Do you remember just how weird you used to be back in the day? Now, before you answer, I should probably put a restriction on how you answer. I don't want to have to hear confession after this.
This will show off my age, but do you remember back when we had to pay cash for everything? I ask it that way because kids today won’t know what that’s like. We used to have to think about things as simple as, “how much cash will I need this week?” If you needed more cash, you might have to go to the bank and write a check made out to cash so you could get it.
All of this was before credit cards became common, before you could deposit checks by phone, or even send money around the world with a couple of clicks of a mouse.
Some of that happened before we even knew a mouse was something other than what my cat would catch in the house.
When everyone started accepting credit cards they didn’t all accept the same ones right? Did you ever have to ask someone if they took: Discover, or American Express, or some other card?
Now we just assume that folks will all take what we have. For that matter, I can use my phone to pay for things, and the 12 year old part of me still thinks I’m some sort of wizard ever time I tap my phone to the terminal at Casey’s to get my donuts.
Now we have things that we take for granted, but they didn’t used to be a part of everyday life. It was a journey for us to get there.
In this series, we're on a journey through what is one of the hardest parts of our faith; the Doctrine of the Trinity.
The Trinity is made up of three persons, but they are all together one God. We call them persons because our individual experience of each part of the Trinity is more than just an experience. To call it just an experience denies the power, the autonomy, and the strength of what God is doing through that experience.
So we call them persons, for good reason, but the thing to remember is that what we describe are different experiences of God. I use experience, even though it is an imperfect way of talking about them.
We don’t have to understand everything about how that works. In fact, that’s probably a good idea because we’ll get lost doing that, and that’s what makes it hard. Rather, we have faith that it does, because for each of us the individual experiences we have of God as three persons is different and unique to who we are, and where we are in our lives.
We have God as Father, as the first person, who is our creator and from him everything else comes. It is the start of our experience of God, long before we can ever put into words what that experience is.
Then we have God as Son in Jesus Christ, who helps us to accept who we are, and also know and accept God as real and as truth and as loving.
Then we have God as Holy Spirit who sanctifies us, or makes us holy. Who guides forward after we have accepted Jesus.
How all of this works can be confusing, but what makes it all stick, and what makes our experience of God in three persons important is grace. And our most important experience of that grace is through Jesus Christ.
We can define grace this way. And that can be applied to simple things, unexpected things that we don’t think of.
Its like getting up from a restaurant and realizing that someone else has paid for your meal, or a friend unexpectedly showing up that you haven’t seen in years. After I finished writing this message I found out that we were going to go see friends that were going to be in the area on vacation...we haven't seen them in a while.
There are lots of ways that it can happen every day. But when we’re talking about what God does through the three persons of the Trinity, that’s at a whole other level.
Jesus shows us grace, that we don’t deserve, and has from the very beginning.
From here we begin to see two distinctions of how we experience God, as Creator or Father, and as Word or Son. This is something we accept on faith, and it was something that the early church struggled with, but we accept as truth now.
But what does the Word do?
We know Creator, and we know about prevenient grace that we experience from God as Father or Creator.
That’s God’s grace given to us before we know anything about God, God who makes us in his image and gives us the ability to live our lives.
But the word is different from that.
The Word, Jesus, gives us light so that we can see what has been hidden. Through him we can see what others will try to put in our way, cover our eyes with, or put out the light. It continues to shine.
Paul describes what that looks like as a stumbling block. It is something that gets in our way of both knowing God and the world God created.
What makes this grace different is that we have to accept it. Our second experience of God as Son, or Word shows us Justifying Grace, this is the grace that redeems us.
Because we are created with the ability to choose right from wrong, we will choose wrong from time to time. That’s part of what will happen, and God knows this.
Part of our experience of this is that God grants us grace because he doesn’t want that to hold us back. But because we can choose we don’t have to accept it. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is all meant to help us to accept that grace.
Out of God’s love for us, he gives us this experience of grace so that we don’t have to stay in the dark, so that we don’t have to fail all the time, so that we don’t have to live in fear of what others will do to us. God gives us grace.
What does this look like in practical terms?
The previous post said that prevenient grace, the grace that comes from our experience of God as Father and Creator covers not just us, but all of these other
Folks that don’t know who he is. God is still with them.
God showing us his justifying grace through the Son, through Jesus our Redeemer is different.
We formalize our acceptance of that grace through baptism if we’re of an age when we can make that choice for ourselves, or our parents do that for us if we’re infants and then when we are able we confirm that choice through confirmation later.
This grace is what comes to us through Jesus that sets us apart and sends us out into the world. Accept the grace that is given to you, and reach out to others to help them do the same.
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