“The Trinitarian Conundrum”

a Holy Trinity Sunday a

John 16:12-15

I love to do different kinds of puzzles, mind challenging games. Well, let me be more specific. I love to do
puzzles that I can eventually solve successfully. Maybe you’re the same way. I could do Sudoku puzzles all day long
– those number puzzles where you have to figure out how to fit together the numbers 1 through 9 in every row,
column and box. I love the challenge, because I know that, through various principles that I regularly use, I can
always figure out the answer, sometimes quickly, sometimes a little more time consuming. And when my regular
numeric principles don’t achieve the answer, Sudoku puzzles challenge the mind to come up with new principles
that will help to solve the puzzle.
I love to do puzzles that I can eventually solve. I loathe puzzle games that I can’t figure out – like the Rubix
cube. Some people are really good at figuring out the Rubix cube. Not me! No matter how much work I would
put into it, I would never get more than one side to line up, and then, when I tried to get the next side to line up,
the one side that was already completed gets totally messed up! The harder I worked to solve the Rubix cube puzzle,
the further away I was from actually figuring it out. If I can say this in a non-threatening way, I hated it! To me,
it’s a conundrum – an unsolvable puzzle.
Holy Trinity Sunday is a celebration of a conundrum, an unsolvable mystery, the mystery and majesty of the
Trinity, that our God is three persons who are co-equal and co-eternal as one Godhead, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine that identifies churches as Christian churches and people as
Christians, a dogma so vital to the Christian faith that if one were to deny it even on an elementary level, they
would be outside of the true faith. In other words, non-Trinitarians cannot be believers...that’s how important this
Biblical truth is.
And yet, it’s a conundrum, a mystery that, try as we might, not one of us can or will figure out on this side
of eternity. Today, on Holy Trinity Sunday we explore the Trinitarian conundrum, astounded at the complexity of
God’s essence which goes far beyond what we could ever understand, both in the existence of the Triune God and
the functioning of our Triune God for the salvation of man. Yet, what astounds us is not able to rob us of the
comfort that our Triune God gives. For while our God is complex in essence, his message of truth, his message of
salvation is so simple and therefore comforting, that even a little child who can barely utter a word can say with
confidence, “Jesus is my Savior. He died on the cross for me. I’m going to heaven.”

I. The complexity of God’s essence astounds us

Try as we might, we just can’t wrap our minds around the essence of the divine Godhead! We can’t! We
can’t picture in our heads how there are three persons who are all one God and not three gods (as we confess in the
Athanasian Creed). We can’t put down on paper how the Trinity works. The best we can do is come up with a
diagram that has a triangle with three interlocking circles in the middle – showing that God the Father is not the
Son or the Spirit, but is God, that God the Son is not the Father nor the Spirit, but is God and God the Holy Spirit
is not the Father or the Son, but still truly God. Confused? Maybe you should go home and do a Rubix cube, that
would be much easier to figure out!
God’s essence is complex, impossibly complex not only in nature, but also in the way that the three persons
of the one Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, interact in the work for the salvation of mankind, which all three
persons of the Triune God are essentially involved in. Listen again to the gospel lesson: 12 “I have much more to say
to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will
not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will bring glory to
me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said
the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.”
God the Holy Spirit, through the gospel, leads believers into truth, implants Jesus into our hearts so that he
lives and reigns in us by faith to make us right with the Father, applying to our hearts his holy and precious blood so
that we may stand in holiness before the Creator! Confused yet? You should be, because it goes far beyond us! But
far be it from us that we would ever seek to trivialize the complexity of God’s essence and interworkings by
humanizing the divine, trying to make God not only more understandable, which is often done at the expense of
Biblical truth, but more palatable to the world, at the expense of the comfort of the gospel. The doctrine of the
Trinity is not like a Rubix cube or a Sudoku puzzle, where you can sit down for an extended period of time and
then, all of a sudden – DING! The light bulb goes on in the brain and you get it! No, it is something that we must
receive by faith, not by sight or understanding!
And where does this faith come from? From God himself through his Word, the Bible in which he clearly
communicates his nature to us. Genesis 1:26, God speaking in plural terms of himself even at creation: “Let us
make man in our image, in our likeness.” The Aaronic benediction of Numbers and the triple repetition of the name,
“The Lord,” and of course the great commission: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Are we ever going to understand it fully, how God is three persons,
yet one Godhead and how the three persons interact as one God? Absolutely not, because of our sinful state which
lacks a full understanding of God’s essence and will! It is a matter of faith, a vital and important doctrine of the
Christian faith, one that we confess with the creeds, in our hymns, even in each prayer that ends, “...who lives and
reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.” Believe what the Scriptures say about God’s
essence. Be astounded at its complexity. And marvel in wonderment at God’s majesty – because the things that
remain hidden from our understanding only serve to brighten all the more clearly, the simplicity of what God makes
absolutely clear to us – that we have been saved by grace through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ our Lord.

II. The simplicity of God’s truth comforts us

When something is difficult theologically to understand, or in this case, impossible because of our sinful
state, it’s best for us to let Scripture speak – to accept what the Bible says as truth, even though we can’t grasp it
logically, and to give thanks for and find comfort in what is clear. Just as a point of illustration – I don’t know the
inner-workings of a car, how everything goes together so that it will run smoothly and properly. Some people know
that, I don’t! Cars are a conundrum to me. And it’s going to stay that way, because all I need to know is THAT the
car runs and can drive. I don’t need to know how it does it – all I need to know is what is does! I own a Playstation
3 – (I like video games!) I don’t need to know which circuit is soldered to which board and which cables hook to
what connectors...all I need to know is what is does so that I can use it.
Approach the doctrine of the Trinity that way. We don’t need to be able to completely comprehend and
understand the complexity of God’s essence, how God is Triune, and each person of the Trinity is co-eternal and
co-equal. We simply need to know and believe by the Spirit’s guidance and power what it is God has done and
continues to do for us. That truth, God has not hidden from our understanding. In fact, he has revealed it in such
absolute clarity that even a young child may grasp it by knowledge and faith.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but
have eternal life.” “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.” Simple! Complete! Concise! “All have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
The Trinity may not be possible to understand, but what our Triune God does for us is clear. The Father
created us, formed us in the womb to be his own. But because of the curse of sin, passed down from generation to
generation, we were conceived in sin, born in sin and have continued in sinful rebellion all our days. Out of love for
us, the ones whom he wonderfully made, the Father sent Jesus into the world, God the Son, to assume full
responsibility for our transgressions by offering himself on the altar of sacrifice, the cross, so that, by his blood and
his bitter suffering and death, we would be set free from sin’s curse forever, awaiting the time when we will be
brought to the eternal presence of our God. And, so that we continue in the truth throughout our earthly lives, the
Father and the Son sends to us the Holy Spirit, through word and sacrament, who brings us into the kingdom of
faith by holy baptism, keeps us firm in our relationship with Jesus through the gospel, and guides and guards us in
the true faith until life’s end.
Beautiful! Simply...beautiful! Find comfort today, fellow Christians, in the fact that, even though God is
impossible to understand when it comes to his essence, the truth he reveals about how we stand in his sight will
never be a mystery. We don’t need to be able to understand the inner-workings of the Triune God, how there are
three persons and yet one God. We simply trust what the Scripture says of God...and learn from the same Scripture
to know and believe what God has done to rescue us from sin for eternity. On this side of eternity, the Trinity will
always remain a conundrum, an unsolvable puzzle. But know that the God whose essence will remain a mystery to
us on earth, has not left us with an eternal conundrum. In the words of Paul to the Jailer at Philippi, “Believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” It’s that simple! Amen.