The God who is Jesus

 June 6 2021

John 14:15-31

         As I have talked about before, I am currently taking classes in order to someday be ordained. One of these classes was named Nazarene History and Polity and it was just as exciting as it sounds. The polity aspect of the class was basically focused on the sixteen Articles of Faith of the Church of the Nazarene. These are statements of what it is exactly that defines us as being Nazarenes, just why it is that we are perhaps different from, say, Lutherans, or United Methodists, or Baptist’s. The importance of these belief statements became quite evident during our class time when one of my fellow learners stated that she had grown up Lutheran and had only been a Nazarene for a little over ten years. For her, the tenth Article of Faith, the one that concerns our belief of entire sanctification, that we believe that it is indeed possible for a person to be free of their sin nature through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, this was a real struggle. You could have heard a pin drop when she stated that she did not believe that it was possible for anyone to be able to be set free from the power of sin so that they might experience a full communion with God and perfectly love with the perfect love of God. The rest of us as we sat there rather stunned wondered just what would be our teachers response and he was perhaps more gracious that any of us expected, merely stating that if this was her belief then she was free to share it. The rest of us knew, though, that for her to stay within the Nazarene church meant that she was in for some difficult days ahead as a proper understanding of entire sanctification was something that would come up every year when a pastor came before the Board of Ordination. Well, I thought not much more about it until at the end of our last class together, the teacher ended the class by stating once again how important these Articles of Faith are to who we are as Nazarenes and if someone had a difficulty with any of these statements of belief then perhaps, this was not the place for them. Right there all of us figured out quickly that the teacher was addressing the elephant sitting in our midst. As difficult as it may have been for our fellow classmate, she was going to need to do some soul searching to see if the Church of the Nazarene was really the place for her.

         I tell you all this so that you understand just why I thought it would be a good idea to go over the Articles of Faith of the Church of the Nazarene. Just what exactly is it that we believe and the bigger question is, if this is what it means to be a Nazarene, then, is this what each of us personally believes? The importance of being certain in just what it is that you and I believe is found in something that Jesus told his disciples on the night before his death, found in John 16:33, “In this world you will have afflictions but be confident, I have overcome the world.” This is why I decided to call this summer series about our Articles of Faith, Confident. Confident, in its original meaning means intense trust and this is what we should come away with when we have an understanding of the ground of our faith. You know, as well as I do, that these past years have shaken us, we have experienced a virus that completely upended our world, we have witnessed political and racial strife the likes we have never seen before, and all of the unrest in our world leaves us shaken. This is why we need to know that there are sixteen beliefs that we can intensely trust to be absolutely something we can be certain about no matter what is going on in the world because these beliefs will remind us that it is Jesus who is at the center of our beliefs and he has overcome the world.

         So, having said all of that, lets begin and it should be no surprise that the first Article of Faith is about God. Here is what we read: 1) The Triune God. We believe in one eternally, existent, infinite God, Sovereign Creator and sustainer of the universe; that He only is God, holy in nature, attributes and purposes. The God who is Triune in essential being, revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now, the most important word in all of that first statement of faith is the word, “revealed.” To really grasp just how it is that we know anything about God at all we have to listen closely to what Jesus said as recorded in the tenth chapter of Luke and also found in the eleventh chapter of Matthew. At the return of the seventy-two missionaries that Jesus had sent out, we are told that “Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things  from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” So, the starting point of speaking about God is with Jesus. When people want to tell you that the God of Christianity is the same God as the God of Judaism or the God of Islam you can tell them confidently, that no, that is not the truth because the God of Christianity is the God revealed to us by Christ. Knowing this then we have to ask, just what is it about this God who is revealed to us by Jesus Christ that is so fundamentally different than every other God believed by the other religions of the world? The answer as to what is different about this God revealed to us by Jesus is found again in this passage in Luke. Did you hear me say that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit when he rejoiced about his relationship with his Heavenly Father? As Jesus said, all things had been handed over to him by his Heavenly Father, which is stating that he and his Heavenly Father are one and Jesus was one with the Spirit because it was through the Spirit that Jesus rejoiced. Do you see where this idea of God being one God, in three persons came from? This idea of God being one God in three persons is the God revealed to us by Jesus. So, if someone wants to argue that the Trinity was just the work of a bunch of theologians you can tell them, no, the Trinity is the God revealed to us by Jesus. The word, “Trinity”, may not be in the Bible but the three-in-one God, which is what the Trinity means, is most certainly the God revealed to us by Jesus.

         Now, Matthew and Luke are not the only places where Jesus reveals to us that the one true God is a God in three persons. The gospel of John is perhaps, the place where this God, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit jumps off the page. Nowhere is this more true than in the final words of Jesus, found in the thirteenth through the seventeenth chapters. In our scripture for today from the fourteenth chapter, it is quite evident that our God is a Triune God. Jesus first, begins to tell his disciples that he was going to ask his Heavenly Father to give his followers another Helper, Advocate, or Counselor or Comforter as is variously translated. The word in Greek is Paraclete which is a compound word which means one who comes along side another to call out to them, or speak with them. Knowing this helps us to understand that the one the Father is going to send is the Spirit who is going to come alongside the followers of Jesus and speak truth to them.

         Jesus continues by saying that in a little while the world would see him no more but they, his beloved followers, they would see him because he will live and because he lives they too will live. Jesus continued that on that day they would realize that he is in the Father, and they would be in him and he would be in them. Now, that’s rather difficult to understand just what Jesus is getting at but from what he is saying here we do know that he is speaking of his resurrection, his victory over death, and who Jesus appeared to was only those who believed in him. It was the resurrection of Jesus that affirmed his true identity as Paul records in the first chapter of Romans, that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead..” As the Son of God, Jesus is one with the Father, “in the Father” as Jesus would state it. And as Jesus was not only perfectly God but also perfectly human when he died upon the cross, we who share in his flesh died with him and likewise when Jesus arose in the flesh we now also live because Jesus lives. This is why Jesus told the disciples that they would be one with him because they are one with him when the life of Jesus lives in them. It is this understanding that because the life of Jesus was going to live in them this is the reason that Jesus told his disciples that they were to guard and keep watch over this commandment to love one another. You see, when his life lived in them they would at long last be able to fulfill this command. And Jesus also told them when they loved each other as he had loved them then they could be assured that the love of God, the love of both the Father and the Son, was going to be with them. Yet if that were not enough, Jesus in answering a question of one of his disciples, goes on to say that not only would they be certain of the love of God but God, both Father, and Son would come and make their home with them. This is the same promise found in the fifty seventh chapter of the book of Isaiah who records God telling his people, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is contrite, which means one who has been ground down by the trials of life, and those of a lowly spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to give new life to those who life has been ground down.” It is this verse you can begin to glimpse, in a small way, the God revealed to us by Jesus. God is not only God who dwells in the high and holy places, the God known to us as our Heavenly Father but we also know God as the God who is the God who dwells with the lowly, the poor of spirit, those that life has ground down, the God we know as Jesus. God must be known as the high and holy one if there is to be any hope of salvation but if God is their salvation then it also makes sense that he is the one who must be willing to come and dwell with those who desperately need the salvation that only God can provide. And further, if God is to save them then he must save them from something, which ultimately we know as death and deliver them into something else, which we know is life and since it is his life that is holy, unsoiled by the sin of this world, then it is his life which we must live in and which must live in us.This life of God with us is the life of the God we know as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, so we know the Holy Spirit as a person, as Jesus spoke of him being a “him” not an it as some people wrongly do.

         What should also become clear from this passage from the gospel of John is that this three in one God revealed to us by Jesus is a God who speaks. Jesus, God’s Son is first known to us in John’s gospel as the Word. He is the spoken Word of God and the kept Word of God, fully obedient to the Word even unto death. As Jesus tells us, the words he spoke were only the words that his Father had spoke to him. And the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us by the Father, is also the God who speaks, the one who teaches us all things and brings to remembrance all the things that Jesus had taught. All the words spoken by God, though serve the greater Word, the Word which is the command of God that we who are listening are to love one another just as Jesus, the very Son of God, has first loved us. This love that Jesus has for us is the same love which we are to love one another. 

Have you ever thought of the love of Jesus? When Jesus told his disciples the reason why he was going to be obedient to the command of his Heavenly Father, the answer Jesus gave is that he does his Father’s command so that the world knows that Jesus loves his Heavenly Father. With this in mind then, listen to what we hear Jesus say as he prays as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John. There we hear Jesus thank his Heavenly Father that he has loved him before the foundation of the world. So, what is revealed to us is that this relationship between Jesus, the Son of God and his Heavenly Father is a relationship of mutual love for one another, a love shared and expressed by the Holy Spirit as well. This is the love found in our three in one God, this is the holy and eternal nature of God which Jesus came to reveal to the world.  You see there are other religions who believe in one God but for them the love of God is an action on the part of their God not his unchangeable nature. This means that this God is a God whose love must be constantly sought after. How very different is the God who is revealed to us by Jesus. The God of Jesus is the God who can be described as being a God of eternal love so that we can be forever assured that there is nothing that we can do to make our God love us more and there is nothing that we could ever do to make our God love us any less. The whole question of God’s love for us has been settled through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

         Jesus then reveals to us a God whose love renders him vulnerable to the rejection and hurts and wounds done to him by the very ones he loves, and such love makes our God beyond our own wisdom and understanding. Even though our God is Sovereign and our Creator, these titles take a back seat to the title of Father, the one who longs to give what he has, his life, as an inheritance for those so unworthy to receive it, yet this is what love does. Jesus revealed that as the Father has eternally loved him, the Father has eternally loved us and it is because of this amazing love that we are drawn into this life of love and through this love that has always been, we now love each other so that the world may know that as the Father has first loved us, we too love the Father. This is the life that the Word of God calls us into, the life that God comes along side of us to call us to fulfill, the life that God continues to teach us and to bring to our remembrance for this is the life that we were created to live. This life is the very life of Jesus who died and rose again so that now his life can now live in us and his love can be our love.  This is the life that reveals the God of Jesus, the God three in one, the God we know as Father, the one who inhabits the high and holy place, the God who sends to us salvation. He is God we know as Jesus, the one sent by the Father, the one who took on our mortal and corrupt flesh, yet holy through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the one who came in the fullness of time, the one who lived among the lowly and the ones rubbed raw by life and died to put to death our sinful flesh so that in his resurrection we might at last have new life. He is the one we know as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the God who eternally loved us who now eternally dwells with us and in us to bring us back to life. He is the God who pours the love of heaven into our hearts, the very Spirit of our adoption into this life of God, so that we cry out, Abba, Father. This is the God revealed to us by Jesus, the God we can be confident is the one true living God, the God who has overcome the world. Amen!