The triunity of God is one of the most foundational doctrines of Christianity. And yet, the Trinity is one of the most neglected and least understood tenets of our faith. I’m afraid I have contributed to this myself. I have been guilty of speaking of the Trinity as if it was something too difficult to understand or too risky to talk about for fear of stepping into heresy.

The problem with such neglect is the misinformed notions we develop about God as a result. Instead of understanding God to be Father, Son, and Spirit, who dwells in eternal unity and love, we fashion a singular god in our own image who often turns out to be cold, distant, and ultimately unknowable. Even if we don’t consciously believe God to be singular and distant, we often live as if he is, expecting his disapproval, ambivalence, and relative absence to characterize our lives rather than warm, enjoyable, loving fellowship with him. The antidote to this, Michael Reeves argues, is to know God as Trinity.

To know the Trinity is “to know God, an eternal and personal God of infinite beauty, interest, and fascination. The Trinity is a God we can know, and forever grow to know better.”^[1] The strength of Reeves’ book is that he writes about the Trinity from a relational perspective rather than an ontological one.^[2] His goal is not to mine all the nuanced gems of the Trinity’s nature, but to show how God has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Spirit, and how he relates to us as such.

Reeves’ explanation of the Father, Son, and Spirit gives delightful color to many of the words and phrases we use about God. He demonstrates that if we remove the Trinity, we remove the meaning behind everything we say about God. Consider the phrase “God is love” (1 John 4:8), for example. This phrase can only be true if God is triune. If he were a mathematical singularity,^[3] there would be no one in eternity past for him to love.

But because God is Father, Son, and Spirit, we can say “God is love,” because the Father, Son, and Spirit have been loving each other in relational unity for all of eternity. This not only shapes our view of who God is but what this God does. Why does he create? Reeves answers, because the Father eternally loves the Son, and desires to share that relationship with others. He writes,

Since God the Father has eternally loved his Son, it is entirely characteristic of him to turn and create others that he might also love them…the Father has always enjoyed loving another, and so the act of creation by which he creates others to love seems utterly appropriate for him.^[4]

In love, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created us in their image to have fellowship with them. This helps us understand the disaster that occurs in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve reject the love of God for the love of themselves and the things of the world. Thus, understanding the Trinity helps us to understand why God created but also what happened when man fell.

The Trinity also helps us understand why and how God saves. The answer is the same as the why and how of creation. Because God is triune and is love, he desires to share that love. He desires to save us and to bring us back into fellowship with him. In commenting on John 17:24-26, Reeves writes,

The Father loved the Son before the creation of the world, and the reason the Father sends him is so that the Father’s love for him might be in others also. That is why the Son goes out from the Father, in both creation and salvation: that the love of the Father for the Son might be shared.^[5]

The Father wants to be known and to share his love, so he sends his Son. But precisely because he is the Son, Jesus can reconcile us and bring us close to the Father, and can help us to enjoy him as he always has.^[6]

All of this is very different than any other singular God, who would create us only to serve and obey him (for he could not be a god of love). Even if he wanted to be known, he could only transmit information to us about himself. He couldn’t be with us. But because God is one unified God existing in three persons, the Father can send the Son to dwell with us and reveal the heart of the Father. And after his resurrection, the Son can send the Spirit from the Father to indwell us and deepen our relationship with the Father and the Son.

In other words, the trinitarian God loves us by giving all of himself. This should not surprise us, because God, as Trinity, is always giving himself. He is, by nature, a giving, loving God. Reeves argues that this is what God’s glory is all about: sharing himself and his love with us,

The glory of God is like radiant light, shining out, enlightening and giving life. And that is what the innermost being and weight of God is like: he is a sun of light, life and warmth, always shining out. As the Father gives out life and being to the Son, as the Father and the Son breathe out the Spirit, so the Spirit breathes out life into the world…as the sun gives of its own light ad heat, so this God glories in giving himself._^[7]

Of course, the greatest example of this is Jesus, the Son of God, giving himself on the cross for our sins, bearing the judgment of the Father, so that we might be reconciled to Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

These are merely snippets of the wealth of insight Reeves offers in his book. He sweeps away the cobwebs of neglect in our discourse on the Trinity and presents to us an enjoyable God who delights in being known.

He concludes his book, “Without the son, God cannot truly be a Father; thus alone he is not truly love. Thus he can have no fellowship to share with us, no Son to bring us close, no Spirit through whom we might know Him.”^[8] But praise God, we do not have such a God! We have the triune God of love, a kind Father who draws us to share his eternal love and fellowship with the Son and the Spirit.”

The choice set before us is, “which God will we have? Which God will we proclaim?”^[9] Reeves’ work gives the only God worth knowing and proclaiming. I heartily recommend it to anyone looking to grow in their relationship with the wonderful God of the Bible: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

P.S. I recently took our Imago Dei life group class at Glen Haven through a series on the Trinity, using Michael Reeves’ book as a guide. If you’re interested, here is a PDF of my handouts for the class:

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[1] Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2012), 12.

[2] Although there are several discussions on the best way to understand and defend the Trinity against common misunderstandings or misconceptions.

[3] See Reeves, 13 for his argument against understanding “one” in Deuteronomy 6:4 as mathematical singularity.

[4] Ibid., 42.

[5] Ibid., 44.

[6] Ibid., 77.

[7] Ibid., 123.

[8] Ibid., 129.

[9] Ibid., 130.