|
“Christ
Our New Birth”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 3:1-17
During my days in college, at a prayer
meeting that we had on Wednesday nights, I heard our pastor answer a
question about the Trinity. He
said, “If you do not believe in the Trinity you will loose your soul;
if you try to understand the Trinity you will loose your mind.” We all laughed, and told ourselves, “Okay, let’s get back
to more practical aspects of what it means to be a Christian.”
But, in the background, I started thinking to myself, “Whatever this
doctrine of the God, called the Trinity means, if it is true, then it
should be something very important, and it should be something that I
could sit down at my table and talk to my mother about.
If it is true, then it needs to be real.
If it is true about God then it ought to be important in our
lives of faith.”
Since that quest began in my heart and in my mind, what I have
discovered is that the very doctrine of the Trinity, the Christian
doctrine of God is the very gospel of Jesus Christ.
There are many religions that believe in one God. And many of these
religions relate their beliefs to the God revealed in the Hebrew
Scriptures. But, what we
have been blessed with in the Christian church is the ultimate truth
about our God, and that is that our God is one God; there is only one
God, and our one God is three persons.
Now, that is where my pastor, Calvin Thielman, was applying the
principle of “…if you try to understand the Trinity you will loose
your mind.” From a
logical and intellectual approach it is beyond our mental ability to
show or to prove that one God is equal to three persons. You cannot prove that one is equal to three.
But, this is not about having some kind of comprehensive
intellectual understanding of the mysterious truth that God is one being
in three persons.
Where it becomes real in our lives, where it becomes the good news God
is giving to us, where it becomes what we can sit down and talk about in
everyday language is that God is a family of personal loving
relationships. The ultimate
truth that God is showing us is not that he knows everything, that he is
everywhere, and that he is all powerful—though all this is certainly
true; God is the alpha and omega—the ultimate truth about God is that
God is love in the relationships of the persons of God.
And the very fact that God has revealed this to us is the great
news that we have been included in the love between the persons of God
and that this is the ultimate truth of our lives here, and our lives in
eternity.
This is exactly what Jesus is telling Nicodemus in our passage.
Nicodemus is a Pharisee and religious leader in his day.
He teaches and he has authority in their religious institution
and he has seen something in Jesus and so he sneaks to him in the middle
of the night, so he won’t be caught.
And he starts off with some words like, “We have seen all that
you have done, these miracles, these signs from God; we know that you
are a teacher sent from God…”
Nicodemus is trying to point out a little bit that he thinks he knows.
But there is another very real meaning behind his words.
Basically, he is asking Jesus a question.
There is a question in Nicodemus, and Jesus knows this.
His question is, “Who in the world are you? We have seen these
signs, so, who are you?”
And Jesus answered Nicodemus in much that same way of communication that
Nicodemus initiated. “Jesus
answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of
God without being born from above.”
There is a meaning behind these words of Jesus, that Jesus actually
gives more explanation of in later words.
But, what Jesus is telling Nicodemus is, “Nic you must be born
from above to know God’s love; and that is who I am; I am your birth
from above.”
In a few seconds Jesus will also tell Nicodemus that no one can ascend
into heaven except one who has descended from heaven.
Nicodemus is asking Jesus who in the world is he.
And Jesus is telling Nicodemus, and each one of us.
“You must be born again. And
that is who I am; I am your second birth; I am what you needed from God
in order to fulfill the eternal decree of God that you be included in
the love within the personal relationships of God.
I have come to include you in the Trinity. You are included. That
is the way it is. The will
of God has been accomplished. It
is finished. You are in me
and I am in you and we are in God.”
For us to hear the truth of God in Jesus Christ is to show us that we
have been included in the love between God the Father and Jesus Christ
in the Holy Spirit. We are
brought by God to see this and in the discovery of faith to say
“Yes” to this truth.
And one of the greatest freedoms experienced in the Trinity is that we
are not required to get ourselves into God through some perfect act of
faith on our part. We do
not have to get ourselves into God.
We do not have to get ourselves right with God. And again, that
is what Jesus is telling Nicodemus and us.
“For God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
God loved us in such a way that He sent the Son to become one of us, and
as the Son became one of us, we were engrafted into God.
We are born from above in Jesus Christ, and we have been taken
back to God the Father in Jesus Christ.
The ultimate truth of who we are is that we are in the Trinity.
We are in an inescapable situation.
We are living in the love within God and the personal love of God
is alive in us. Faith is
the continual experience and discovery of these truths as God who is in
us and around us, and closer to us than we are to ourselves, surprises
us and ambushes us (maybe everyday) with this fantastic and astonishing
truth.
It has been accomplished. You
have already been born again, a second time, from above in Jesus Christ.
You are in the Trinity. If you try to understand it you will find
your soul.
Amen
|