Let us pray: O blessed Trinity, You are the only God there is. And You are the God of our salvation. So today enlarge our understanding of You so that we can approach Your throne of grace with joy, wisdom, and fearlessness in our prayers. Amen
GRACE MERCY AND PEACE ARE YOURS FROM THE HOLY TRINITY!
TEXT: Romans 5: 1-5
Dearly Beloved By God, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit:
I believe that God made people with a body, a soul, and a spirit. The fancy word for that is: a trichotomy. So, there are three aspects of your being, or what makes you, you. Why did He do this? Well, we know that when God created humans He breathed into them the breath of life. That breath came from God. It animated humans and gave them consciousness. Usually we define all that as meaning: God created us sinless. But I also believe it means God created us with three distinct, interwoven aspects which reflect Him in the form of: body, soul, and spirit. He did this so that we would have innate knowledge and understanding of His goodness which fully touched us. And then, we all know that sin entered the world and this got all discombobulated. That is why people have such a hard time understanding the teaching of the Trinity today.
I
Who do you usually pray to? Most pray primarily to Christ, the 2nd Person of the Trinity. We do that because we can relate to Him easier. He came and was born of flesh, just like us. He had a body, just like us. People could touch Him, share with Him, and see the love in His face. He also bore our sins and all our pains—bodily and emotionally. Since we pray out of faith in His work of saving us, naturally we pray more to Him because we sense that He really CAN relate!
Others pray to God the Father. He strikes us as a bit more unseen and sometimes even murky. He’s strong, All Powerful, in charge, and controls the unseen realm that our sins have obscured. He gave us an eternal soul which we also cannot see. We have an inner inkling of this truth, so our soul aspect can relate. Hence our prayers to Him often reflect this.
Still others pray to the Holy Spirit. He energizes and gives us life. The spiritual part of our nature needs this desperately and so we pray our inner longings concerning it to Him. I suppose that’s why He’s identified in the Bible as the “Comforter from on high. That being said, every Person of the Trinity hears our prayers of faith. They answer them, too. They are all in-on-this-together. For they share everything together. We have One God in three distinct persons. I would identify our trichotomy of: body, soul, and spirit all of which make us, us, as aligned with this fact.
II
With all this in mind, listen again to St. Paul’s words: “Therefore, since we have been justified (declared righteous and holy before God) through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
So, all three Persons of the Godhead are operative when it comes to our salvation. God the Father sent His Son or cleanse our soul. God the Son did the heavy lifting on the cross thus making us right with God via the forgiveness He won there. And God the Holy Spirit has thereby taken our fears away and replaced them with a new-found spirit, or zest, for living. In short, God’s got you covered in every manner possible!
My friends, we cannot fully understand the inter-workings of the Holy Trinity and never will. We simply believe what He tells us about Himself. It’s the greatest mystery of the Christian faith. But, isn’t it a glorious one? And that’s why we come to give Him our thanks, prayers, praise, and adoration today…..Amen
THE PEACE OF GOD…..
Pastor Thomas H. Fox