June 12, 2022 “Triple Truth” – John 16:12-15

John 16:12-15
“Triple Truth”
June 12, 2022 – Trinity Sunday

I can’t wait to teach our grandson to fish, but he’s not ready yet. There’s so much I’d like to share with him: how to bait a hook or tie on a fly; where to find fish in a stream or lake; how to cast a line; on and on. But at twenty months hold, he can’t handle it right now. All I can do is hold up a plastic fish puppet over Skype and listen as he responds, “Glug, glug, glug!” He’s just got that much so far.

In the hours before His arrest and death on the Cross, Jesus had much to say and teach to His disciples. John recorded a great deal of it here for us in his Gospel. Yet in it all, this fifth and final statement about the Holy Spirit begins with Jesus telling them, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

Like other times as we read the Gospels, our curiosity rises up here. What did Jesus have to say for which they were not yet ready? Was it more about the meaning of the crucifixion that was about to happen? Was it training for the mission to the world which He gave them? Was it more detailed doctrinal truth, like the concept of God as holy Trinity, which we’re celebrating today?

The simple fact is: we don’t know what the disciples didn’t know. Nor should we presume to guess what those things might have been. The truth is that there are still many things Jesus would like to say to us, but we are not ready to bear them. And that may be partly by our own fault and unwillingness to be guided by the Holy Spirit.

Verse 13 says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” I love going out and exploring new fishing spots on my own. Last month while at the coast I did just that and found a beautiful little pond where the fish were fat and happy and willing to bite almost anything I flung at them. Yet other times I’ve driven to a huge lake or a rushing river and needed a guide to help me know where to start, to navigate me to the parts of the water that held fish and to show me what flies would work.

Jesus knew that you and I would need guidance in and upon the rushing waters of this life. As we said on Ascension Sunday, He departed just so that His Spirit could come and be everywhere and with anyone seeking that kind of guidance.

Yet talking about the Holy Spirit’s guidance can be a tricky business. It’s easy to imagine, and perhaps you’ve experienced it first hand, that sincere Christian people may claim the Holy Spirit has led them to conclusions about doctrine or about Christian living or even about politics which are diametrically opposed to each other. How are we to sort that out? How shall we adjudicate opposing claims to spiritual truth?

We need to begin with what Jesus went on to say right here, what guided early Christians from the beginning. Jesus said in verse 13 that the Spirit would lead them “into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears…” Then, at the beginning of verse 14, Jesus says, “He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” The Holy Spirit is not a free agent, not some independent spiritual force disconnected from Jesus Himself. The Spirit comes on behalf of and in the name of both Jesus and His Father. That’s exactly what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is all about, that the three persons of God are, in heart and mind and will, One God.

So the first check on any movement or truth which claims to come from the Holy Spirit is just whether it lines up with what we know of Jesus. That’s the same test the apostles were given. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about their various experiences of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, prophecy, he referred them back to Jesus, taught them that they were the Body of Christ, that the same love they received through Jesus was how the true Spirit would lead them to treat each other.

Yes, it can still be complicated. Just like two Christians can claim the Holy Spirit as their guide for going in opposite directions, we can claim to be doing what Jesus taught and end up doing very different things. But sometimes it’s crystal clear.

Last week a pastor in our country stood up and railed against homosexuality and said that gay people in this country deserve the death penalty, that they should all be lined up and shot in the back of the head. Friends, whatever you think about gay marriage, whether you believe it’s wrong or not, we all know that what that pastor said is not what Jesus would say. Whatever spirit guided that sermon is not the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it’s that simple and we need to say so.

Jesus will not contradict Himself. That means that any further truth into which the Holy Spirit leads God’s people will always be consistent with and come out of what we already know about Jesus. That’s how slavery came to an end first in England and Europe and then in this country. Christians realized that ownership of other people, particularly of other Christians. simply was not consistent with what Jesus taught. The Holy Spirit guided them into truth they hadn’t been ready to bear yet. The Spirit convicted their hearts to recognize a deeper consequence of what it means to follow Christ.

It might be tempting to limit what Jesus said here to the first generation of Christians. Some interpreters will do that. That “all the truth” which the Spirit would bring was given to those disciples only back then. They wrote it down here in the Bible. So there’s no more need to look to the Holy Spirit for guidance. We just read and study the Bible to find out everything we need to know because “all the truth” is right here.

Yet, just like those first Christians and all who came after them, you and I live in a constantly changing world. We cannot possibly just open the Bible and find direct and clear answers about all sorts of issues we face. There are no Bible verses about social media or wearing masks or democratic elections or guns or narcotics. Christians can do one of two things about such matters. You can simply ignore the Bible and do whatever you personally desire, whether it’s putting on a mask or voting or buying an assault rifle. Many take that route, believing that God has nothing to say about most of our personal choices.

Yet if we believe that Jesus’ words about the Holy Spirit are here for our benefit as well as for Christians long gone, then much of the way we live is not just a matter of personal choice. The Holy Spirit was sent to guide us into actions which reflect our commitment to Jesus, even if He said nothing specific about a choice we have. As Paul says in our epistle lesson from Romans, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,” the love that we saw and learned from Jesus. If the Holy Spirit is guiding us, then that same divine love will guide both what we choose to believe and what we do.

On this Trinity Sunday, we also read from Proverbs 8. We hear the voice of “Wisdom,” personified as a woman calling out to be heeded. We skipped the verses where she asks those who hear to pay attention, to seek and follow wisdom. We focused on verses in which Wisdom says she was with God from the beginning, that she had a hand in creation, that it was by her that God shaped the mountains and set the limits of the sea and the borders of earth and sky. Hearing those verses today suggests something else about what Jesus told us about the Holy Spirit and the truth into which He guides us. He is at work in the natural wisdom and order built into the world from the beginning.

When Christians began to reflect on what they had learned from Jesus, and as the Spirit guided them deeper into that truth, one of the ways the Spirit led them was via God’s own ways of thinking built into our minds and hearts, by wisdom. Plain “common sense” would be one way of talking about it, but it’s larger than what we usually mean by that. It’s wisdom that allowed Christians to discern how to fit the truths they knew about Jesus together. The Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom helped them see that if Jesus said things like He does in verse 15, “All that the Father has is mine,” then Jesus must be equal to the Father, that Jesus is God just as much as the Father is God.

So the Christian church has always used the gift of wisdom, common sense, reason, to understand and apply what we’ve been taught by our Lord. From the beginning, Christians were baptizing and worshipping in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. But they were slowly led into a clearer understanding of what that meant, that those three names were all persons in their own right, yet also one and only one God.

The Spirit had to lead the church through a time when others were saying something different, saying that Jesus was not quite God. In that time, they were ready for the Spirit to guide them into formulating the doctrine which we take for granted, one of the defining formulas of Christianity, that we worship three persons in one God. Jesus, in the words of the Nicene Creed, is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.” And the Holy Spirit comes from both the Father and Son. He spoke to us through the prophets, and continues to guide us into the all the truth.

Jesus told us here that the same kind of consistent, reasonable leading of the Spirit will guide us deeper into truth. What the Spirit says will glorify Jesus. What Jesus says is what He has from the Father. God’s own self is internally consistent and united in thought and will. Inconsistency and contradiction does not come from God, and is not and cannot be the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Wisdom is still God’s gift to His people through the Holy Spirit. But wisdom is not limited to the Bible or to Christian doctrine. The phrase, “All truth is God’s truth” is based on what Augustine wrote, “let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master…”[1] John Calvin said, “All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God.”

“All truth is God’s truth” means that Christians have nothing to fear from science or philosophy or political theory or medicine. In fact, insofar as any area of study arrives at what is true or good or beautiful, that is also the work of holy wisdom, God’s Holy Spirit moving in the world. When such truth is fully understood it will all do just what Jesus said, glorify Him and point back to His Father.

Yes, it’s more than difficult to discern at times what the truth is, especially in our time as some of a consensus we took for granted has collapsed. Which news outlet is telling the truth? Which medical authority ought you to believe? To which preacher of the Bible should you listen? Yet God’s truth is all one and undivided. Jesus told us that the Spirit says what He says and that He says what the Father says. So any “truth” up for our consideration is going to need to be consistent with that, and consistent with itself. The Trinity does not offer us three different truths. God offers us one truth, triply guaranteed by Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all saying and teaching us the same thing.

The old “X-Files” television show used to repeat the slogan, “The truth is out there.” That’s a pretty Christian thought. Jesus assures us that the truth is there, and that it comes to us from the Father, through Him, by the Holy Spirit. Most importantly, it’s the truth of the Gospel, that Jesus died and rose again for the forgiveness of our sins and for the transformation of our lives. But it’s also all the truth, all the true and good facts about our world and about our own selves.

As I said from the beginning of the text, we don’t know what the disciples did not yet know. And, most assuredly, we do not know what we do not yet know. We should never imagine we already have all the truth. The Spirit keeps guiding us into it. Yet it is there. Our Lord is constantly directing our thoughts and connecting it together for us.

Our grandson is making some connections. He learned to say, “glug, glug, glug” looking at a plastic fish, but now he goes to the botanic gardens, sees goldfish in a pond, and says, “glug, glug, glug.” He’s being led deeper into the truth, not just about fish, but about the world around him. We are all like that, children who do not yet know, but are always headed toward more and more knowledge. Paul said in I Corinthians 13, “When I was a child… I thought like a child… For now we see in a mirror, dimly… Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” We are all children in Christ. We often think like children and see only a little, only dimly.

Yet we do know a little. We know that Christ has died and Christ has risen and Christ will come again. We know that He has taught us how to live and to love each other. We know that He has given us the Holy Spirit to continue our education and understanding of what that means today in 2022 and through the rest of our lives. As we read in verse 15, the Spirit takes what Jesus said and declares it to us. And we know that, in eternity, it will all be told, that we will grow out of our childhood and see clearly.

May you and I always admit to what we do not know. May we always be open to what the Spirit has yet to teach us. And as we learn and grow, may we always be faithful to that which we do know, that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. Jesus has taught us to be one with each other as They are one. That will be our topic for next Sunday. So may that one God be the truth on which we base everything else.

Amen.

[1] On Christian Doctrine, II.18.