LIVING THE TRIUNE LIFE
(Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15)
Mike Fargo preaching
June 16, 2019
As you read in the bulletin, today is Trinity Sunday, which marks the beginning of the longest season in the church calendar. For the last six months we’ve journeyed through Advent, Christmastide, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide, and Pentecost, which was last Sunday. But from today until December 1 of this year, we have almost six months of what most traditions call “ordinary time.” This is the season in which we reflect on (and hopefully live out) the implications of what all those other seasons have prepared us for. This is the season when we ask ourselves, “What difference does it make that Christ has come, taught us about God, died for our sins, rose from the dead, and sent the Holy Spirit? On a day-to-day level, has anything really changed?”
Well, the answer to that question begins today with Trinity Sunday. Everything we have participated in over the last six months is brought together in the mystery of God himself—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And wisely, the lectionary readings for today do not offer us some abstract theology of the Trinity, but a practical, living description of how the Triune God is working in our lives right now.
In particular, I want to focus on the epistle reading from Romans 5:1-5. Romans is Paul’s masterpiece. It is the most systematic and complete description of what the Christian gospel is all about. In the first four chapters Paul makes a compelling case for how broken our human condition actually is apart from God, and how through the cross of Christ we can be healed and reconciled to God. But then in chapter 5, his whole argument pivots. In fact these first five verses are sometimes called the “great hinge,” for a great door swings open with this text. Let’s begin with verse 1:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
This was the great battle cry of the Protestant reformation, and rightly so. It’s a truth that Christians have had to rediscover over and over again. There is this chronic human tendency to want to earn God’s acceptance by simply being good people. We want to have a claim on God—that we deserve his acceptance. The problem with this effort, of course, is that it always fails in the end. We can dress up like good, humanitarian, nice people, but inside we are all haunted by the reality that we are not such nice people.
This is what Paul hammers on for the first four chapters of Romans. In reality we never live up to that which we know to be true. Our motives and our actions are always flawed by envy, greed, selfishness and cruelty. If there is to be any hope of reconciliation with God, it has to come from his side. And that is exactly what God has provided through Christ. In Christ God took upon himself the penalty we all deserved and opened up a new way to God, a way that involves the forgiveness of sins, but so much more. We are declared “just” in God’s sight by virtue of the sacrifice of Christ.
So this is a sacred truth, and we have to relearn it over and over. Unfortunately, it’s also a truth that is sometimes preached in naked isolation—as if this were the whole message of our gospel. This is why Romans 5 is such a crucial “hinge.” It opens the door to the next four chapters of Romans, which is summarized in verse 2:
…through whom [that is, “through Jesus”] we have also gained access into this grace in which we now stand.
In some of your translations the word “also” is missing, which is unfortunate since it’s in the Greek text. Paul is now trying to draw a logical conclusion. He is trying to make us aware that the gospel is not just about forgiveness of sins. It’s not just about justification by faith. The gospel throws open the door to having access to God’s very life, to his “grace.” In the cross of Christ God didn’t say, “Okay, okay, you’re all forgiven—now go away and leave me alone.” No. God, through Christ, is inviting us into a profound union with himself. All that he is—all his “grace”—is at our disposal. And as a result of this, we have access to a whole different way of living, as we read next in verse 2:
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Earlier in Romans Paul claimed (and I quote), “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” God’s glory refers to God’s perfections—his justice, mercy, truth, love, etc. And we see this glory most visibly in his Son, Jesus. As Christ said to the disciples in the upper room, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Or as Paul writes to the Corinthian church, (and I quote) “God has given us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
In other words, God made forgiveness of sins possible so that he might fill us with his glory—change us into this image of Christ, who is the glory of God. Paul uses the same phrase in his Colossians epistle when he writes: “This is the mystery that has been hidden from ages past but is now revealed: Christ in you the hope of glory.” We Christians are people who have come to Christ because we recognize that we are broken, sinful, lost people who need more than just a divine pat on the back. More than just forgiveness, we need transformation. Or as Jesus put it in the Beatitudes, true disciples are people who “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” to be changed into what God intended us to be. And the visible reality of what that looks like is Christ himself.
Taken together, these two opening verses of Romans 5 combine what the New Testament calls our justification and our sanctification. But if we are honest, most of us will admit that it’s much easier to believe that our sins are forgiven than it is to believe that we are being transformed into the image of Christ. Our day-to-day lives still seem so filled with selfishness, envy, greed, unkindness, anger, lust, and every other human failure. Where are the signs of God’s transformation? How does this happen? Paul jumps right into this next in vs 3:
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that afflictions produces endurance;
Now some of your translations use the word “suffering” in place of “affliction,” and that is perfectly valid. The underlying word is actually the most common word in the New Testament for the whole gamut of difficulties that fill our lives every day, from the mundane inconveniences to the truly deep tragedies. It’s all part of the pressures and pains that make up ordinary human existence.
And it should come as no surprise (although it often does) that our growth as followers of Christ often involves facing into this kind of suffering and responding with the patience, love, courage, and hope that Christ calls us to. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus warns us that the road that leads to destruction is broad and easy. All you have to do is just “go with flow” of the crowd or the culture. No effort is required. Look out for number one, avoid pain at all costs, take the course of least resistence. But the road that leads to life, he tells us, is narrow and hard. To follow Christ is to march up stream, against the tide, into the wind. In short, it’s not easy.
And it’s right here that many would-be followers of Jesus fall away. In his parable of the four soils, Jesus compares fair-weather Christians to the seed that falls on the rocky soil. They spring up quickly but then quickly fade because, says Jesus, “they have no root in themselves.” They are shallow people who are quick to jump on a bandwagon and just as quick to jump off when the going gets tough. They want the perks but not the pain.
But those of you who attend any kind of exercise class know that the only way our muscles ever get stronger is when they meet resistance, whether it’s doing water aerobics or weight lifting. The longer you endure the resistance, the easier it is to sustain it. Or to return to our text, “suffering produces endurance.”
Now someone could say to me, “Okay, Mike, I can see how the difficulties God sends our way can build our endurance, but I don’t see why Paul says that we actually “rejoice” in these sufferings. Are Christians masochistic? Do they enjoy pain? Are we supposed to rejoice when loved ones die or we lose a job or our health or our children wander off into dark places? And the simple answer is “no,” that is not what Paul is talking about. We don’t have to pretend that the circumstance, in itself, is something to celebrate. What we celebrate are the changes we can see in ourselves. And so Paul continues:
…and endurance [produces] a proven character;
If endurance were the only result of our suffering, then our faith would become more stoic than Christian. But the goal of our endurance is a changed character. The underlying Greek word that is translated “a proven character” refers to the kind of character that’s been tested and proven to be authentic, a change that has become a deep and permanent part of who we actually are. Mere religion can make changes in people, but they’re largely superficial and external. Religion can teach us how to behave but have no impact on who we are on the inside—on our values and attitudes and aspirations. God isn’t interested in that. It’s on the heart that God is working. But that’s not all. The third result of all this is that:
…a proven character produces hope.
Our suffering leads to endurance and endurance to deep, permanent character changes, and it’s those changes themselves that make us realize, “Wow, there is truly something going on in my life, something new and wonderful.” We begin to see the world in a different light, to respond to people in a different way, to see our role in the bigger scheme of things in a healthier way. And although these changes may be hard fought and incremental, they create a sense of hope that yes, God is at work in us.
Now so far this is all well and good, but if I have done my job correctly this morning, some of you—maybe all of you—might still be feeling a little concerned by what Paul has written so far. When confronted with where God wants to take us and the means he has chosen for making this happen (that is, our suffering), we all should be a little concerned about whether we can really “go the distance.” Which is why Paul assures us that just as our justification is a work of God, so now is our transformation also a work of God, as we hear in verse 5:
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
This verse has often been misunderstood. It’s sometimes taken to mean that God gives us some kind of mystical, interior feeling of God’s love. Now I don’t deny that we all periodically receive such experiences and that they are wonderful and valid. But that is not what Paul is driving at. Rather he saying that God, as a concrete demonstration of his love, has sent the Holy Spirit into our lives for the purpose of transforming us. This is what Paul means when he writes to the Corinthian church (and I quote):
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
This is why our hope should never falter. Not because we are so capable. Not because even the visible growth we see is so convincing (because so often it’s not). Not because of some warm glow in our hearts. Our hope lies in the fact that we have been given Holy Spirit to work from within us, guiding and empowering us to do that which pleases God. And because this Spirit is God himself at work, we are right back to where we began when Paul tells us our justification has given us “access to this grace in which we stand.”
It’s all grace, from beginning to end. It’s all a work of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yes, he calls us to believe this promise and to strive with all our might to cooperate with this transformation. But when all is said and done, God has committed himself to making this happen, and so it will. As Paul put it so simply to the Philippian church: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in Christ Jesus.”
In closing let me say that when people ask me, “What is the essence of the gospel?” I reply that it involves three things: (1) forgiveness of sins, (2) reconciliation with God, and (3) renewal in the Holy Spirit. I hope you realize now that these three things involve all three persons of the Trinity—the Father who calls us, the Son who reveals the Father to us, and the Spirit who brings both the Father and Son into us. This what our “ordinary time” is filled with.
There are many other collateral implications that follow this basic gospel truth, which Paul works out in Romans 5-8. But for today know this: God has much higher plans for you than you may have for yourself. He intends to make you into a being who reflects the glory of the Trinity itself. It’s a project that is guaranteed to be completed—in God’s time and in God’s way.
So trust him and keep on growing.
Amen