200607 Trinity Drive in Service Audio Trinity Order of Service Sermon manuscript: A creed is a statement of belief. The Christian Church has three creeds—the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. All three of these creeds describe what Christians believe. All three of them describe the God in whom Christians believe. The shortest and simplest and oldest creed that we have as Christians is the Apostles’ Creed. This is the creed that we have been speaking on non-communion Sundays. It is also the creed that is in our Catechism. The other creed that we are quite familiar with is the Nicene Creed. We speak this creed on Communion Sundays. It is quite similar to the Apostles’ creed, but it goes into more detail about who Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is. One of the earliest controversies that arose after the death of the Apostles is how Jesus Christ is to be seen. There were some who thought that he wasn’t as fully God as God the Father. Some said that he was created and not eternal. The Nicene Creed is responding to these errors when it says of Jesus: “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.” Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary in time, according to his human nature. He is eternally begotten, and true God, according to his divine nature. This takes us to the third creed which we will speak later today. It is the longest and least familiar to us. From the way that the creed speaks, being so emphatic, you can tell that two mysteries are firmly laid out for us to believe in. There continues to be the concern that we’ve already mentioned—that Jesus Christ is true man, born of the Virgin Mary, and also true God, begotten of the Father from eternity. This is taken up in the second part of creed. The other mystery is in the first part of the creed. It has to do with the Triune nature of God. The words “Triune” and “Trinity” are not in the Bible. They were words that were made up by Christians to describe two facts that are clearly taught in the Bible. The first part of the word is “tri” as in “triangle.” A triangle has three angles or sides. The word “tri” means “three.” The Bible speaks clearly of there being three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The second part of “Triune” or “Trinity” is “une,” as in “uno” or one. The Bible speaks of God as singular and as the only God—not three gods but one God. God says, “Behold, the Lord your God is one.” Therefore the words “Triune” or “Trinity” are like shorthand for what the Bible says. The Bible speaks of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Bible speaks of there being only one God, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. We naturally have difficulty with these mysteries because one of the ways that our brain is especially fond of operating is by relating whatever it is that we are talking about to something else that is already known. We like to put stuff into categories and compare and contrast them. Unfortunately this is something that we cannot do either with God or with Jesus Christ being true God and true man at the same time. The reason why we can’t categorize and compare and contrast with God or Jesus very well is because God and Jesus are absolutely unique. The word “unique” has that word “uno” in it, to which we have already referred. “Unique” means that there is only one of them. Since there is nothing like the Trinity where God is both three persons, but only one God, at the same time, and since there is nothing like Jesus Christ being true God and true man at the same time, our intellect has a hard time with this. It wants to be able to categorize and understand. And so it has been the case that there have been a great many people who have tried to figure out these mysteries over the history of the Christian Church. The reason why we have the careful, clarifying language that we do in both the Nicene and Athanasian creeds