Greater than Abraham

Text: John 8:48-59

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

          You’ve probably heard me talk about the Trinity enough to know that I know that the point of Trinity Sunday isn’t to try to figure God out. Because however we might try to wrap our minds around the doctrine of the Trinity, we just won’t do God justice. It isn’t about proving His existence. He’s more real than anything we might call reality. And it isn’t about justifying His ways. He’s the judge of all. He condemns, and He justifies. And it isn’t even about making Him understandable or relatable. He does that on His own as He reveals Himself to us in Holy Scripture.

God isn’t an idea or a concept any more than you or I are ideas or concepts. We’re living beings—creatures of the human kind. And who is He? He’s the one and only God, the divine Being—uncreated, infinite, eternal, and almighty—in three distinct persons. God can’t be reduced to facts or bits of information. He’s too big and too personal for that. The Trinity isn’t a physics equation or an engineering problem. In fact, the Trinity isn’t a problem at all, and He certainly doesn’t require a solution.  So, what do we do with a God like this? How do we approach a Being who is so different, so much bigger, and so much holier than we are? Who already knows us, knows our nature, our thoughts, words, and deeds, more intimately than we know ourselves? What do we do with the Holy Trinity? This is what we do. “We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.” That’s what the Athanasian Creed says. It’s what we just confessed. In other words, don’t try to figure Him out. Worship Him. Bow your head in adoration. Bend your knee in homage. Shout and sing His praise: “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”

This is how God reveals Himself to us in Scripture. It’s how He makes Himself known. He tells us that He is one God. He also tells us that He’s also Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God in three persons. This is what we mean by the Holy Trinity. And so that’s how we worship Him. The Christian faith has no room for theories about God. It has no place for speculation about what He might be like. It isn’t based on how you or I or anyone else feel about Him or what we think about Him. He is who He is, and He is who He says He is, and so that’s what we confess and that’s how we worship Him.

But we sinners have a problem with this. We prefer our gods to be small. We prefer them to fit our thoughts and feelings. We prefer to make them in our own image, like us. Because we, as sinners, want to make our gods the way that we want them. We make gods that are like us, gods who are small and petty and fickle. I remember reading about Greek and Roman mythology in high school. I haven’t thought too much about it since then, but looking back I realize how similar those gods seem to us. They have the same lusts, the same hatred, the same envy, spite, and murderous thoughts, just a bit more power.

Someone said that in the beginning God created man in His image, and that ever since man has been returning the favor. That’s not far from the truth. What our world wants are gods who will be there if we need them, gods who will respond whenever we call for them, gods whom we can manipulate and control. Gods for our convenience. What we don’t want is a God so big or so real that He’ll be in our way or affect our lives or have His own plans and purposes for us. He certainly shouldn’t be telling us what to do or not to do. Who does that God think He is anyway? When our hearts and minds are so full of ourselves, when we’re stuffed with our own selfish thoughts and desires, when the universe revolves around the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I, well, it doesn’t leave much room for a God like the real Holy Trinity. Like it or not, He can’t be sent off into the corner or scheduled into a convenient time on the calendar.

And that’s precisely the trouble Jesus ran into with His own people. Their concept of God was too small. They didn’t have room in the Godhead for the Son, much less for the Holy Spirit. And certainly not for a Son “who became flesh and dwelt among” them, whose eyes could watch them, whose words could call them, whose touch could give life. And if you don’t recognize the Son who came in the flesh, who is approachable by human beings, how would you ever know the Father who sent Him. The one “who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.”? They didn’t recognize the Son and so they didn’t know the Father. They couldn’t figure Jesus into the equation. Here’s what they say. “Are we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” They’re wrong, of course, but they put their finger on something important.

In the end, it’s impossible to be neutral about Jesus. He can’t be just a nice guy, a good teacher, or even an enlightened man. Not with the things He says. Not with the things He does. So, if you’ve already decided up front that He can’t possibly be God, then maybe Samaritan or demon are some of the only options you have left. If He’s not the Lord, then He must be a lunatic or a liar and deceiver like the devil himself.  And this is how Jesus answers them. “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” Whoever believes in the Son believes also in the Father. Whoever trusts the Son trusts the Father. Whoever keeps the Son’s word has the Son’s life in Him and so lives with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever.

But without the Son, they can’t have God the Father. Those who deny that Jesus is truly the Son of God loose God entirely. They don’t have part of the Trinity. They have none of the Trinity. Their god is fundamentally different. That was the trouble with Arianism in the fourth century that led to the Nicene Creed. Arius denied the full divinity of Jesus. He said that there was a time when the Son of God didn’t exist. And so, for him, the Son was not Creator but creature, not “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, being of one substance with the Father,” but of a similar substance. Like God, but not God. That’s the problem still today with some who call themselves Christian, but can’t be if Jesus isn’t truly God. And if Jesus isn’t the divine Son of God, then God hasn’t died for you, and the blood of God doesn’t cover the sin of the world. But “it is the right faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both God and man.”

When Jesus speaks about His Father, the Jews are only thinking about father Abraham. They say, “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” Now there’s the real question. Since Abraham and the prophets died, how can You, Jesus, keep anyone from experiencing death?” Because Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God the Father, “begotten of the Father before all worlds.” He proceeds from the Father. And what He says is true. If they knew the Father, they would know that. If they were spiritual children of Abraham, they would see that. “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

And that’s what really gets them riled up. “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?” If they knew who He was they would know that He hasn’t just seen Abraham, but He knows him well. “Before Abraham was, I AM.” And that’s His claim to equality with God. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He brought Israel out of Egypt with a strong hand and a mighty arm. The One standing before them is both eternal and thirty years old—eternal according to His divine nature but conceived and born in time according to His human nature!

Although He is God, the irony is that Jesus, like Abraham, dies. He allows Himself to be treated like an ordinary man and even worse than an ordinary man. He endures shame. He’s not greater than Abraham in avoiding death; He’s greater in overcoming it! He died, but on the third day He rose again. And He lives to raise the dead!

The Son honors the Father by coming in the flesh to do the Father’s will—to be and reveal the God that no one could imagine or even conceive of. The God greater than anything we might think or feel. And now He is exalted at the right hand of the Father, having poured out His spirit on the church.

And so, we, too, honor the Father by receiving the Spirit and honoring the Son. The point of Trinity Sunday isn’t about us figuring God out; it’s about the blessed Holy Trinity figuring us out by forgiving our sins. It isn’t about us fitting God into our lives; it’s about God the Holy Trinity fitting us into His life. And that’s exactly what He does. We have a God big enough and personal enough to come to us, deal with us – with our sins, and with death itself. And He has. The Father sent the Son into our flesh, that we might be born again in His image, in the image of Jesus Christ, and have His life in ourselves, that we might be children of the heavenly Father and temples of the Holy Spirit, who with the Son live and reign forever. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.