Sermon Snippet – One God in Three Persons – Part III
INTRODUCTION – As a crucial part of the “simplicity [singleness of purpose] that is in Christ” (II Corinthians 11:3), we have for the last two weeks considered the doctrine of the Trinity, One God in Three Persons. For God to be God, He must be utterly different from us and must be Triune if He is to be relational in His essential character and thus relational to us. Because analogies do not work well due to God’s distinctiveness, we need Scriptural insight. The greatest example of Trinitarian teaching is found at the Cross (Luke 23:44-46).
1. AT THE CROSS, WE SEE THE WORK OF GOD THE SON
(See last week’s message.)
2. AT THE CROSS, WE SEE THE WORK OF GOD THE FATHER
Jesus, God the Son, specifically and emphatically commits Himself to God the Father: “Father, into Thy hands I commend [commit] My spirit” (verse 46b). Just before this statement of absolute assurance, Jesus had cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46b); these two complementary truths reveal the core of the Cross. God the Son willingly accepted the punishment for our sins; God the Father willingly accepted that sacrificial substitution. Within the Triune Godhead, both Son and Father fulfilled what theologians call their offices; that is, both finished their specific work of salvation at the Cross.
The Father-forsaken cry of God the Son in Matthew 27:46 needs our further careful consideration. Was God the Father impassive as Jesus suffered and died? Theologians speak of the impassability of God; that is, He cannot be altered or affected emotionally by anything. Clearly, God is unchanging and unchangeable. For example, James 1:17 states, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” This impassability of God is in contrast to the false ideas of process theology (sometimes called “the openness of God”), which teaches that God changes as He interacts with His creation (these false teachers are creating God in man’s image, making Him merely a human on steroids, to use a modern expression). We must insist, though, that impassability does not mean that God the Father is impassive – aloof – as the Son dies on the Cross. The disruption of divine fellowship was mutual: just as the Son was separated from the Father, the Father was separated from the Son. Both remained unchanged, but both cared for each other – and for us, as the historical fact of the Cross demonstrates.
Was God the Father passive as the Son gave His life on the Cross? Right in this passage, we read that “the vail of the temple was rent in the midst” (verse 45b). This specific act of the Father ripped from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51) the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple. This singular event signified that “a new and living way” had been opened into the eternal presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-20). Clearly, the Father was not passive at the Cross.
In fact, the Father was directly involved in the Son’s work on the Cross. II Corinthians 5:14-21 is a discussion of the sacrifice of Jesus. Verse 19a is especially illuminating: “Ye wit, that God [the Father] was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” The New International Version’s rendering of this statement is a misleading mistranslation: “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ.” No! The NIV translators arbitrarily changed the word order to avoid what seemed to them to be an unanswerable question: “How can the Father be separated from the Son and be in the Son at the same time?” There is no contradiction, for both unity and distinctiveness are attributes of One God in Three Persons. The Father and the Son are utterly unified in this great purpose of reconciliation (a transformed relationship with God); each fulfilled His separate office. Thus, the One wronged was the One Who not only sought reconciliation but also actually reconciled us to Himself. We come back to the Cross and hear the words of Jesus: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34a). As the Son was forgiving, the Father was forgiving. In this omnipotent and efficacious sense, then, the Father “was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.”
CONCLUSION – As I mentioned last week, my original three-point sermon grew too unwieldy for one sitting. What we have studied today, though, is central to the Christian faith. The Cross provides the means of our salvation; it also reveals the blessed character of our Savior God. Without the Cross, we really do not know God very well. We have seen that God the Father was neither passive nor impassive at the Cross. Rather, He was fully involved and invested, actuating His grand plan of redemption He has made it possible for each one of us to be forgiven of all of our sins and to be reconciled to Him forever. May each of us enter into an eternal relationship with Him through faith in the finished work of the Cross. May we always be certain that our God – One God in Three Persons – will never be aloof to and separate from all of our needs and troubles.