The Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran Church, Pinetop, Arizona

Rev. Michael “Mick” Mathews

The Feast of the Holy Trinity– May 31, 2026

Sermon:  “The Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”     Matthew 28:16–20

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I invite all of you to turn in the hymnal to page 319 and mark the place. We will be reading the Athanasian Creed together as part of the sermon.

Today on this first Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate that God has made Himself known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – Three Persons and yet One God. The church has created a word to sum up this teaching that God is Three in One by putting together “tri” which means “three” with “unity” which means “one” – and forming the word “Trinity” meaning “three and one at the same time.”

Because the word “Trinity” is a human creation and the word does not appear anywhere in the Bible, some people claim that the teaching itself must not be Biblical or true either. But that claim is false. Even though the word “Trinity” is not in the Bible, the teaching that God is Three in One certainly is.

Just look at the Gospel reading for today from the last chapter of Matthew. After Jesus rose from the dead and before He ascended into heaven, He told His disciples:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18–20)

As part of Jesus’ command to His followers, He teaches us to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He teaches us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three Persons who can be distinguished from each other and yet they are united as one. Because notice: Jesus doesn’t tell us to baptize in the “names” of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but in the “name” of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Three Persons – One Name, the Name of God, who also told Moses that His name is “I AM” (Exodus 3:14), not “We Are.”

Consider also how the Trinity is present in the story of creation from Genesis chapter 1:

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Genesis 1:1–3)

“God created” speaks about the Father. And the Spirit of God was present, “hovering over the face of the waters.” So where is the presence of the Son? John’s Gospel tells us:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

So where is the Son at creation? When God said, “Let there be light,” the Son is the Word of God through whom the Father creates first the light and then everything else. The existence of the Trinity is not something new. God has existed as Father, Son, and Spirit since before the creation of the world.

Now that Jesus has made it known to us that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one God, this is what every true believer in God believes and confesses. Or as the Athanasian Creed puts it, this is “the catholic faith.” Don’t get thrown off by that word “catholic.” It’s not referring to the organization of churches that follows the pope in Rome. It’s the original meaning of the word: “in respect of the whole.” The whole group of true followers in God believes this. It is the “universal” teaching of the true church of God.

Unfortunately, because it is difficult for us human beings to wrap our minds around how God can be three and one at the same time, at various times in church history, different people have gotten messed up on their understanding and have taught the wrong thing about God.

Some false teaching overemphasizes the oneness of God, which the Athanasian Creed calls “confusing the persons.” Other false teaching overemphasizes the three-ness of God, which the Creed calls “dividing the substance.”

One example of false teaching that overemphasized the three-ness of God claimed that the Son has not always existed with the Father. This false teaching argued that since human fathers exist before their sons exist, it must be the same with God the Father and God the Son: at some point the Father must have existed without the Son. The problem with that argument is that God was not made in the image of man. Instead, man was made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27). So we should not say that the Heavenly Father is like human fathers, but rather that human fathers are like the heavenly father. The Heavenly Father sets the pattern for human fathers, not the other way around. As human fathers – and mothers – share the gift of life with their children, so God the Father and God the Son share their existence with each other. But with them, it has always been so. The Father and Son have always existed together. The Father has always been the Father of the Son, and the Son has always been the Son of the Father.

The words of the first section of the Athanasian Creed help us to speak rightly about how the three Persons of the Trinity are all equally God. Let’s read that first section of the Athanasian Creed together, marked as verses 1 through 18 in our hymnal.

An example of false teaching that overemphasized the oneness of God said that there are not three Persons in God but only one, and that the one Person of God sometimes expresses Himself as a Father, at other times as a Son, and at other times as a Spirit. But that teaching ignores the evidence that Jesus, the Son of God, prayed to the Father (John 17:1), and Jesus said that He would send the Spirit from the Father to His disciples (John 15:26). So the Father, Son, and Spirit are not to be confused with one another but distinguished from one another. The Athanasian Creed helps us to speak rightly about how the three Persons of the Trinity are distinguished from another, drawing on the way the Bible speaks about them to describe their relationship to one another: The Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Because God is beyond our human understanding, we will never fully grasp how the three Persons are united as one God. All we can do is believe and confess what God has told us in His Word. The second section of the Athanasian Creed help us to do that, so let’s read verses 19 through 26 together.

The third and final section of the Athanasian Creed helps us to speak rightly about another great mystery of our faith: the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who is the eternal Son of God has become man while still remaining God. The one through whom all of creation was made entered into His creation as one of us in order to save us. It is beyond our understanding to grasp how Jesus can be both God and man at the same time. Those who have tried to explain it have either ended up separating His two natures, keeping God and man separated, or they have somehow tried to mix the God and man together into something that is no longer truly God or truly man, but something different from either. So we do not say that Jesus changed from God into man, or that He mixed humanity into His divinity, but that He added our human nature to His diving nature while remaining one Person.

And the best example we have of this is that we human beings exist as both body and soul together. A body separated from the soul is not a living human being. A soul separated from the body is not a complete human. That’s why our hope for eternal life is not about our souls leaving our bodies in death so that the soul can live in heaven. Our hope for eternal life is that Jesus will raise our bodies from death, unite body and soul again, making both body and soul perfect so that we can live in the new heaven and the new earth forever with Him. Jesus took on our human nature, He took on a human body, so that He could achieve that salvation for us. He took on a human nature so that He could suffer and die for us on the cross to pay for our sins, but only as God could He pay for the sins of the whole world. He needed to be both God and man. And as the God-man, He entered into death and hell and broke them apart from the inside by rising to life again in His human body. He has now taken His human nature into the heavens to prepare a place for us, and He will come again to judge the living and the dead and to gather us to Himself in eternal life.

Let’s read the section of the Athanasian Creed, which helps us to speak rightly about our Savior Jesus. Let’s read from verse 27 to the end.

There are two great truths at the heart of our faith. First, the God who exists is one God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Second, the Son of God has taken on our human nature to save us from sin and death. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit continue to work together to bring us that salvation – a gift that God pours out upon us in our baptism into His name, the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the one God whom we praise and worship and adore now and forever. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:3   And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Genesis 1:6   And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

Genesis 1:9   And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:11   And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Genesis 1:14   And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

Genesis 1:20   And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

Genesis 1:24   And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:26   Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Genesis 1:27         So God created man in his own image,

                  in the image of God he created him;

                  male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:28   And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis 2:1   Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Genesis 2:4           These are the generations

       of the heavens and the earth when they were created,

Acts 2:14   But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: …

Acts 2:22   “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. 25 For David says concerning him,

       “‘I saw the Lord always before me,

                  for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken;

26  therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

                  my flesh also will dwell in hope.

27  For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

                  or let your Holy One see corruption.

28  You have made known to me the paths of life;

                  you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

Acts 2:29   “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. 32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. 34 For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

       “‘The Lord said to my Lord,

       “Sit at my right hand,

35  until I make your enemies your footstool.”’

Acts 2:36   Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Matthew 28:16   Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”