delighting in the trinity by michael reeves

And He is the Christ, the One anointed with the Spirit. But even that most basic call to believe in the Son of God is an invitation to Trinitarian faith. That would be an admirable mission statement for any evangelist: to see someone come to genuine Christian faith. John wrote his gospel, he tells us, so “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). I could believe in the death of a man called Jesus I could believe in His bodily resurrection I could even believe in a salvation by grace alone but if I do not believe that God is triune, then, quite simply, I am not a Christian. The bedrock of our faith is nothing less than God Himself, and every aspect of the gospel is only Christian insofar as it is the expression and action of this God, the triune God. For God is triune, and it is as triune that He is so good and desirable. If the Trinity were something we could shave off of God, we would not be relieving Him of some irksome weight we would be shearing Him of precisely what is so delightful about Him. For it is only when you grasp what it means for God to be a Trinity that you really sense the beauty, the overflowing kindness, the heart-grabbing loveliness of God. To dive into the Trinity is a chance to taste and see that the Lord is good, to have your heart won and your self refreshed. Yes, the Trinity can be presented as a fusty and irrelevant dogma, but the truth is that God is love because God is a Trinity. All quite understandable, but Christians must see the reality behind what can be off-putting language.

But “God is Trinity”? No, hardly the same effect: that just sounds cold and stodgy.

They seem lively, lovely, and as warming as a crackling fire. Those three words could hardly be more bouncy.

Delighting in the trinity by michael reeves