A Trinity Sunday Sermon
Phillips Brooks, D. D. Ephesians 2:18 For through him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. The doctrine of the Trinity is the description of what we know of God. We have no right to say that it is the description of God; for what there may be in Deity of which we have no knowledge, how can we tell? We are only sure that the Divine life is infinitely greater than our humanity can comprehend; and we are sure, too, that not even a revelation in the most perfect form, through the most perfect medium conceivable, could make known to the human intelligence anything in God save that which has relationship to human life. Man may reveal himself to the brutes, and the revelation may be clear and correct so far as it can go, but it must have its limit. Only that part of man can cross the line and show itself to the perception of that lower world which finds in brutedom some point which it can touch. Our strength may reveal itself to their fear; our kindness to their power of love; some part of our wisdom, even, to their dim capacity of education; but all the while there is a vast manhood of intellect, of taste, of spirituality, of which they never know. And so I am sure that the Divine nature is three Persons, but one God; but how much more than that I cannot know. That deep law which runs through all life, by which the higher any nature is, the more manifold and simple at once, the more full of complexity and unity at once, it grows, is easily accepted as applicable to the highest of all natures — God. In the manifoldness of His being these three personal existences, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, easily make themselves known to the human life. I tell the story of them, and that is my doctrine of the Trinity. 1. The end of the human salvation is "access to the Father." That is the first truth of our religion — that the source of all is meant to be the end of all, that as we all came forth from a Divine Creator. so it is into divinity that we are to return and to find our final rest and satisfaction, not in ourselves, nor in one another, but in the omnipotence, the omniscience, the perfectness, and the love of God. God is divine. God is God. And no doubt we do all assent in words to such a belief; but when we think what we mean by that word God; when we remember what we mean by "Father," namely, the first source and the final satisfaction of a dependent nature; and then when we look around and see such multitudes of people living as if there were no higher source for their being than accident, and no higher satisfaction for their being than selfishness, do we not feel that there is need of a continual and most earnest preaching by word and act, from every pulpit of influence to which we can mount, of the divinity of the Father. Why, take a man who is utterly absorbed in the business of this world. How eager he is; his hands are knocking at every door; his voice is crying out for admittance into every secret place and treasure house; he is all earnestness and restlessness. He is trying to come to something, trying to get access, and to what? To the best and richest of that earthly structure from which his life seems to himself to have issued. Counting himself the child of this world, he is giving himself up with a filial devotion to his father. He is the product in his tastes and his capacities of this social and commercial machinery which seems to be the mill out of which men's characters are turned. It is the society and the business of the world that have made him what he is, and so he gives up all that he is to the society or the business that created him. Now to such a man what is the first revelation that you want to make. Is it not the divinity of the Father? This is the divinity of the end. We come from God and we go to God. 2. And now pass to the divinity of the method. "Through Jesus Christ." Man is separated from God. That fact, testified to by broken associations, by alienated affections, by conflicting wills, stands written in the whole history of our race. Analogies, I know, are very imperfect and often very deceptive, when they try to illustrate the highest things. But is it not as if a great strong nation, too strong to be jealous, strong enough to magnanimously pity and forgive, had to deal with a colony of rebels whom it really desired to win back again to itself? They are of its own stock, but they have lost their allegiance and are suffering the sorrows and privations of being cut off from their fatherland and living in rebellion. That fatherland might send its embassy to tempt them home; and, if it did, whom would it choose to send? Would it not take of itself its messenger? The embassy that is sent is of the country that sends it. That is its value, that is its influence. The fatherland would choose its choicest son, taking him from nearest to its heart, and say, Go and show them what I am, how loving and how ready to forgive, for you are I and you can show them. Such was the mission of the Messiah. The ambassador was of the very land that sent Him, "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father." My friend says God sends Christ into the world, and therefore Christ is not God. I cannot see it so. It seems to me lust otherwise. God sends Christ just because Christ is God. The ambassador, the army is of the very most precious substance of the country that despatches it. This is the meaning of that constant title of our Master. He is the Son of God. The more truly we believe in the Incarnate Deity, the more devoutly we must believe in the essential glory of humanity, the more earnestly we must struggle to keep the purity and integrity and largeness of our own human life, and to help our brethren to keep theirs. It is because the Divine can dwell in us that we may have access to divinity. We and they must, through the Divine method, come to the Divine end where we belong, through God the Son to God the Father. 3. And now turn to the point that still remains. We have spoken of the end and of the method; but no true act is perfect unless the power by which it works is worthy of the method through which and the end to which it proceeds. The power of the act of man's salvation is the Holy Spirit. "Through Christ Jesus we all have access by one Spirit unto the Father." What do we mean by the Holy Spirit being the power of salvation? I think we are often deluded and misled by carrying out too far some of the figurative forms in which the Bible and the religious experience of men express the saving of the soul. For instance, salvation is described as the lifting of the soul out of a pit and putting it upon a pinnacle, or on a safe high platform of grace. The figure is strong and clear. Nothing can overstate the utter dependence of the soul on God for its deliverance; but if we let the figure leave in our minds an impression of the human soul as a dead, passive thing, to be lifted from one place to the other like a torpid log that makes no effort of its own either for cooperation or resistance, then the figure has misled us. The soul is a live thing. Everything that is done with it must be done in and through its own essential life. If a soul is saved, it must be by the salvation, the sanctification of its essential life; if a soul is lost, it must be by perdition of its life, by the degradation of its affections and desires and hopes. Conclusion: When this experience is reached then see what Godhood .the soul has come to recognize in the world. First, there is the Creative Deity from which it sprang, and to which it is struggling to return — the Divine end, God the Father. Then there is the Incarnate Deity, which makes that return possible by the exhibition of God's love — the Divine method, God the Son; and then there in this Infused Deity, this Divine energy in the soul itself, taking its capacities and setting them homeward to the Father — the Divine power of salvation. God the Holy Spirit. To the Father through the Son, by the Spirit. If we recur a moment to the figure which we used a while ago, God is the Divine Fatherland of the human soul; Christ is like the embassy, part and parcel of that Fatherland, which comes out to win it back from its rebellion; and the Holy Spirit is the Fatherland wakened in the rebellious colony's own soul. He is the newly living loyalty. When the colony comes back, the power that brings it is the Fatherland in it seeking its own; So when the soul comes back to God, it is God in the soul that brings it. So we believe in the Divine power, one with the Divine method and the Divine end, in God the Spirit one with the Father and the Son. This appears to me the truth of the Deity as it relates to us. I say again, "as it relates to us." What it may be in itself; how Father, Son, and Spirit meet in the perfect Godhood; what infinite truth more there may, there must, be in that Godhood, no man can dare to guess. But, to us, God is the end, the method, and the power of salvation; so He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is in the perfect harmony of these sacred personalities that the precious unity of the Deity consists. Let us keep the faith of the Trinity. Let us seek to come to the highest, through the highest, by the highest. Let the end and the method and the power of our life be all Divine. If our hearts are set on that, Jesus will accept us for His disciples; all that He promised to do for those who trusted Him, He will do for us. He will show us the Father; He will send us the Comforter; nay, what can He do, or what can we ask that will outgo the strong and sweet assurance of the promise which we have been studying today: Through Him we shall have access by one Spirit unto the Father. (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. WEB: For through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.