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strinity04
Who Proceeds from
the Father and the Son
Text:
John 16:12-15
Date: The Holy Trinity 
6/6/04 mpeg4 video codek 4.12
On
Pentecost Sunday, last Sunday, we spoke of the Holy Spirit in the
words of the Nicene Creed, “the Lord and Giver of Life.” The emphasis
was on the work of the Holy Spirit to create faith in the heart
of sinners who hear the Gospel and thus to work conversion, repentance
and faith and connect people with salvation from sin and death,
by means of faith in Jesus Christ alone. Today, as we celebrate
the mystery of the one, true God who has revealed himself as a Holy
Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we use the very next words
of the Nicene Creed that speak of the Holy Spirit, “Who proceeds
from the Father and the Son.” While we contemplate the great mystery
of the Triune nature of the one, true God, in the Gospel for today
Jesus speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit, saying, “he will guide
you into all the truth,” and “he will declare to you the things
that are to come.” In certain ways the festival of The Holy Trinity
acts as a sort of springboard from which we dive into the long,
green season of Sundays after Pentecost with the adventurous expectation
of discovering and learning of the “many things” Jesus said he had
to say to his disciples. On that night in which he was betrayed
he said, “but you cannot bear (these many things) now.” Similarly,
Christian disciples never stop growing in and learning the grace
of God and the truth of God's Word which is far deeper than any
human can fathom or understand.
One
of the “many things” that unfolds for the Christian disciple is
deeper insight into and conviction of the truth. “When the Spirit
of truth comes,” Jesus says, “he will guide you into all the truth,
for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears
he will speak.” To borrow the words of Pontius Pilate, “What is
truth?” That question has been asked in our day and the world and
society in which we live thinks it has found the answer! What is
truth? The answer, they say, is, there is no truth. There is only
personal opinion or, at most, deeply held personal, subjective convictions.
But there is no such thing as something that is objectively true
for every person in every situation of every culture. Yet this is
the very first thing we are privileged to proclaim to the world
on this Trinity Sunday, namely, that there is objective truth and
it finds its basis in the spiritual realities of the one and only
true God, the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God,
now and forever.
Many
will disagree. But that's the way it is when you are confronted
with truth. For something to be true means, by definition, that
it's opposite or anything that contradicts it must be false, phony
and fantasy. This is the most politically incorrect and offensive
thing about Christianity (that is true, historic Christianity),
namely, its exclusive claims and discrimination and judgment of
all that is falsehood and deception. The first truth is the First
Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before my face,” says
the one true God, Yahweh, the Great “I Am,” the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of Israel, the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And
that is the second truth: that the Son of God, the second Person
of the Holy Trinity, took on our human flesh, incarnate by the Holy
Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, given the name Jesus. “No one
can say ‘Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit” [1 Cor. 12:3
(ESV)], and this is the truth that the Spirit reveals, that Jesus
of Nazareth, Jesus the Galilean, Jesus the crucified and risen one
is Lord, my Lord, and Lord of heaven and earth.
“When
the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
Besides the truth of Who the one, true God is, there are spiritual
truths that a person can and must know. He can know the truth only
because it is revealed to him by the Holy Spirit through the inspired,
inerrant Word of God in the holy scriptures: the truth that all
have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; the truth that
because of sin no one is able to save himself; the truth that there
is salvation in no one else than in Jesus Christ alone; the truth
that this salvation comes to a person by faith in Jesus Christ and
not by works of the law; the truth that even this saving faith is
created objectively in a person when he or she hears the Gospel.
The
Holy Spirit guides the Christian into all the truth. Secondly, Jesus
says, “he will declare to you the things that are to come.” How
many have there been who have claimed to have the gift of telling
the future? But of what gain is there, ultimately, in fortune telling?
Actually none. But of all the things that the Spirit reveals to
the disciples, Jesus singles out for special mention this one thing,
“the things that are coming.” Of course, since the Spirit will speak
only what has already been spoken and revealed by the Father and
the Son, “the things that are to come” can be nothing else than
the final return of Jesus when he comes in the day of resurrection
to judge the world and usher in the eternal heavens and earth of
his own re-creation. These are the only things that are to come
in the future that are important, that make any difference for the
Christian.
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