Anthony Mullins—Year A Trinity Sunday
Anthony: Hello, friends, and welcome back to Gospel Reverb, the podcast where we dive deep into the scriptures and let the gospel reverberate into every facet of our lives.
Before we jump in today, I just wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you. Thank you to our listeners, whether you’ve been with us from the very first episode, or you’ve just joined the family recently: thank you.
Your support, your encouragement, and the way you keep showing up month after month truly means the world to us. This podcast wouldn’t be the same without you. So, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing and thank you for letting the Gospel Reverb in your life and throughout your faith communities.
Alright, let’s get to today’s episode. I’m going to be reading from 2 Corinthians 13:11–14. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition. This is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for Trinity Sunday on May 31.
11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.
12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All God’s people here send their greetings.
14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
That’s a short one, isn’t it? But there are moments in Scripture that feel less like instructions and more like windows.
This brief closing from Paul is kind of one of those moments. It’s not just a farewell; it’s a glimpse into the very life of God And on Trinity Sunday that matters because the Trinity is not a puzzle to solve, a mathematical conundrum. It is a life to be drawn into.
Paul doesn’t end with doctrine. He ends with blessing, but this blessing is theology at its most alive.
He said, the grace of Jesus, the love of God, the fellowship of the Spirit. This is not abstract language. This is the heartbeat of reality.
Paul begins with grace, and he names it specifically in Jesus Christ. Grace is not an idea. Grace has a face. It is the face of Christ turned toward sinners, toward the broken, toward those who ran, denied, betrayed, and hid.
Grace is not God. Lowering the bar. Grace is God lowering himself, stepping into our humanity, into our mess, into our death. In Jesus, grace walks dusty roads. Grace touches lepers. Grace eats with tax collectors.
Grace stretches out his arms on a Roman cross, and that cross is not merely an event. It is a revelation. It tells us what God is like. God is not distant. God is self-giving. God is not waiting for you to climb up. God has come down in Jesus Christ.
So, when Paul says the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, he’s not offering a polite blessing. He is declaring that the entire Christian life begins, continues, and ends in the unearned, unstoppable love of Jesus.
And this is Christological at its core. We do not know God apart from Jesus. And what we see in Jesus is grace all the way down.
Then Paul names the love of God. This is not generic spirituality. This is the love of the Father, the one from whom all things come. And here’s what is striking. Paul does not say the “love of God” after “grace” by accident. He is telling us something profound.
Grace is how we experience the love of the Father. Jesus does not convince a reluctant Father to love us. Jesus reveals that the Father has always loved us. Therefore, the cross was not plan B; it is the unveiling of an eternal truth. The Father has always been and will always be love.
Before creation, before sin, before time itself, there was love. The Father loving the Son in the joy and communion of the Spirit. That means at the center of the universe is not power. Well, not in the way that we think of power — [it’s] not control or competition.
But at the very heartbeat and center of the universe is relationship. The Trinity’s not a committee. It is a communion of the triune Persons. And the staggering news of the gospel is that this love is not closed off. It is open, it is generous, it is reaching outward.
So, when Paul blesses the church with quote unquote the love of God, he is saying, you are not on the outside looking in. You are being brought into the very love that has always existed between the Father and the Son.
Finally, Paul speaks of the fellowship or communion of the Holy Spirit. Fellowship is more than togetherness. It is participation. It is sharing in something so real. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force. The Spirit is the living bond of love between the Father and the Son, and the One who draws us into that bond.
The Spirit does not simply give us gifts. The Spirit gives us God himself. Through the Spirit, we cry, “Abba Father.”
We are united to Christ. We are formed into one Body. This is why Paul can say earlier in this passage aim for restoration and live in peace because the Spirit is actively creating a people who reflect the life of God.
The Church is not just a gathering of individuals. The Church is meant to be a living icon of the Trinity — a community where grace is practice, love is embodied, and the communion is real.
Notice how Paul begins this idea of trinitarian life together. He says, rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another. Live in peace. These are not random commands. They are the shape of Trinitarian life.
We rejoice because of the life of God is joy. We believe in restoration because God is always reconciling. We see comfort where the Spirit is our Comforter. And of course, there is peace because Christ is our peace.
The Trinity is not just something we believe; it is something we reflect and embody. When a church, forgives, welcomes, restores, and reconciles, it is not just being nice. No. It is participating in the very life of God. And when we fail to live this way, we’re not just breaking rules, we’re actually contradicting reality. The reality we claim to belong to.
Now, this brings us to sort of the missional impulse and heart of this passage. Paul is not simply blessing the church for their own sake. He is shaping them for the sake of the world because the world is longing, often unknowingly, for what the Trinity alone can give a world of division. It needs fellowship and communion.
A world of shame needs grace. A world of fear needs God’s perfect love, and the Church is sent as a living witness to this reality. Mission is not just about programs or strategies. Mission is about participation.
We are sent not just to talk about God, but to embody his life. We might call this gospel proclamation and gospel declaration and gospel demonstration.
To extend the grace of Christ in tangible ways, to reflect the love of the Father in how we treat one another, that is the mark of the disciple, right? The way that we love one another, and to walk in the fellowship of the Spirit, inviting others to experience that communion. The church becomes in a small but real way, a preview of the new creation — a place where the life of the Trinity is already breaking into the present.
Paul ends with a blessing because ultimately this life is not something we manufacture. We don’t create grace. We do not generate love. We don’t produce fellowship. We receive them and we live from them.
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” — not just with you individually, but with you all. Or as we might say in the south, all y’all — not just us individually. Here in the States, we tend to be so hyper individualistic, but this is a blessing for the community.
This is a communal blessing because the Trinity creates a communal people. So, on Trinity Sunday, we are reminded that God is not solitary. God is love in eternal fellowship, Father, Son, and Spirit. And through Christ by the Spirit, we are brought into that life.
The invitation is simple, but it’s everything:
Receive the grace of Jesus, rest in the love of the Father, and walk in step and communion with the Holy Spirit, and then go live that life together for the sake of the world. Amen.