Your Salvation Takes All Three!

1st Sunday after Pentecost, 5/22/16
Romans 5:1-5


Your Salvation Takes All Three!
I. God the Father to justify you
II. God the Son to redeem you
III. God the Holy Spirit to regenerate you


There is any number of situations in life when one isn’t enough. Have you ever eaten just one potato chip out of an entire bag full of chips? One isn’t enough. One good tire or one good brake on the vehicle you’re driving doesn’t provide you with much security. One isn’t enough.

The same can be said of two. That object you wanted to move was so heavy, that even with another person’s help you weren’t able to lift it. Even with two people feverishly working on the project at the same time, it wasn’t finished before the deadline. Two attempts to remove the stain weren’t enough. The stain is still obvious.

Today we join Christians around the world in celebrating the Trinity—the truth that the only true God is three persons but only one God. Mathematically, we’re saying three equals one. That simply doesn’t make sense. In fact, no amount of explanation will ever make that truth reasonable to us. It will always remain a mystery.

But that’s what the Lord our God declares about himself in his word, and, by his grace, that’s what we believe. The truth that God is triune is like so many other truths of the Bible: the virgin birth, that Jesus is both God and man in one person, all of his miracles, especially his resurrection from the dead, the fact that our God is eternal. Each of these biblical truths and many more are beyond our human comprehension. But they are true nonetheless.

However, Scripture does help us understand the role that each person of the Trinity plays in our salvation. We have just such a section of God’s word before us this morning in Romans chapter 5. Here our God explains the Trinity’s part in your salvation. One wouldn’t have been enough. Neither would two. It takes all three. Your salvation takes all three. May our God enlighten our hearts and minds to his saving activity in our lives with this section of his holy word this morning!

Part I.

It doesn’t happen often, but I’m guessing it’s happened to every one of us. We owed someone something—usually money—and instead of demanding repayment, the lender told us, “Just forget it. You don’t owe me anything.” And the emotions we experience in the next moment are overwhelming, especially if there was little or no possibility that we could repay them. Their generosity, their kindness, their compassion astound us. The next words that come out of our mouths gush with gratitude, but they seem so small compared with what out benefactor just said and did. What we owed them is gone!

Dealing with unmanageable financial debt is unnerving enough. Dealing with spiritual debt—the debt of sin—is humanly impossible. There is nothing we can do to right a single wrong we’ve committed against the holy God. Billions of people wrongly think they can. They delude themselves into thinking that their deeds of charity and love towards others earn them points with the holy God. Or, they minimize or even deny their sins. They refuse to recognize what God’s holy law says about sin.

But that holy law has done its work in our hearts. That’s one of the reasons we’re here in worship this morning. We’re all too aware of the spiritual debt we owe to our God because of our innumerable sins and we have nothing to offer him.

So what does God do? Listen again to this astounding truth from Paul, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God the Father justifies us. Imagine this courtroom scene. You’ve been wrongly accused of a terrible crime. The prosecutor has laid out all sorts of evidence but you didn’t do what he is accusing you of. Imagine your relief when the judge reads the verdict, “Not guilty.” You’re elated!

Now imagine this courtroom scene. You’ve been charged with a crime you did commit. In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that you have no defense. So you plead guilty. But the judge doesn’t accept your guilty plea. Instead, he pronounces you not guilty. You’re stunned! You can’t believe it!

Well, dear Christians, believe it. Countless times in our lives we have pleaded guilty before God of our sins—sins too numerable for us to count, even sins of which we’re unaware. The evidence against us is overwhelming and we recognize that. We fully expect to receive the punishment we deserve. But what do we hear our God declare? “Not guilty.” Not guilty.

Your salvation takes all three. God the Father justifies you.

The truth that God the Father justifies you is the greatest good news any sinner can hear. It’s the very heart and center of our Christian faith. But that good news is often difficult for us to process. And there are two reasons for it. One is the guilt we feel over past sins. It haunts us. It comes back at the most unexpected moments. We have a hard time believing God actually declares us not guilty. The other reason we have difficulty processing our justification is that we innately feel that our works of service to God and neighbor should be worth something to God. If he is pleased with them, then why don’t they earn us anything?

Because we can do nothing about our sinfulness. Thankfully, we don’t have to because Jesus has already done it all. His holy life and his innocent death have already paid for our sins. On the basis of what Jesus has done for us God the Father justifies us. That’s the sweetest news any sinner can hear!

Part II.

One of the results of having a world of information at our fingertips via modern technology is that it has made it easier for adopted children to locate their birth parents. And there are pros and cons to these efforts. Among the pros in knowing your birth parents are that it can supply medical history information as well as satisfy a nagging desire simply to know. Among the cons is that you might not enjoy the information you discover. Thus some adopted children are content to let their parentage remain a mystery.

But there is no mystery regarding our spiritual heritage. As sinful people who come into this world with original sin inherited from our parents and committing a lifetime of actual sins, we rightly belong to the Sultan of Sin, Satan himself. And that would be our eternal parentage if it weren’t for the work of God the Son.

His work is redemption. He came into this world to redeem us, to make us his own. The price he paid had to be something that lasts forever. Thus gold or silver or anything else that we consider to be costly and precious wouldn’t pay the ransom. It had to be something truly unique and precious. It took none other than the blood of the Son of God. The precious blood of Jesus redeemed us.

In a sense, then, our divine Brother adopted us. He made us his own. We belong to him, not so that he can use us, but so that he can bless us forever. God’s word makes it perfectly clear that we came into this world belonging to the devil himself. But Jesus bought us back so that we can belong to him forever.

Your salvation took all three. God the Son redeemed you.

By God’s grace we belong to Jesus, and because you do, Jesus has eternal blessings in store for you. We rejoice to know that Jesus was willing to make the greatest sacrifice for us. In fact, he made it his goal to accomplish that work for us. But let’s be honest. There are times in our lives when we consider Jesus’ claim on us to be unwanted. We’re infected with a sinful nature that screams for its sinful freedom to indulge in sin as we please. We’d rather not be claimed by Jesus. But thanks be to Jesus, he doesn’t let go of us. He uses the thunder of his law to knock some spiritual sense into us and the comfort of his gospel to announce our forgiveness and to restore our relationship with him. Your salvation takes all three—the Son of God to redeem you.

Part III.

From time to time the media report that someone has discovered a human body. Some teens about a month ago discovered one in a house just a few miles west of here. Imagine the horror of such a thing!

When God the Holy Spirit first approached us, he found a horror far greater. He found a person who was physically alive and looking just fine, but spiritually he came across a corpse. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, the Bible declares.

And we would have remained that way eternally if it weren’t for the fact that the Holy Spirit regenerated us. He gave us spiritual life. He used the gospel—the good news of Jesus as our Savior—to make us spiritually alive. That was God’s plan for us before he created all things. Paul says it like this, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he gave us.” Were it not for the work of God the Holy Spirit, the Father’s justification and the Son’s redemption would have been for nothing. The blessings of forgiveness, new life as child of God, and eternal life would be a cruel pipe dream, dangling spiritual carrots that we could never grab on our own. But God the Holy Spirit brought us to faith in Jesus, gave us spiritual life and brought to us the blessings Jesus won for us.

And now the Holy Spirit remains with us every day of our Christian lives. He does that through God’s word and sacrament. Don’t take those precious means of God’s grace for granted. God forbid that we should despise his word and sacrament as unworthy of our time or effort! Your God loves you so much that each person of the Trinity did his part in bringing salvation to you. Yes, it took all three persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Praise the triune God not just with your words, but also with your life! Amen.