fulfilled in us. And so we
love the Lord our God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with all our
minds.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
And now the peace which
surpasses all understanding shall your hearts and, yes, your minds in Christ
Jesus unto eternal life. Amen.
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