27 May 2018
Text: John 3:1-17 (Isa 6:1-7, Rom 11:33-36)
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
“For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life.”
For many people, this is their favorite verse in all of Scripture. Dr. Luther called it “the Gospel in
miniature.”
This
passage beautifully sums up the Gospel.
But there is a temptation to put this verse on a bumper sticker, hang it
from a banner in the end zone, have it tattooed on our body, or send it out in
a tweet – as a single verse removed from its context. And that context is very important. Jesus is teaching a teacher of Israel who
doesn’t understand what Jesus is teaching him.
This is where Jesus tells Nicodemus that, “You must be born again.” Nicodemus is struggling with this second
birth that Jesus is talking about.
Indeed,
to a lot of people, being born again is an experience, a feeling, an emotional
high. To many people, being born again
means not drinking, dancing, or playing cards; watching your language, voting
the right way, and not being judgmental. But
this has nothing to do with birth, with the process of being born.
When
you were born the first time, dear friends, you weren’t even aware of what was
happening. You did not make a
choice. You did not feel a certain
emotion. In fact, when you were born in
the flesh, you were helpless, dependent, and not capable of decisions. And Jesus uses this metaphor of fleshly birth
to teach us about spiritual birth. This
is not the only time Jesus will befuddle His listeners about what it means to
enter the kingdom of God. On one
occasion, when the disciples were arguing about which one of them was the
greatest, our Lord put a child in their midst and told them that unless you
“become like children,” you “will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
And
this is very similar to what our Lord teaches the teacher of Israel: “Unless
one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” This is what it means to be born again, dear
friends: “water and the Spirit.” Our
Lord cleared up this mystery when He commanded the apostles: “Go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
St.
Peter made it very clear when he wrote in Scripture: “Baptism now saves you.” St. Paul likewise wrote in Scripture: “He
saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He
poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having
been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal
life.”
To
be born again is to be baptized, and to be baptized is to be reborn of water
and the Spirit in the name of the Trinity.
It is not about intellectual understanding. It is not about being “the greatest” as the
world judges such things. It is not
about decisions or emotions. It is about
being baptized in the name of the Trinity.
And having been born, we grow: we learn to eat, to read, to reason, and
to live. So too in our spiritual life,
we are born helpless, and we grow: we learn to hear the Word of God, to
believe, to eat and drink the Lord’s body and blood, and to confess the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, into whose name we are baptized.
And,
dear friends, it is no accident of language that Jesus doesn’t say the “names”
of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but rather “the name.”
His
Jewish listeners knew what He meant by saying “the name.” For that is what they called God: “השם”
(Ha-Shem). They called God “The
Name.” It was the name that they didn’t
speak for fear of misusing it. This,
dear friends, is “the Name” that Jesus commands us to be baptized into: the one
name of the one God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
We
Christians are under a lot of pressure to back off of our confession of the
Trinity. We may be tempted to pray to a
generic “God” such as the Creator which is mentioned in the Declaration of
Independence, or the God of the Pledge of Allegiance. We are sometimes encouraged to treat Jews and
Muslims – and sometimes even Buddhists and Pagans – as people who pray to the
same God as we Christians.
But
what does our Lord say? “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot
enter the kingdom of God…. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Unless we pray to the Trinity, we are praying
to a false god. If we deny that Jesus is
God, we are praying to a false god. If
we are praying to a “life force in the universe,” we are praying to a false
god. If we deny the divinity of the Holy
Spirit, we are praying to a false god.
Our
Lord could not be more clear. The Church
sums it up in our creed: “the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is
God; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God.”
And
this is an important distinction. Jesus
doesn’t tell Nicodemus that being born again is a luxury. Nor does He tell the disciples that baptism
is a nice ritual and a chance to take some pictures. Jesus also makes it clear that we are
baptized in the name, in השם: that is, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. And we must be born again! As St. John the Evangelist put it: “Whoever
believes and is baptized will be saved.”
What we believe is important. The
name into which we are baptized is important.
For as we confess in the church’s ancient creed: “whoever desires to be
saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith.
Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish
eternally. And the catholic faith is
this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.”
Our
creed makes it clear that: “It is also necessary for everlasting salvation that
one faithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ” and that He
“suffered for our salvation.” The cross
is part and parcel of this Trinitarian faith, the faith into which we are
baptized. And just before the Lord
teaches Nicodemus that famous John 3:16 passage, the Lord mentions the cross:
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”
God
the Son came into our world to suffer for our sins, to die on the cross for our
salvation, to rise again for our justification, and to come again for our
redemption and the redemption of the world.
God the Son is no mere prophet, avatar, or great teacher. He is God the Son, “begotten from the
substance of the Father before all ages: and He is man, born from the substance
of His mother in this age.”
The
faith into which we are baptized and born again is the faith of the Holy
Trinity, the faith that confesses that the “Father is Lord, the Son is Lord,
the Holy Spirit is Lord; and yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord.”
And
this catholic faith of the Trinity, of the incarnate Lord Jesus, of the Cross,
and being born again by water and the Spirit in השם “of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit” is beautifully summed up in the “Gospel in
miniature,” that beloved passage of Scripture that delivers such comfort and
joy, as well as the profound nature of the Trinity and the Sacraments:
“For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the
world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through
Him.” Amen.
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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