The Augsburg Confession: The
Importance of the Trinity
Pastor Mathew Magera – 6/11/17 – Sermon 232
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Using the Lutheran
Confessional documents as a guide we are able to see just how much value is
placed in Scripture and how far believers were willing to go and how much they
were willing to sacrifice to reform the church in the Middle Ages. Last week I
preached on the responsibility of the church expanding its boundaries for
ministry and how that expansion is necessary to find new answers to the
repeated questions of ministry. We must know that there comes challenges to
that very calling. For if those boundaries are expanded upon too far, the
church fails to be the church any longer. The Protestant Reformation marks a
time boundaries needed to be assessed and redrawn. It is always good to be
refreshed in our understanding, to be reminded of the good news of the Gospel,
the role of the church throughout the world and the love of God. One thing that
is challenging to perceive about the Reformation is that it was not motivated
by any desire to create new confessions of church doctrine. The Reformation was
not an intentional fight against the Roman Catholic Church.
Let me give you this
example. Every once in a while Lane and I need to go through the struggle of
clipping the nails of our animals. It has always been a struggle to clip our
dog's nails. Even as much as I hold her on my lap and comfort her and move
slowly, she doesn't like it, but eventually the job gets done. Looking at this
from my perspective, I'm doing it for her benefit. I don't want her to be
uncomfortable with long nails. I don't want her long nails to have a negative
effect on our furniture or any person who happens to be in the house. From her
perspective, however, it's possible she thinks I cut her nails because I don't
like her or that I'm intentionally trying to torture her. While perhaps a bit
far-fetched, we might be able to think of the Protestant Reformation in this
way. The reformers only wanted to trim the nails of the Roman Catholic Church.
There was no hostility, only love. They didn’t want to create a new church
because that just wouldn’t work. Could you imagine if every time I needed to
cut my dog’s nails that I just traded her in for a new dog with neatly trimmed
nails? It would be ridiculous. The reformers understood this very idea. They
didn’t want a new church with new confessions, they just wanted to trim up the
current Church. But, this notion proved to be only an illusion. So it was also
with the Augsburg Confession. Written 13 years after the posting of the 95
Theses, the Augsburg Confession was intended only to promote and put into
writing the basic beliefs and understandings. It was never intended to be the
foundation for a new church body.
Nevertheless, the Augsburg
Confession is what it is, a collection of articles that define and put into
words the faith of the church and today we consider the purpose of the first
four articles. Today happens to be Trinity Sunday and that gives us a great
diving board to begin exploring this confessional document because the Holy
Trinity is so important to our faith and how the rest of our confessional faith
develops. Yet, the idea of the Holy Trinity is so vague and confusing that we
often times have trouble explaining it.
Philip Melanchthon, the
writer of the Augsburg Confession said, "We do better to adore the
mysteries of the Deity than to investigate them." And so, what we'll do
today is adore the mysteries. Yet, we can't help but try to investigate them,
can we?
We've tried to compare the
Trinity to water saying that like the Holy Spirit water can be found in three
forms, gas, liquid and solid. But this doesn't quite describe the Trinity
because it would show that God is not three distinct persons but is just
revealed in three different forms. Perhaps you've heard the Trinity described
like the sun, in which you have the star itself, the light and the heat. Or a
three leaf clover. Or an apple, have skin, the flesh and the core. Any of these
can be used to describe the nature of God in Trinity but none of them are fully
correct. Each of them fails to say without error that God is three distinct
persons yet one God. So, being so difficult to explain, it's very easy for this
concept to be pushed aside and only used when absolutely necessary as long as
someone doesn't pull us aside and say, "hey, what's this Trinity thing all
about? How's it possible?"
Yet, the Trinity is so very
much important to us that we may not even realize it. So important in fact that
when writing the Augsburg Confession Philip Melanchthon decided that it needed
to be discussed right up front before going further, and only enough that the
mystery of the Trinity would be adored and not investigated. This was because
in order to discover the purpose of the church, we first have to understand, to
the best of our ability, God. Before faith can be developed, the first article
has to define God and the second, third and fourth have to build upon that
first one to teach us about God and salvation.
Without an understanding of
God and salvation, the formation of the church would be useless. Today happens
to be Trinity Sunday and these four articles, while seemingly different, show
us why the Trinitarian God is so important to our faith. In fact, without
belief in the God as Triune, the rest of the articles and the idea of salvation
itself begins to crumble. So, what I want to show you today is exactly what our
world would be like without the Trinity so that we are able to see just how
much our faith relies on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and how important
that Trinity is.
WITHOUT THE
TRINITY, JESUS IS NOT GOD
When we think of salvation
we think of Jesus, right? Well, what if Jesus wasn't God? What if Jesus was
just a man, just a prophet? Then salvation through Jesus probably wouldn't mean
anything to us, our faith would be hurt. In order for our idea of salvation to
be true, Jesus needs to be God. Only when we think of God as Triune, Father,
Son and Holy Spirit does Jesus have that saving power. Our reading from
Colossians was intentionally picked because it makes this point in about the
clearest way it can be made.
"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all
creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all
things have been created through him and for him." These are the very words of
Paul showing us how Jesus is God. Paul is using this opportunity to make it
clear that without a doubt Jesus is God and that Jesus' pure divinity is not
only important but absolutely necessary for salvation. We'll get to why in a
minute. But, if Paul's words don't convince us enough, this very same language
is used in the Gospel of John. Right in the very first chapter of John we read,
"In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been
made." From John and Paul. All things were made through Jesus, Jesus,
who is God himself. So clear, so simple to understand, yet also so very tempting
to dissect.
So, at this point what the
Augsburg Confession has to do is to define God as the Holy Trinity, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit, one God, three persons and then to confirm that the Son of
God, Jesus, is monumental and absolutely necessary in the salvation of
Christians. It does this in articles one and three. The Augsburg Confession
says this Trinity is a really important concept for people to know, that God
exists as three distinct persons and is yet one God. So, let's put that first
because without it, we can't explore salvation any further. Thus, the full
divine power of Jesus is very important to us. Without the Trinity Jesus is not
God but because God is Trinity, Jesus is God. With that understanding that
Jesus is God, we can move into thinking about what salvation is and what it
means for us.
WITHOUT THE
TRINITY, THERE IS NO CURE FOR ORIGINAL SIN
Jesus becomes very important
for these next two points. Without the Trinity, there is no victory over
original sin. Now, if you're not familiar with that term original sin, it's a
term that really is just how it sounds. Original sin is the idea that since
Adam and Eve sinned, anyone who is conceived after them inherits this condition
of being without the fear of God or having any trust in God. Even an infant who
doesn't even have the concept of sin is an inheritor of this sinful condition.
So, going back to the Trinity, without it, there is no victory over this
condition of original sin because if Jesus isn't part of the Trinity to die on
the cross and if the Holy Spirit is not part of the Trinity to be given in Holy
Baptism, original sin still remains overpowering in our lives. That's another
point for the Holy Trinity. Because the Son of God has the fullness of divine
power, the problem of original sin can now be and is wiped out through his
death on the cross. Because Jesus is God, that sin you committed last week is
paid for. The sin you will commit this afternoon, paid for. I always imagine a
scenario when someone is asked if they are a good person. They think for a
while and stumble onto an answer like, “well, I’ve done a few bad things but
overall I consider myself a good person.” Well, unfortunately, for that person,
those few bad things are enough to condemn you. Thankfully because of our Triune
God we have that cure for those few bad things (which are actually many bad
things) and we have hope because of the Trinity.
WITHOUT THE
TRINITY THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION
Without the Trinity, there
is no justification. Right away here we have another big Lutheran term,
justification. Being justified is much different than having victory over sin.
Jesus may have won the victory over sin but we are still sinful. Perhaps the
easiest picture to paint for you in thinking about justification is to think of
a word processor on a computer and how you can organize what you are typing.
You can align it to the left where all of your text lines up neatly on the left
side of the screen but will appear jagged on the right. You can align right and
which does the exact opposite. You can align center and have everything line up
with the center of the page or to make everything smoother you can justify.
Justify takes away all of those jagged edges and makes it smooth on both sides.
Jesus is the only one that can accomplish justification within us. This is what
the fourth article of the Augsburg Confession goes to say. We are not capable
of justifying ourselves. We cannot by our own strength justify ourselves, we
cannot by our own merits or works justify ourselves. The only one who can
justify us, the only one who can take away those jagged edges of our sinful
selves is who? Jesus. Without the Trinity, those jagged edges are still there.
If Jesus is not God, there is no justification apart from the old Jewish Law
that as we well know is impossible to maintain.
So, you see, it all circles
back to the Trinity, giving that divine power to Jesus in order to receive that
justification. Because Jesus is God, because God is Trinity, three in one and
one in three, we have received justification through Jesus who died. Going back
to our reading from Colossians, Paul writes, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him
(Jesus), and through him to reconcile himself to all things, whether things on
earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the
cross." That peace is the forgiveness of sin and the gift of
justification.
* * *
Now, upon hearing this
wonderful news about the Trinity, how can we apply it today? Why is it so
important to be going back to something as basic as understanding God like
this? If we remember what was going on at the time the Augsburg Confession was
written, the very basic understanding of God was the absolute first thing that
is mentioned. It was the very foundation for the rest of the points the
reformers were trying to make in the reformation of the church. So, the reason
this is so important to us now is because the church in the world today feels
like it is within another reformation. The church is being challenged on all sides
by the cultures and societies that sometimes have the ability to go in
directions contrary to Scripture's teaching. If we don't have a clear
understanding of God and how God is portrayed in Scripture, it is going to be
very difficult for the church to build the foundation necessary to reform.
We are reformers. Whether we
like it or not, I believe the Christian church in the world today is in the
midst of another reformation. There are people and churches that discount what
the Bible says, that play down the miracles and teachings of Jesus and even
reject a physical resurrection. In a society where tolerance reigns, the
authority of Scripture is disappearing, Christian discipline is falling away.
We are reformers. We broke off from the mainstream where after many years of
going only slightly off course it was realized that something so small can
create such a big gap over time. Churches that teach and preach the Bible,
unfortunately, have fewer people but they have stronger disciples, yearning for
the very truth of God. We need to be reminded again and again to immerse
ourselves in God's Word because the sinner in us will do everything it can to
avoid it. Our knowledge and study of God's Word should not get rusty.
Many people are calling this
year the Luther year. People from around the world are flocking to Germany this
year to see the places where the Protestant Reformation played out. Perhaps you
are overwhelmed hearing about this 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
Perhaps it has encouraged you to learn more about our Lutheran faith. Wherever
you stand, as we continue through this year, let us be reminded of the good
news of the Gospel that comes to us and that the Reformation sought only to
make that good news more prominent and accessible. We are given that same good
news through Christ who overcomes sin, who justifies us not by anything we do
but by His love for us. Let us now go in the light of Christ to continue
bearing that good news to the world and digging our feet into that beautiful
foundation that is our God, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and let’s
help to reform the church so that just as the gift of Christ is received by us
today, He may be received by all. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.