John 3:1-17 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
First Sunday After Pentecost: Holy Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2021 “Describing a God Beyond Understanding”
I just don’t understand. It can be an incredibly frustrating feeling not to understand something. It can make us nervous and concerned. Maybe people around us seem to be “getting it,” but we’re lost. It could happen in the classroom as the teacher explains a lesson, but I just don’t understand. It can happen in an informal setting when someone tells a joke and everyone laughs—well, everyone except me because I just don’t understand. It can happen in our families where mom or dad just can’t understand what that child is thinking and that child just can’t understand why mom or dad is so upset. And it can also happen when we are talking about the most important truths of all, the truths about who we are, who God is, and where our lives are headed. People misunderstand or struggle with these spiritual and eternal truths all the time. And just like in our other examples, if we want to understand, we need someone to explain it to us. If I don’t understand the teacher, maybe he or she can explain it differently. If I don’t get the joke, maybe one of my friends would be willing to fill me in. If parents and children are willing to work at it patiently, they often can understand one another—or at least understand better. And if we truly want to understand God, we need him to explain. Today’s Gospel from John chapter 3 records an explanation. It records a lesson. The teacher is Jesus, and the struggling student is a man named Nicodemus. It’s a secret lesson undertaken under cover of darkness, apparently because Nicodemus suspected that the other men of the ruling council would not be in favor of his contact with Jesus. But Nicodemus does want to understand. He knows there is something special about Jesus. He has seen the miracles. He wants to know more. Jesus even scolds Nicodemus for not understanding. How can he claim to be a religious leader if he doesn’t know the basics about God? But it’s not just that Nicodemus hasn’t worked hard enough or studied long enough to understand. There’s a particular obstacle in play in this lesson, and that is the fact that none of us sinful human beings can ever fully understand what God is like. God is like nothing else in our experience. He defies fully satisfactory explanations and descriptions. He defies our expectations. But he loves us, he wants us to live with him, and he draws us to himself. He does all that by telling us about who he is. He is the only true God, the eternal God, the Triune God. And even though we won’t fully understand and we discuss this matter today, let’s listen in on Nicodemus’ lesson and learn how a God beyond understanding can be described. Jesus doesn’t use the words Trinity or Triune. In fact, these aren’t found anywhere in the Bible. They are words that have been used to refer to what Jesus explains here and the Bible also describes in other places. But Jesus does indeed lay out an explanation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and how the God beyond understanding saves. The Father loves the world. Perhaps the most famous passage of all of Scripture comes near the end of this lesson, John 3:16. Perhaps you and I are not amazed when we hear that God loves the world, because we are so used to hearing it. Some might assume that the God who created the world would love the world, and I guess that’s a fair assumption, too. But it is an amazing fact that God loves the world because the world he created has rebelled against him. The perfect world that he made by his almighty power and almighty word did not remain the perfect place that he established. His people listened to temptation and plunged all of creation into sin and shame and death. Generation after generation have been enemies of God by nature, their hearts set against the one who created them. And against that backdrop, against that darkness, this passage shine out as joyful good news: God so loved the world. And we’re not just talking about a feeling here. God loving the world means that he does something for the world. God so loved the world that he gave his Son, his only-begotten Son. God so loved the world in spite of their sins against him that he wanted to save the world from those sins. And so in this amazing love, the Father sent his Son.
That is why Jesus was there to speak to Nicodemus. That is why he was born into a world of sin and sinners. And that is why he sacrificed himself. With that same love for people, for all people, the Son came willingly to offer himself for their sins. Jesus explains it like this: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus already knew at that moment so early in his earthly ministry how his ministry would end. He would be lifted up from the earth on a cross, an instrument of pain and torture and death. He would be executed. And in that execution would be the world’s salvation because on the cross Jesus, the Son, would offer himself as a sacrifice. He would be punished in place of the sinners, in place of the world of sinners, so that forgiveness and life and eternal salvation could be theirs. And that forgiveness and life and salvation become the possession of everyone who believes. That, as Jesus explains, is the job of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives life. He takes those who are without faith—and that’s everyone at the start, and brings them to faith. He takes the spiritually dead and makes them alive. This is exactly what Jesus is talking about when he says, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus explained to Nicodemus that flesh gives birth to flesh. Sinful people give birth to sinful offspring. No, they didn’t need to go into their mothers’ wombs again to be born, they needed to be born, or reborn, spiritually. They needed the birth that is by the water and the Spirit. They needed baptism and conversion. They needed a life of faith. They needed to be born of the Spirit. A God beyond our understanding doesn’t seem so hard to describe when you hear how Jesus describes God. He is the Father who loves us and sent his Son, the Son who loves us and sacrificed himself for us, and the Holy Spirit who loves us and gives us life. But it gets more difficult when we understand that the Bible says the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. But it also says that there are not three Gods, there is just one God. The Father is not a part of God. He is God. The Son is not a part of God. He is God. The Holy Spirit is not part of God. He is God. Where the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit is, there is God in the fullness of the deity. And yet, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all distinct. Trying to get all the details right about the way that God reveals himself to us is a mind-boggling thing. We can’t really understand it, because we don’t know anything else that is three-in-one like God is. We know lots of things that can be divided neatly into three parts or things that can be seen in three different ways, but that’s not what Triune means. That’s not what God is like. So part of our Holy Trinity Sunday observation is to speak words like those of the Athanasian Creed, which repeat what the Bible says about our Triune God—not so that we understand it, but so that we can marvel at a God who is above and beyond anything we know. And we marvel at this: that God in his whole being desires our salvation. He loves us. And that means so much more than that he has a warm feeling about us. It means that he puts his love into action. He loves us so he sends and sacrifices and makes alive. He fills us with his love so that we can also love others and tell them about our God who is beyond our understanding. We all, all who believe, have this in common: that our personal experience reflects Jesus’ teaching in John 3. If we believe, we have been born from above, born again. We have been rescued from the darkness of sin and unbelief. We have been changed from enemies of God, dead in sin, to his friends and children. It is the work of our amazing God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It can be frustrating to admit when we don’t understand. And I don’t think that any of us can claim to fully understand a God who is Triune. But we understand enough of what the Savior says, enough of what the Bible tells us about God to understand this: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him [through the work of his Holy Spirit] shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
The Text: John 3:1–17 (EHV) 3 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these miraculous signs you are doing unless God is with him.” 3Jesus
replied, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of
God.” 4Nicodemus
said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” 5Jesus
answered, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God! 6Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh. Whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be surprised when I tell you that you must be born from above. 8The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9“How
can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.
10“You
are the teacher of Israel,” Jesus answered, “and you do not know these things? 11Amen, Amen, I tell you: We speak what we know, and we testify about what we have seen. But you people do not accept our testimony. 12If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven, except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. 14“Just
as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 16“For
God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.