Caught up into the life of God
Readings: Romans 5. 1-5, John 16. 12-15
We have two rather short readings today, five verses from Paul’s letter to the Romans, and four verses from John’s Gospel. They’re short but they pack a punch, and speak to us boldly not just about God as Trinity, no doubt why they were chosen for today, but of God’s saving acts for us.
Those readings are in some ways a tale of two advocates, two who stand alongside and on behalf of. Two who speak on behalf of another. Jesus earlier in the conversation happening in our reading from John says that he will ask the Father and he will send another advocate, the Spirit of truth. And in many ways chapter 16, which our Gospel is taken from, is revisiting much of what he said there in chapter 14. But, another advocate, that rather implies that in Jesus we have an advocate.
And we see it in that passage from Romans. Paul writes that ‘therefore’ see the first 4 chapters to know the background to that therefore ‘Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have peace with God, when we place our faith in this same Jesus. We often talk about the results of the cross being forgiveness or new life or a fresh start, and that’s all true, but here Paul speaks of it as peace, peace with God. Which means without the cross we are not at peace with God, we have the opposite, we are in conflict with God.
Which might seem rather uncomfortable language, and rightly so, it should make us uncomfortable. Because without faith in Jesus, without his death and resurrection, we and God are in so many ways opposed to one another, in conflict. And this conflict is not God’s doing, it is ours. It’s not that God decided to oppose us, it’s that we, in so many ways, big and small, choose to oppose him.
That’s basically what sin is, placing ourselves in opposition to God, placing ourselves against him. And yet God will not allow this to stand, he stands against so much of what we stood for, stands utterly opposed to our sin, for it is wrong, and dangerous and even evil, of course he stands against it. But he will not choose to stand utterly against us, if he did he could have wiped us out immediately. And yet he chooses not to. Instead he sends an advocate, someone to come and act and speak on our behalf.
And so God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, comes and becomes incarnate, becomes human. Fully God, fully man. And does what we could not do, lives a perfect life on our behalf, takes all our sin and shame upon himself on our behalf, and dies our death on our behalf, and is raised to life again on our behalf. He’s doing this for us, for you. And it is because of this, with faith in Jesus and what he has done on our behalf, we have peace with God. The enmity and division is past, not just forgiveness, but peace. Perfect peace. This God was utterly for you, even when we were utterly steeped in sin, determined not just to make forgiveness possible, but peace possible.
We look at the conflicts raging around the world, and every time I mention them there seem to be more, and we know the difficulty, the challenge, the seeming impossibility at times, of an end to conflict. But then for there to be forgiveness? Gosh that would be so much harder. And beyond that enduring peace? A peace and a settled-ness that means further conflict is impossible. How on earth would we get there? And yet that is what God has done through Jesus. Not just an end to the conflict, not just forgiveness, but perfect peace between us.
This Jesus, this first advocate, he speaks on our behalf in the heavenly realms. He speaks of us. He speaks when we sin of his death and resurrection for us. He speaks for us, our advocate in the heavenly places, speaking of us and for us to the Father. He has not only done the work of salvation to bring us forgiveness, he now speaks it over us always, our advocate in heaven.
And because our advocate is in heaven we can come not just before God but stand before God by his grace. By his grace, that is God’s unmerited gifts, received by faith, which we might think of as the open hands to receive, we can stand in God’s presence. Stand in the throne room of God and speak to him. That’s what we’re doing in prayer, and we so take it for granted, but when we come before God it is because of that first advocate, Jesus Christ, that we can speak with the one who was once just the Father of the Son, and now is the Father of all who believe, more on that next week.
Because there is a second advocate, the Spirit. As Paul continues he says that the hope, which is produced by character which is produced by perseverance which is produced through suffering, hope does not put us to shame, in other words will not allow us to fall short, end up with egg on our face, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
It is the Spirit of God, that second advocate, who pours into us both the experience and knowledge of God’s love for us. If Jesus, God the Son, is God with us, the Holy Spirit is God within us, given to us when we first believed. Jesus is the one who speaks on our behalf to the Father, the Holy Spirit is the one who speaks on the Father’s behalf to us. Giving us the true and real knowledge that we are his children by faith. It is the Spirit who allows us not just to know God’s love for us, but also to experience God’s love for us, for it to be true and real and deeply felt. That isn’t to say when you can’t feel it the Spirit isn’t at work or has left somehow, our emotions are fickle things. But that knowledge and that experience of God’s love, that the Spirit’s work.
And Jesus says that this Spirit will leads us into all the truth. In that reading from John he says that he has much more to say, more than they can bear, so instead the Spirit will speak to them later. Now sometimes this passage is taken to mean that there’s some special knowledge that the Spirit will reveal to us somehow, or that the Spirit will reveal the end times and when it’s all happening, hence ‘he will tell you what is yet to come’, or that the Spirit will continue indefinitely speaking new knowledge and truth, even re-writing our understanding from that given in Scripture because people couldn’t deal with it then but now we’re ready.
But that’s not what Jesus means. He’s speaking specifically to his disciples the night before he dies, and the word bear is often used in association with suffering. What Jesus has to say is about what’s about to happen to him, the yet to come is his crucifixion and death, why he must suffer and die and be raised. Jesus is saying that what I have to say to you will cause you to suffer, it’ll be too much to speak plainly of it now, and you’re already suffering because you kind of know what’s coming, so I’m not going to speak it now, but soon I will, through the Spirit.
And we see that in the Scriptures, we see the Spirit helping them afterwards to understand what was going on in Jesus’ death and resurrection. That’s the truth into which the Spirit will lead them. And he will speak only what he hears, take what he receives from Jesus and make it known to them, to us. And what is Jesus’? All that is the Father’s. Just as Jesus only speaks and acts as the Father directs, so the Spirit only speaks and acts as he receives from Jesus. But this isn’t a hierarchy, rather an expression of the complete unity in will and action of God, God the Holy Trinity. In seeing one act, we see all three, in hearing one speak, we hear all three. They are utterly united, no division among them in will or in action. The Spirit is God’s advocate to us, speaking of Jesus, revealing him to us, helping us to understand all that Jesus said and did. Just as he helps us understand all that God said and did in the Old Testament and how it points us to Jesus.
Two advocates, the Son speaking on our behalf to the Father, the Spirit speaking on Jesus’ behalf to us. What we find on this Trinity Sunday is that to be a Christian is to be caught up into the life of the Trinity, caught up into the life of God. To see the Son acting and speaking on our behalf and the Spirit poured out into us that we may better know him, know the love of God, and truly understand who Jesus is. To be a Christian is not to stand at a distance from God, nor is it to hold a set of doctrines as true in a cold and scientific way, rather it is to be caught up into God, to know him, to love him, and to live with him and for him, not just for this life, but forever. Amen.