Who God Is
Text: Matt. 28:16-20, Gen. 1:1–2:2a
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Here we are again on Trinity Sunday; white paraments on the altar; confessing the longest of the three worldwide Creeds, the Athanasian Creed; and all the other elements that mark this Sunday as a special feast day in the Church year. We have a day dedicated to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. But why do we place such importance on this? What is it that makes this teaching so important that we have a day set apart to rejoice in it?
As you may have already guessed, we don’t dedicate this kind of time and energy simply to celebrate being right. Yes, it is important to get things correct, especially when it’s dealing with truth, and most especially when that truth has a bearing on the eternal salvation of our bodies and souls. But we don’t insist on and teach the doctrine of the Trinity just so that we can get the answer right on a quiz or pat ourselves on the back for knowing the right answer to give if someone asks us what this whole Three-in-One thing is all about. No, we give our hearts and minds to this teaching today because there’s something much more important going on with a proper understanding of the Holy Trinity. When we confess this divine truth, it gives us insight into who God is at His very core.
For if God were not Three-in-One, but singular and One only, we would focus on some very specific attributes. We would talk primarily about how He’s the most powerful, that none can match Him in glory or strength. Our discussion of Him would revolve entirely around how He is unlike anything else, that He is alone in His greatness and majesty. Now, there’s nothing wrong with talking about how God is almighty and all-knowing, so on and so forth. But that’s a tragically incomplete picture. There’s still something vital missing.
Conversely, if we had three Gods, not one God in three Person united in a singular divinity, we would find ourselves no different from the various pagans who had multiple gods that were constantly trying to one up each other and gain the upper hand. Our entire faith and religion would be in a set of deities who are in competition—which, by the way, never goes well for mortals in any of those other pagan religions. But we confess that in God, none of the Three Persons are before or after another, all are co-equal in majesty and glory, all share in the same Godhead. And that’s because of that one attribute we haven’t touched on yet—the attribute that can only perfectly exist in a God who is Triune.
That attribute, the one we hold as highest in describing our God, is perfect love. As we’ve heard from St. John in his letter, “God is love.” And that sets the tone for the way that we understand everything about our God. It’s what Jesus has been talking to us about those last few weeks of Easter: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Because the Triune God is perfect and all three Persons are coequal, co-eternal, it means that the love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is perfect and eternal. Even greater than the qualities of being all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent, and so forth, is the quality that God is love.
And because love becomes the defining attribute, we see that all God does is out of love. This is the reason that God creates the universe, the account of which we heard in our reading from Genesis today. The love within the Trinity was infinite and overflowed so that the Father spoke creation into being, the Son was the Word who was with God, and the Spirit hovered over the waters during creation, all in order to create a recipient for the love of the Trinity. All of creation exists to be loved by God.
This then extends to the sending of the Son to redeem this creation after its fall. It was not because God was obligated to do it. He didn’t send His Son for any reason but love, to save the creation He made in order to be the recipient of this infinite love. And when that salvation was complete, the Son sent His Apostles into the world to bring others into this love, telling them to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Triune God who loves them—in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—so that He would be with them always, even to the end of the age.
All that God has done, all that we’ve celebrated and rejoiced over, all the feasts and festivals and celebrations of the Church year, have taken place because God is Triune, and because He is Triune, He is love. These things that we learn about every year—the nativity of Jesus, the miracles, the cross, the resurrection, Jesus’ ascension, the sending of the Holy Spirit, the saints’ days, the remembrance of the martyrs—all of it is done not because of a demand for God’s honor or glory. It’s all out of love, because this is who He is at the deepest level. All He does is out of love—grace, unmerited, not in exchange for works or anything else. He simply wanted to because He loves His creations.
That teaches us then to obey everything Jesus has commanded us: namely, to love God and our neighbor. We see who God is at His core and that helps us leave behind the fallen, fleshly, earthly ways of thinking and acting, with an eye always on what we can get out of it, acting out of a thirst for respect or honor or power or reward. When we confess that our Lord is Three Persons in One God, bound together by perfect love in a shared divine nature, it shows us the way to walk: the way of the Trinity, the way of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is, it shows us the way of our Baptism, where our sins were washed away, where our old sinful nature is drowned and a new believer daily arises in faith and a desire to love God and our fellow forgiven sinners. Our lips are opened so that we can speak and sing and chant and pray to the true God—the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity. And so we do, even now. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
