Trinity: This Changes Everything (John
17:20-26)
Introduction: Review
People have come up with all sorts of desperate sounding
illustrations to explain the Trinity. You
ask, “Explain why Bible teaches that the one God has always existed in three
persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And some helpful soul will tell you, “Well, it’s
like a three leaf clover, or (for you physicists and engineers) it’s like water
that exists as ice, liquid, and steam.
Or the Trinity is like an egg, which has a yolk, a white, and a shell,
but is one egg.” And that’s a really compelling
illustration, isn’t it? Our God is like
a gigantic egg! It all sounds really bizarre. And the next question is this: how could the eggishness of God be anything
more than some curiosity? What
difference could this mystery possibly make to my life? And how could my heart ever be drawn out to a
God like this?
But dear friends, as we’ve seen in this series, this isn’t at all how the Trinity is explained to
us in the Bible. You never even see the
Trinity put forward as a confusing puzzle, a conundrum. Rather, we have our God, Father, Son, and
Spirit, put forward in the most wonderful, joyful, confident terms. It’s not presented to us as a question, but
as the answer to our questions.
What is God like?
Well, you could ask, before he created the universe, what was he doing? Jesus
tells us here in John 17:24, "You loved Me before the foundation of the
world" (John 17:24). The essence of
God is his love, and the three continually pour out love to one another and
receive love in return. God is a perfect
community of self-giving and receiving, united in infinite being. And loving others isn’t a strange thing for
God, because it’s at the center of who God is.
So, here at last is the right place to start. Forget the egg! The Bible says, “God is love.”
Imagine a god who’s always been a single person, alone for
all eternity. Obviously, god would not
be a Father eternally delighting in his beloved Son. He could perhaps become a Father, but he
wouldn’t be a Father. God could perhaps begin to love, but he wouldn’t be
love. Love requires an object. In fact, you should ask whether such a god
would even know what love is? Would he
know what fellowship is? How could
he? For that god could not from all eternity delight in the fellowship and love of
another, nor could he be love. He would
have no love to give, and no fellowship to share. He wouldn’t know how to love others. If god were not Trinity, you might end up
with a god to fear and obey, but not to love as father. And you wouldn’t find your heart drawn out to
him. But because he is a Trinity, God is
delightful. God is a fountain of love;
he is love, he could not not love. And
you simply could not say that of any other god.
And if God were a single person, that would not be true.
I point this out because we live in a day in which people
want to erase distinctions. People say
that all religions are the same, with different names for god, just like queso, formage, and ost are just different words for cheese. So it is with God. It’s just different names for the same thing,
and all religions therefore are basically the same. But this is absurd. You simply can’t stuff the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit into anyone else’s thought of God.
In your notes, I’ve put a picture of another god that I hope
won’t offend anyone, though we honor him all once a week and have a day in his
honor. Does anyone recognize him? Maybe you kids? It’s Thor.
Thor is one of the chief gods of the Vikings, rather cruel, and he likes
to smack down people. Now if Thor is
god, does it matter? Let me put it to
you this way, if the over-sexed, beer sloshing, war-god of the Vikings is
really god, you can hardly blame the Vikings for acting as they did. If Thor is god, you should be a Viking! And right after the service, we’ll go and be
godly. We’ll go out and smack down some
people, take some women, and drink beer.
The point is this:
Who God is has everything to do
with what it means to be godly, in
other words, what it means to be like God. And being like another god would look very,
very different. Consider the
bloodthirsty god of the Aztecs who demanded child sacrifice. You see that God, and you’ll know why the
Aztecs were such bloodthirsty conquerors and, for example, why their kings
demanded games be played to the death in their presence. Or think about the hormonal outbursts of the
gods of Greece and Rome, and you’ll learn something about why classical society
often bordered on debauchery.
One of the earliest creation stories we have is the one from
ancient Babylon called the Enuma Elish. In it, we learn why God created the world,
and us in it. The god Marduk puts it
bluntly. He creates mankind so that the
gods can have slaves. Love for others is
clearly not the heartbeat of Marduk. Of
course, he’d probably love himself, but that’s not the point.
Now, friends, our God is a Trinity, an eternal community of
love and joy. Surely, the God of the
Bible isn’t like any other god. And the
point today is that this changes
everything. What would it be like if
love and fellowship weren’t central to God’s being? If god were a single, solitary being, a
hermit in all eternity, surely you can forget other people. If god were cruel and proud, you can be cruel
and proud.
But here is our God, who doesn’t demand that we sacrifice
our children to him, but who comes in love to sacrifice himself for us, while
we were yet enemies. And so, it’s no
wonder that the two great commandments are to love, to love God with all that’s
in us and our neighbor as ourselves. For
that is being like God, overflowing with love others. When you start with the Trinity, you find a
godliness that’s very warm and attractive.
God says, “Be holy because I am holy.” And what does that mean? He goes on to say in that chapter, Leviticus
19, turn from idols and come before him with fellowship offerings. Have care for the poor, and forsake lying and
stealing. Don’t hate your brother in
your heart, but “you shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord” (Lev
19:17-19). This is the beauty of
holiness. John writes this: "Beloved, let us love one another, for
love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for
God is love" (1 John 4:7-8).
Now, someone will say, what about God’s wrath? Well, friends, more about this tonight, but
where do you think the wrath comes from?
It comes from his eternal love. One
writer puts it this way, “If I could twiddle my thumbs and yawn while my
daughters suffered, it would prove I didn’t really love them. … Love cares, and
that means it cannot be indifferent to evil” (Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity, p. 118). If you start with God as Trinity, it all
comes together, but if you miss this, you miss everything, and mess up
everything in your life. Augustine
therefore wrote 1500 years ago in is book on the Trinity: “In no other subject is error more dangerous,
or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more profitable” (Augustine,
De Trinitate 1.3.5; cited in Kevin
DeYoung, The Truth We Almost Forgot,
p. 49). So, what I’d like to do with you
this morning is to remind you why this changes everything. The Trinity determines everything in the Christian faith and life, of course. But I’ve selected five from this passage to
illustrate it today.
1. The Christian Life
The most basic definition of what it means to be a Christian
is given here. A Christian is someone
who has come to dwell in God and God in us.
We have been welcomed into the love, fellowship, and spiritual unity of
God, Father, Son, and Spirit. Verse 21, "that
they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also
may be one in Us" (John 17:21).
The most basic and important thing we can say about the
Christian life is that it’s a life in God and God in us. This is taught repeatedly. John writes in his first letter, "God
abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we
abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. … And we
have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who
abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:12-16). Or a few chapters back, Jesus says, "If
anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will
come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23).
Christianity isn’t primarily a matter of what we believe, or
what we do, or how we feel. It’s sharing
the very life of God in us. It’s called
a new birth, a new life, a new creation, Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col
1:27, John 3, 2 Cor 5:17). Galatians 2,
"It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I
now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
Himself for me" (Gal 2:20).
And when we partake of his life, we partake of his
love. Verse 26, “that the love you have
for me may be in them, and I in them.”
God gives his children his own love to share, and this makes us new from
the inside out, now overflowing with love as God is overflowing with love. And this is why the great commandant is what
it is: to love the Lord with all that’s
in us, and then our neighbor as ourselves.
You would never get that if you didn’t have a Trinity.
So life as a Christian involves having our hearts turned
from lesser loves, and unworthy loves, and unsatisfying loves, especially the
love of self, to the love God who is infinitely lovely, to find our hearts
captivated and expanded and enriched with him.
He is our treasure. It’s about
having the love of God made complete in us, and then overflowing to
others.
And here is the standard of our love: By this we know love, that Christ laid down
his life for us—while we were yet sinners and enemies. Remember this when a brother or sister sins
against you: your Father has sent his
Son in love to cover your sins. And when
our fellow Christians are hurtful to us, we’re likewise called to love them in
such a way that no sacrifice is too great and no kindness is too extravagant. There’s much, more I could say. But the Trinity shapes everything about the
Christian life, what it is and what it does.
2. The Good News
Jesus mentions twice in this passage about the good news
going to the world: that world may believe
that You, Father, sent me, and have loved them as you loved me.
Friends, what is the good news? And what does the Trinity have to do with
it? Well, this changes everything. If, like in many religions, god from all
eternity was just a solitary Lord, all about commanding, what would the gospel
be? The gospel might be that he’s the
ruler, we’ve broken the rules, but he maybe he’ll forgive us somehow; and we
won’t be punished and may get some benefits, provided we remain under his rule.
Now, you might hear the gospel presented something like
this. You’ve sinned. Jesus died for sinners. And if you accept that, you get forgiveness
and eternal life. Now, if that’s the
gospel, Jesus is basically just a cheap get-out-of-hell-free card. And it’s not like you’re enjoying God, or
loving God, though you’d probably be grateful, like a policeman who let you off
for speeding without writing a ticket.
Thanks a lot, Jesus! You’d be grateful,
but you wouldn’t love him. In fact,
you’d probably just love yourself and just want to save your own skin, rather
than the goal of it all which to know, love, and enjoy God our Father, Christ
our Redeemer, the Spirit our comforter.
If you don’t desire him, you’re thinking of a different God. You’re confusing him with someone else.
It’s very interesting, by the way, to listen to the new
atheists describe the kind of god that they don’t believe in. They invariably describe some other God
besides the Trinity, a good that’s not good news at all. They describe a god who’s a remote,
commanding, a cold judge, a kind of slave-master. It’s like the prodigal son’s older brother
said to his father, “Look, all these years I’ve been slaving for you”
(NIV). That’s the idea a lot of people
have. And they import that into
Christianity. They think that the God of
the Bible is just a heartless dictator, and they don’t want God to exist. And I agree.
If God is not love, if God is dictator, I don’t want God to exist
either. It’s not good news.
But our God, it’s totally different. The good news is not that we can merely be
forgiven and come back as servants under the reign of the eternal
dictator. What do you read here? God the Father embraces us with the love that
he has for his own Son. Verse 26, "I’ve
declared to them Your name … that the love with which You loved Me may be in
them, and I in them" (John 17:26). This is what we also proclaim. We proclaim God as Father who will embrace
all who come to him in his son with the very same love. We proclaim Christ as Lord, the Lord who’s
come to serve his people and lay down his life for them. We proclaim the Spirit who gives life from
the dead and brings us into communion with God, so that all that’s Christ’s is
ours and we cry out, “Abba, Father.” This
is a far richer God, and therefore a far richer gospel.
End of Verse 23, “You have loved them as you have loved
me.” You are as loved as Jesus. Does any other religion or philosophy offer
you anything remotely as good as that?
One writer puts it this way: "[The]
good news of salvation is that God, who in himself is eternally the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, has become for us the adoptive Father, the incarnate
Son, and the outpoured Holy Spirit. God
the Father sent the Son to do something for us and the Spirit to be something
in us, to bring us into the family life of God" (165).
Jesus uses the most tender and affectionate language to
describe his relationship with his Father in heaven. He dwells eternally, it says, in the bosom of
the Father (John 1:18). And that is
where we are being brought. We’re
redeemed not merely as creatures or slaves but as children, to enjoy the
limitless love and glory that the Son has always known.
3. Prayer
This context, of course, is a prayer. And Prayer is a Trinitarian experience. To begin, Jesus teaches us to pray to our
Father, and to remember that he knows, and cares, and delights to give good
gifts to his children. What other god
has prayers like that, I ask you. And
you’ll notice that prayer and praise in the Bible is almost exclusively
directed to God. I know that some are in
the habit of regular prayer to Jesus, but that’s not the Biblical pattern or
teaching. There are a small handful of
prayers to Jesus in the Bible, and none to the Spirit. But Jesus himself rather directs us to come with him as dearly loved children in
praying, “Our Father.”
And as our Mediator, Jesus brings us to the Father as our
father also, sharing in all the privileges of Christ. And we read the Spirit of adoption enables us
to cry, “Abba, Father,” from the heart, testifying to us that we are the
children of God. So by the Spirit we cry
what the Son himself has always cried as we come to our Father as his beloved
children. And this is how prayer is a
Trinitarian experience. The Spirit is
the wind in our sails, Christ our mediator enabling us to approach God as our
Father just as he always has.
And so we don’t pray as the irrelevant servants of a distant
God. We’ve been carried on the heart of
Jesus, our High Priest before our Father in heaven. And the Spirit of God within us cries,
“Father.”
You see what the Trinity has to do with prayer? The triune nature of our God is not an
encumbrance on Christianity but the very undergirding truth that makes it good,
lovely, and beautiful. This isn’t some
airy, impractical truth. It’s something
we can revel in every time we pray. Instead
of nervously calling, "O Distant Creator," we can pray "Our Dear
Father," enjoying the Son's own relationship and privileges. And we can do so with the Son's own boldness,
secure in him and enabled as he is by the Spirit. The father loves us as he loves the son. That’s why we pray. And that’s why we pray boldly.
4. The Church
More than once, the Bible joins the life of the church to
the triune life of God. Here it is in
our passage a few times, such as verse 21, “that they may be one, Father, just
as you are in me and I am in you.” These
words remind us how we are together to enjoy the same love and unity. And this is not just an invisible, spiritual
unity, you notice, but one that the world can see, “that the world may believe
that you have sent me.” The world will
see the church demonstrating the redeeming, healing power of love and be
ravished by our God, brought to believe in Christ.
The harmony of mankind has been shattered by sin and
everywhere today there are walls of hostility, broken homes, divided
communities, separation between rich and poor, red and yellow, black and
white. The Lord will have his church be
a visible alternative, a counter-culture, a place where the dividing walls have
been trampled down in his love. Here a
new race of people based not on flesh but spirit. Here is a new society, governed not from
earth but from heaven. Here is the city
of God where we dwell together secure in the love of God and each other.
The very fact that we were made in God’s image means that we
were made for fellowship. There has
always been an affectionate social life within God. And what do you think the church is supposed
to be therefore? Jesus chose twelve
disciples to be with him (Mark 3:14).
More and more today, people try to find fulfillment in
independence, not committing to relationships.
People are delaying or forsaking marriage, and slow to commit to a
church, and often change friends every couple years. Relationships are casual and open-ended. People don’t consider the value of family
ties when choosing a job or place to live, and so forth. We have shallower and fewer
relationships. But this is contrary to
the fact that we’ve been created in the image of God. What does is mean for the Son to have a
Father, and the Father to have a Son, the Son of his love, in whom he delights
and pours out love into heart by that Holy Spirit.
As we saw in a previous study, God created man male and
female for this reason, brining them together in marriage, where each is to
know and share the love, security, and delight that nothing but death can
separate, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.
And in the family, as in the church, we’re to enjoy Philadelphia, brotherly love, and storge, family affection.
Heaven itself is not described as a harem of virgins or a
beautiful wilderness, but as the city of God (Rev 21:2, 10). Nor should we now as Christians long to live
lives that are detached, disinterested, and self-consumed. We’re called to warm the community with the
love of God we’ve received.
We’re to be united in
fellowship, just as God is united in loving fellowship. You may have heard the Greek word for this,
which is koinonia, which also means sharing, communion, having in common. So in John 17:20, "all Mine are Yours,
and Yours are Mine" (John 17:10).
In the same way, we share the work of ministry, of giving
and receiving (Phil 4:15-16), so that no one has need (Acts 4:34-36), of using
our gifts for each other’s good (1 Cor 12:7), bearing one another’s burdens
(Gal 6:2), weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice (Rom
12). We share in the work of ministry to
the world, calling people to be reconciled to God and share in our joy (Phil
1:5).
All of this is brought out in the Lord’s supper, which is
called the communion, or participation, in the body of Christ, by the body of
Christ (1 Cor 10:16). This doesn’t mean
that we only commune in the sacrament.
But the Lord’s Supper is the solemn spiritual festival that binds us
together to him in that new covenant in his blood. And wherever we go, we are the Lord’s,
communing in his body and blood, receiving the blessings and benefits of his
death and new life.
And when we receive the bread from an ordinary
fellow-believer and pass it on to the next, it expresses the truth that the
church is a fellowship of giving and receiving, in which God’s gift is shared
among us, in which we all have something to give and something to receive. Imagine that someone wouldn’t give, that the
plate came to them and stopped. Part of
the church would suffer. And so it is in
our common ministry.
5. Assurance
What about our assurance?
If God’s just the heavenly Lord and we his servants, why wouldn’t he
cast us off if we offend him? Would
assurance be possible? But we have
something radically different. The
spirit unites us to His Son, so that we’re in
Christ Jesus. And therefore we’re
children of God. Now, the Father could
never weaken or cool in his love for his son, let alone send him away. And if we’re embraced by the eternal love of
the father, Christians are perfectly safe in the Son, who promises that none
will ever be snatched out of his or his father’s hand.
Sinclair Ferguson illustrates this well when he says, “I’ve
often reflected on the rather obvious thought that when his disciples were
about to have the world collapse in on them, our Lord spent so much time [here]
in the Upper Room speaking to them about the … Trinity. If anything could underline the necessity of
Trinitarianism for practical Christianity, that must surely be it!”
The Trinity comforts us in our sorrow. When Jesus told his disciples he was going
away and their hearts were troubled, the comfort he brings is through this
doctrine of the Trinity, “Do you believe that I am in the Father and the Father
is in me?” (John 14:10), “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you
from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will
bear witness about me,” (John 15:26), and “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth:
it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper
will not come to you. But if I go, I
will send him to you” (John 16:7).
Paul writes, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God"
(Col 3:3). Nothing can separate you from
the love of God, who is our shield, our mighty fortress, our hiding place (Ps
84:11, 18:2, 32:7).
Conclusion
Single-person gods must, by definition, have spent eternity
in absolute solitude. Before creation,
having no other persons with whom they could commune, they must have been
entirely alone. Love for others,
then, cannot go very deep in them if they can go for eternity without it. And so, not being essentially loving, such
gods are inevitably less than lovely. They
may demand our worship, but they cannot win our hearts.
What’s your Christian life like? What’s the shape of your faith, your
gospel? It all depends upon what your
God is like.
The basic problem in the world is not that we’ve strayed
from being law-abiding people but that we’ve strayed from him. And what is redemption, but to be brought
back as his beloved children. What is
the Christian life about? What are our
churches like, our marriages, our relationships, our mission? It’s all a reflection of the way that we
think about God.
And so Jesus says that He is the way. We must begin with a God who has a beloved
Son, a Father and Son of eternal love in the fellowship and communion of the
Spirit. Without Jesus, we can’t know God
as a loving Father. Without Jesus, we
can’t know him as our loving
Father.