John 3:1–17

Trinity Sunday

¹⁶For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

God made man in his image. But what is the image of God? In order to begin to answer that question we must look into the internal recesses of the Trinity himself: God is a Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God in three persons and three persons in one God. And these three persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—live, work and have their being together in complete and perfect harmony and love. The human mind is absolutely incapable of comprehending the Trinity. But one thing that the Scriptures tell us is that "God is love." So what is the image of God? The image of God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit living in true harmony and perfect love.

How often Jesus spoke of the love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! "The Father has loved the Son since before the foundation of the world," He says. And "I love the Father." The love between the Father and the Son is the model of perfect love. It is the definition of love between man and God for Jesus says, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love." And also, "If anyone loves me he will keep my command and my Father will love him."

The entire creation is the manifestation of God's love. It was for love that He created mankind. His very act of making man in his image is nothing more than an expression of his love. God made man for him to love and to love him. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength," is the first and greatest command. Man was made to be loved by God and to love God. The perfect love and harmony between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is the model and definition of man's relationship with God. That same perfect love and harmony is the model and definition for our love for one another. "Love your neighbor as yourself," is the other great command. "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." The internal love of the Trinity is the model for our love between husband and wife and the definition of our love for our neighbor.

And out of love God created the universe to show his love for humanity; providing us a home and filling it with all good things to be a blessing for us. The image of God is love; the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit which is expressed in his love for us and in our love for others. God's law is love: love for God and for one another.

And this law was written on the hearts of our first fathers. God did not write his law until after sin entered the world. Before sin, it was an unwritten law, innate in the creation itself. Adam and Eve had the law written on their hearts. It was a law, not of prohibitions and punishments, but rather the law was a description of who God is, it was his image, and it was revealed in the creation of mankind and the entire cosmos. The law was not threats and punishments but a description of what man was made to be in the image of God. It was the law of love, the divine love and harmony that infused every part of creation and determines the relation of human beings to their creator, to one another and to the creation itself.

And man's innate knowledge of God and his image of love was made explicit in the prohibition against eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. By not eating of this tree man would demonstrate his love for God. But that love faltered. When put to the test, man did not love God and failed to keep his command. He turned inwardly to his own selfish self-love and by so doing broke the harmony and love into which he was created. He despised the love of God and so his love for one another and for the creation was broken. The perfect relationship between man and God, between man and man and between man and creation is now broken. Man has turned from God and is suffering the consequences every day with the evil, the sickness, the pain, the suffering and ultimate death of everything.

The law of love no longer describes man's relationship with God. The law that was once innate in man, is now corrupted, so God revealed his law in written form and gave it through Moses. Now mankind sees God's revealed law as prohibitions and threats of punishment. Man sees God as wrath and burning anger, threatening punishment not only for his evil deeds and actions, but for his thoughts and desires, his cold and hard heart, and for his lack of love for his neighbor. God appears to man as an enemy whose wrath is poured out like a consuming fire upon our heads in just retribution not only for what we have done, but for what we have become.

For we have become sinful and corrupt. The law of God accuses us not only of sinful deeds, but of being sinners. The real problem is not what we do externally, but what we are. We are by nature sinful and unclean. We are by nature spiritually dead. We are by nature enemies of God. We neither fear, love nor trust in God, but flee from him in hatred and fear of punishment. For God is a consuming fire that destroys us and avenges himself.

But in that perfect love of the Trinity, the Father sent his beloved Son into the world to save the world from his own wrath and vengeance. And in his perfect love for the Father, the Son obeyed the will of his Father and poured out his life for us men; yes, even for us mortal, sinful men who have turned from the love of God and have despised him. Yet "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life."

Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of the love of the Trinity. He is the expression of love between the Father and the Son, for his love was manifest in his perfect obedience to his Father, and the Father's love was manifest in pouring out his Son for us that we might not perish but have everlasting life. The Son stood in the path of God's consuming fire of vengeance. He hung upon a cross and there, the Father whom he loved and obeyed perfectly, abandoned him to the depths of hell where he paid for our sins. There on that cross the Son poured out his blood as a lamb being sacrificed for the sins of the world. Because of his love for mankind, God poured out the fire of wrath upon his Son and crushed him for our iniquity so that by his stripes we would be healed.

There has never been a greater display of vengeance and hatred against sin than on that ugly cross which served as an instrument of torture for the Son of God who stood in our place to received upon himself the full wrath and punishment of God. No man has ever suffered so. No man has ever felt the pain of his wounds so cutting, so burning in his flesh. No man has ever known the utter despair and hopelessness of bearing the burden of the sin of all humanity. There on that cross we see the most ugly, the most horrid display of fury and anger ever seen on the face of the earth as the fire of God consumed a lonely man hanging desolate upon a wooden cross. Greater than the fury of a tempest or twisting tornado or thrashing hurricane was the wrath poured out upon God's Son.

And there has never been a greater display of love than the Son of God hanging there on that cross in our place. It was the greatest show of love that the Father has for us to save us from our sin. It was the greatest show of love that the Son had for the Father to obey him to the point of such a tormenting death. It was the greatest show of love of Jesus for you and me that he hung there in our place and absorbed into himself our sin and the punishment we should have received. For as the serpent was lifted up in the desert by Moses that whosoever looked upon it might be saved from the deadly bites of the serpent, so the Son of God was lifted up on a cross that all who gaze upon him might be saved from the deadly blast of God's consuming fire. Never has there been a greater manifestation of the perfect love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit than the love shown on the cross that day that saved us from our sin.

And out of that perfect love of the Trinity, the Son sent the Holy Spirit from the Father to us. Instead of God pouring his wrath out on us, he pours out the Holy Spirit upon us. We have been anointed with the Spirit who is poured out into us and fills us with the perfect love of God. That perfect love and harmony of the Trinity is poured out into us today through the Word and Sacraments. Through the word preached to our ears that convicts us of sin and calls us to repentance and faith. Through the water poured out in baptism where we are born of water and the Spirit to be the children of God, once again gathered back into the perfect love which is described and defined by the love of the Trinity and written on our hearts. Through the bread and wine of Communion where Jesus Christ pours his own body and blood into us to fill us with that perfect love for one another. It is here, in the preaching of the Word and the eating and drinking of the Sacrament that the same perfect love that the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father and the Holy Spirit is poured out into us and we are brought back into that loving relationship with God, with one another and with the creation. We are brought back into complete harmony with God and with one another and with nature by the love of the Son shown by his perfect obedience to the law of God.

Now we come full circle; back to Adam and Eve and the innate law of God written on their hearts. If the law of God is love; that love between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, then Jesus fulfilled the law of love for us. He fulfilled the law perfectly. He loved perfectly both God and our neighbor. The law of God is fulfilled in Christ. And so when we are united to Christ in our baptism the law of perfect love is fulfilled in us because we are in Christ. The law of God's love no longer is a law of prohibitions and threats, but once again, as before the fall into sin, it is a description of who and what we are in Christ. For in Christ we have fulfilled the law. In Christ we do love God perfectly and we love our neighbor as ourselves. The love of God is poured out into us and we in turn pour it out into our neighbor. And so all has been restored to the perfect love and harmony of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit whose image is love. And though our love is not seen with the eyes of flesh, it can be seen with the eyes of faith and will be revealed for all the world to see on the Last Day when Christ comes again to take his people with him so that where he is, we may be also.

Amen.