Jo Vitale [00:00:43] Good morning, everybody, and a special happy Mother's Day to all the moms in the room, or anybody who's a mom and is watching online this morning as well. Last night, as we were falling asleep, my four-year-old, he says to me, "Mom, are you fine?" And I was like, "Yeah, I'm fine." And he goes, "No, really. Are you like, fine, fine fine?" So I said, "Yeah I'm, fine. Why do you ask?" He goes, "Well, tomorrow is Mother’s Day." I was, like, oh, it filled me right up. Made up for the other 364 days of the year. But speaking of mothers, when my own mother heard that I'd been asked to speak on the Trinity with a sermon that was entitled, Math Problems, she laughed. In fact, my whole family laughed because they know that when it comes to math, I am the problem. It's possible that you have the wrong Vitale with you up here this morning. My husband Vince is a trained analytic philosopher who was a literal mathlete in high school. Well, I spent my time in math class just kind of doodling in the margins. 

‍

[00:01:40] So for all the non-mathletes listening this morning, I feel your pain. I really do. But don't start daydreaming about the post-service doughnuts just yet, because I promise you today's topic is the furthest thing from boring. We're talking about the Holy Trinity, the extraordinary, mind-boggling, universe defining belief at the center of the Christian faith that there is a God who is one in three persons, revealed to us as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Now, sure, the math of the Trinity is mind-stretching, but personally, I think that's the least interesting thing about it. Today, we're going to be asking the most relational question that you could ever ask of anybody. Who are you, God? What are you like? And if I get to know you, are you somebody that I would like? This question of who is God is a question that should grip every person on the planet. I say that for various reasons, but let me just name two of them. Firstly, because you can't love what you don't know. Imagine if I told you I was married, but then you asked me the following questions. Okay, what does your husband do? Great question, actually. 

‍

[00:02:58] I have no idea what he does during the day. Okay, well, where's he from? Well, you know what, actually, I never thought to ask that. All right, well what's his eye color then? You know, I'm not sure. I've actually never got close enough to look at his face. Okay, well, what do you love about him then? Well, I guess I've never really thought about that before. He's just sort of there. Wouldn't that be ridiculous? And yet, how many of us we say I grew up Christian, now I'm kind of spiritual, I attend church every once in a while. But we've never really thought to ask God questions or paid any attention to whether he might have something he wanted us to know about him. We just kind of assume we know whatever there is to know. It's enough. We're good. But a relationship based purely on the idea of somebody is no relationship at all. And secondly, this question matters because until we know him, we'll never know ourselves. So many of us spend our lives getting tangled up in questions of personal identity, but we're going about the whole thing backwards. 

‍

[00:04:07] If you're a created being, which Christianity says that you are, then the question, who am I? It's redundant until we first ask our creator, who are you? Because it's the answer to that question that will determine the nature of reality, the universe, and our own place and purpose in it. In other words, you have a stake in this question this morning. The implications for you personally are life-determining. Now, the good news for us this morning is that the God of Christianity has no interest in playing hard to get. As far as it's possible for infinite beings to comprehend the infinite, he actually wants us to know him. And both through the testimony of the Bible and specifically through the witness of Jesus Christ, God makes clear that the way He wants us know Him is as one God in three persons. As the Trinity of the One Divinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If you want to see how Jesus himself talks about the Trinity, I recommend, when you get home, taking a slow read of John chapter 14 and just paying particular attention to the way that Jesus consistently speaks of the Father, himself and the Holy Spirit as being in one another and yet at the same time as relationally distinct from one another. 

‍

[00:05:33] Now, the reason these relational dynamics between those three are so important is because they reveal that God isn't just swapping out costumes depending on what the situation calls for. God isn't morphing from Father to Son to Holy Spirit depending on which God mode is required in that moment. This isn't a Clark Kent Superman situation, glasses off, cape on, here we go. Rather, the biblical witness that we're given, it points to something more like this, that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. But the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit. The Son is not the Father or the holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is not the Son or the Father. Mind-stretching? Absolutely. But is the concept of a trinitarian God illogical? Do we have a math problem? Or in the words of a talented Muslim spoken word artist I heard a number of years ago, 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 is not going to get you a pass in mathematics. Yes, even I can discern that. 

‍

[00:06:37] If we're saying that one God plus one God plus one God equals one God, then that would indeed be bad math. Likewise, one person one person plus one person equals one person would be bad math. But here's the thing, the reason this criticism doesn't land is because Christians are actually saying something different. Because when we say that God is three and we say the God is one, we say that with respect to different categories. We're not saying that God is three Gods and one God, and we're not saying that God is three persons and one person. We're saying that he is one God and three persons. And so long as those categories are distinct, then philosophically and mathematically speaking, there is no contradiction. There's a way in which God is one, namely that he's a one substance, a being. And yet there's another entirely different way in which he is three, namely in terms of his personhood. The theologian Jeremy Begbie suggests that maybe part of our problem is that we're too reliant upon our visual senses when it comes to thinking about the Trinity. 

‍

[00:07:46] Take colors as an example. You can have two distinct colors, red and blue, but as soon as they occupy the same space, we can't see them as red or blue anymore. Instead, they just all merge to become purple. And we have the same trouble when it comes to thinking about the trinity. It's really hard to visualize God as both distinctly three persons and yet also one being, because as soon as we put him together, they all kind of blur in our mind's eye. But what if, instead of trying to see an answer, we applied the framework of listening instead? What if we conceived of the Trinity through our auditory senses? In musical terms, if I played you a single note, that one sound would fill the entirety of your audible space. It's not like there's a sound that you're hearing over here, but over here you're hear silence. No, the note is filling up the entire of your sense. But if I then added another two notes to form a three-note chord, those notes wouldn't cancel each other out, and nor would they be heard in a different place. Rather, all three notes would fill up the exact same auditory space, and yet at the same time, if you focused on the individual notes and you paid close attention, you would still be able to hear each of them as distinct from the others. 

‍

[00:09:09] This is a way of creatively conceiving of the Trinity that I find helpful if for no other reason than it highlights for me how rigidly we can try to squeeze God into conceptual categories that just may not apply to a being who is so far beyond us. Because the truth of the matter is this. While the Trinity is not illogical, God certainly is mysterious. So mysterious, in fact, that I'm not convinced I've ever heard an analogy for the Trinity that wasn't in some respect heretical. St. Augustine of Hippo said it best in the fourth century, anybody who denies the Trinity loses his salvation, but anyone who tries to understand the Trinity loses his mind. Which door will it be this morning? Option A or B? That's not necessarily a problem with the Trinity, is it? That's a problem with us. It fascinates me how differently we react to the idea of mystery depending upon which realm of study we're in, specifically whether we're talking about faith or science. For example, one of the mysteries of the Christian faith is the claim that God is omnipresent; that He's everywhere all the time. And one of mysteries of quantum physics is that it would seem the same particle can be in two different places at once. 

‍

[00:10:36] Well, to take another example, the Christian faith claims that Jesus has both a divine nature and a human nature. And relatedly, science claims that waves have a particle nature and particles have a wave nature, even though they seem to be two very different types of things. Or again, faith claims we can really know God, even though there is also a great deal about him that is far beyond our ability to comprehend. Science claims that we can know a lot about the universe, even though roughly 95% of it is made up of either dark matter or dark energy phenomena that are mysteries to us. You see, all of these claims are extremely mysterious. And yet, when it comes to science, mystery is exciting. Wow, how amazing. The universe is even cooler than I thought. But then we get to Christianity and we're like immediately suspicious and critical. If I can't figure this one out or solve this mystery, it must be because there's a problem with the Christian account of reality. But you see the double standard here. Why think that way? 

‍

[00:11:42] I actually think the total opposite is true. If we could easily comprehend the nature of God, that would be sure evidence that it is not God we're talking about at all. What kind of small God would he be if we could pin him down with analogies or define him with terminology or fit him into our tiny little heads? If even the fundamental scientific features of the universe are so far beyond us, how much more should we expect the one who created them all to be? Mystery is not evidence against God. Quite the opposite, it's a lack of mystery that would be evidence against God. It does beg the question, however, when we're talking about a being whose ways are so much higher than our ways and whose thoughts are so higher than our thoughts, is approaching him like a math problem really the best approach of getting to know him. Having been married to me for 15 confounding years now, Vince can vouch for the fact that treating me like a specimen to be studied or a math equation in need of balancing is a futile and infuriating pursuit. Despite his many valiant attempts, I remain happily unbalanced. 

‍

[00:12:57] And sure, Vince might glean some random data points every once in a while, but approaching me that way certainly won't get him to my heart. If we truly want to know God, then we need to stop thinking of Him solely as a puzzle to be solved and start approaching Him as a being to relate to. And when we come at His heart that way, far from seeing the Trinity as a problem in need of fixing, we begin to appreciate just how stunning God really is. There are two incredible implications of God's triune nature, his three-in-oneness that I want to draw your attention to in particular this morning. Imagine you're sitting here and you've dazed out from all the math and you start to wonder, well, who is this lady on stage with a weird accent anyway? And so you head to social media and you pull up my profile to find the following status. Joe Vitale is love. Now, I'm guessing you'd immediately think two things. Number one, arrogance. And number two, that makes no sense. It must be a typo. 

‍

[00:14:07] How can anybody claim to be love? Love isn't something you are. Love is something you do, and nor can you do it alone. By nature, love requires both a subject and an object. I can't just be love all by myself. I need somebody to love. But if God is simply one, that creates a little bit of a problem because that means that he also cannot be loved. The most that could be said of him is that he's loving. But even then, in order for that to be true, God would first have to create to have somebody to love. And if God had to create in order to love, then that means love is not intrinsic to who he is, rather it is dependent upon his own creation. And that raises a problematic question. Was God somehow lacking and needed creatures to be fulfilled? And if so, in what sense is he really God if he relies upon creation to complete him? Then contrast to this account of reality, Christianity paints such a different picture. In the words of the apostle John, when we're talking about the Christian God, we're taking about a God who is love. That is not a typo. How can this be? Because He's Trinity. 

‍

[00:15:33] And as such, God didn't need to create a universe at all and His character would still have been perfectly complete and perfectly loving because He would have existed eternally in the perfectly loving relationship of the Trinity. Now as human beings, we can find it hard to conceive of what a perfect relationship like this might look like because our own versions of love are always limited to some degree. One of the best examples we have is in a lifelong marriage, the kind where a couple continue to pursue each other over so many decades that there truly is a sense in which they're living out the Bible's definition of marriage as one flesh. Knowing each other so well that they can finish each other's sentences; intuitively making the same choices because over the years, they've just learned how to preference one another, even adopting each other mannerisms to the point that they weirdly start to look like each other. Poor Vince got the short end of the stick there. 

‍

[00:16:28] But we might think of the Trinity as pushing this kind of relationship to its limits. An eternal relationship in which all three are so completely united in love, in understanding and in will that to speak of three persons is to speak of one God. That is the extent of their perfect intimacy. But if that's what our Creator is like, then what does it mean for creatures like us? Well, it means that God didn't create you to get something out of you. You're not a means to an end. In the nicest possible way, God doesn't need you at all. He created you simply because He wanted to, because He wanted you. You exist because you were made from the overflow of a love so strong and so abundant that God couldn't bear to keep it all to Himself, so He made you to share that love with. No wonder we're a species obsessed with relationships, a species who write songs proclaiming all you need is love and who weep hysterically in movie theaters when the heroine dramatically proclaims, "I'll never let go, Jack," before ruthlessly pushing the man who saved her life into the icy Atlantic Ocean when there was clearly room for him on the giant floating door. 

‍

[00:17:51] And yes, I know it's been over a quarter of a century, but I'm still not over it. Maybe in the next quarter of century I'll get there. It makes sense as a species that we would be hard-wired for relationships in this way because a relationship is exactly what we find at the center of reality. No wonder we crave intimacy. We're made in the image of a God who defines it. And yet at the same time, if the end goal of intimacy is to be fully known and fully loved, then no wonder we never arrive. Humanly speaking, it's actually not possible. But that's not by accident, that's by design. Human relationships were never supposed to be the solution. They are signposts pointing us in the right direction, pointing us toward the God who is love. Now sometimes when we imagine God's love for us, I think we picture it as if we're kind of getting a watered down version. So there's God in this epic eternal love relationship, and here we are forever on the outside looking in, settling for whatever crumbs of affection God might happen to throw our way. But according to the Bible, that is setting your expectations way too low. Certainly not how Jesus talks about it. 

‍

[00:19:14] "As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love," says Jesus. Did you catch that? Here's Jesus talking about the perfect love that God the Father has for him. And then he goes on to say, in the same way that the father has loved me, so have I loved you in that very same way. If there's just one takeaway from your time here this morning, let it be this. You have absolutely no clue just how loved you are. Whatever idea you have in your head or whatever you're feeling in your heart this morning, not only is it not even in the same vicinity of the love that God has for you, it's not even the same universe. In the words of the ancient poem, 

‍

The Love of God, 

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

‍

[00:20:28] And secondly, God reveals his love in a Trinitarian way. I've been a Christian most of my life. But about two decades in, I realized I had veered off into some seriously skewed perspectives on the Holy Trinity. And it kind of went something like this. God the Father was really mad at me, and He hated me. And so Jesus his Son was forced to step in to rescue me so that the Father didn't kill me. And the Holy Spirit, well, who knows? He was just off doing what ghosts do best, probably, ghosting us. This was such a fundamentally flawed view of God. Because God's attributes are not split between His persons. This isn't the origin story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. He is grumpy God. He is happy God. He is bashful God. He's really shy. Quite the opposite, the Bible presents us with a God so united in His will and character that to speak of the actions of one is to see the heart of them all. And yet at the same time, part of the beauty of the Trinity is that through these distinct roles of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that they play in our lives, we get to experience God's love in a far richer, deeper, more multifaceted way. 

‍

[00:21:47] So we get know Him as a Father who loves us. There are many kinds of fathers, but the most famous story Jesus ever told is of God who is Father to the prodigal. This Father who misses his absent rebellious child so much that every day that he's from home, he keeps his eye out to the horizon just waiting and watching. And when at last he sees him coming staggering home, he just takes off running and he embraces him and he kisses him and he gives him the family signet ring as a sign that his status as a son is restored. And then he throws him the most ginormous party. Don't get it confused. This is not a God who wants you dead, he's the Father who longs to restore you to life. He doesn't give you up for lost, he is overjoyed when you're found. Once we understand the heart of the Father, it completely flips everything that we thought we knew about the cross. In the words of theologian John Stott, God does not love us because Christ died for us. Christ died because God loves us. 

‍

[00:22:56] Put from your mind any notion of Jesus the Son needing to coerce the Father into loving us, because it all starts with the love of the Father. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. And here on Mother's Day, that's quite a thought, isn't it? There are many things I can imagine willingly giving up to save somebody else's life. I can even imagine various scenarios where I really hope I would give my own life. But you know what I wouldn't willingly give? My own child, my beloved Son. I'd rather give my own life a thousand times than pay that price. And yet as much as I love my children, I know the father loves the son more. To give up his only beloved son in order to rescue and restore his prodigal children raises one absolutely massive question, just how much must he love us to endure that kind of grief? And Jesus himself answers that question for us in John 17: So that the world may know that You (the father) sent Me and loved them (that's us) even as You have loved Me. Do you see the parallel? Just as we're told that Jesus loves us in the same way that the Father loved Him, now He's telling us that the father loves us in the way He loves Jesus. 

‍

[00:24:32] To speak of the love of one person of the Trinity is to speak of love of them all. Which is why, just as Jesus doesn't have to talk the Father into loving us, so too the Father doesn't need to force His Son to come and rescue us. Throughout His ministry on earth, Jesus is so abundantly clear that He came to seek and save the lost and to give His life as a ransom for the many. Yes, the Father sent Jesus, but it was also Jesus' choice to come. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep. I lay down my life. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I once heard someone say that when you're pushed to your visceral limit, that's when the real you comes out. When you're beaten on, when you push around, when you are crushed by life, that's where we see who somebody really is. What comes out of you then? So what comes out Jesus when he was pushed to his visceral limit in his final hours of betrayal, mockery, and extreme torture? We see the loyalty of a son looking first to the needs of his brokenhearted mother. From the cross where he was dying, Jesus asked a friend to bring her into his home. 

‍

[00:25:54] We see compassion of a savior looking at the criminal next to him who's crying out for mercy. Jesus tells him, "I promise you today, you will be with me in paradise." And we see the forgiveness of God who looks down upon those who are killing Him and with a heart full of love, Jesus prays over them, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." We're presented with so many portraits of love in this world, but the cross reframes them all. Because when you're pushed to your visceral limit, the real you comes out. And what came out of Jesus? A God who is love. And yet in His kindness, God doesn't leave us alone at the foot of the cross wondering how do we possibly go on without Him? Instead, Jesus makes this unbelievable promise to His followers the night before He dies. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. That you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 

‍

[00:27:10] I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you and on that day you will realize that I am in my father and you are in me and I am in you. Just pause for a moment and consider what this promise actually means for us. When you become a Christian, God draws so close that the Spirit of the living God Himself comes to live inside of you, the third person of the Trinity. Becoming a Christian is not just about a change in belief, it's as much about a change in power. It's why Jesus tells us that we will receive power, (Dunamis in Greek, our word for dynamite) when the Holy Spirit comes upon us. Power to become the kind of people that God actually created us to be. Power to finally live the abundant, meaningful life He made for us to live. And power to engage with others with the kind love that is out of this world. That's how real the presence of the Holy spirit is in our lives. The Holy Trinity is so much more than a math problem. He's a father who loves us. He's the son who saves us, and he's a spirit who transforms us. 

‍

[00:28:26] Getting to know God, it's not about solving a formula. It's about being invited into a family. So which aspect of God's invitation are you finding hardest to accept this morning? Maybe it's the love of a father. Perhaps you can't even meet your own parents' expectations, let alone a divine parent. All your life, you've been told you're never enough, that you'll never be worthy of love. Because of the Trinity, that is not true. Not true because you have a father God who's been loving his son for all eternity and who loves you with the very same love. For others, maybe it's the forgiveness of a savior that just seems so impossible. There's just no way. God, not after the harm I've done, the lies I've told, the relationships that I've wrecked. If God really knew me, there is no way that He would come running. There's no way He'd want me back. Again, the Trinity proves that is not true. Not true because you have a savior sent by the father to make such a sacrifice on your behalf that he's already paid for every wrong you've ever done. Forgiveness is already yours this morning, given by the Son who came to set you free. 

‍

[00:29:45] Or maybe it's transformation. Some of you have been trying to break free from destructive habits for so long that you've just resigned yourself to a lack of power. You're so disillusioned by life, you've stopped expecting it to be meaningful or impactful. Now you're just trying to get through it. Just don't believe anything can ever change. Again, not true. Not true. Because the Spirit of the Living God, the same Spirit who hovered over the waters when God spoke creation into existence and who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, has been sent to renew and restore every part of your life by literally coming to live inside of you. All you have to do is say, "Yes, God. Yes I want you." The love of a father, the forgiveness of a savior, the empowering of the Holy Spirit. Whatever our needs are this morning, the Trinitarian God has already met them. And all that's left is for us to believe and to receive from Him this morning the fullness of who He is and the fullness of who He desires to be to you. The Trinity of Divinity. Let me just close with a blessing for you all. So may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all now and forevermore. Amen. 

‍