Why the Trinity Impacts Apologetics
Michael Reeves, author of Delighting in the Trinity, has some insights about why understanding the Trinity is important in witnessing. It helps show that God is loving, and not a solitary dictator.
This is precisely why the apostle John can write that "God is love" (1 John 4:8, emphasis added), for this God would not be who he is if he did not love. If at any time the Father did not have a Son to whom he gave his life and love, then he simply would not be a Father. To be who he is, then, this God must give out life and love. And so we begin to see why the Trinity is such good news: God is love because God is a Trinity, because for eternity this God has been giving out—positively bursting with—love for his Son....
This is precisely why the apostle John can write that "God is love" (1 John 4:8, emphasis added), for this God would not be who he is if he did not love. If at any time the Father did not have a Son to whom he gave his life and love, then he simply would not be a Father. To be who he is, then, this God must give out life and love. And so we begin to see why the Trinity is such good news: God is love because God is a Trinity, because for eternity this God has been giving out—positively bursting with—love for his Son....
To taste the difference the triune nature of God makes, let's step back for a moment and imagine something. What if God was not Father, Son, and Spirit? What if God was really just a single person? Well then, for eternity before Creation he must have been all by himself: no relationship, and nobody and nothing else for him to love. For eternity. This God simply could not have love at the very core of his identity. So would he be the sort of God inclined to be gracious toward us? Most unlikely. And, not having ever known fellowship himself, would he want to have fellowship with us? Would he even know what fellowship means? By definition, a single-person God is not inherently about love and relationship; its "gospel" must be a very poor thing next to the gospel of the God who is love.
But with the triune God, what good news we have! The eternally beloved Son, the delight and joy of his Father, comes to share with us the same love the Father has always given him. He comes from "the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18, NASB), announcing his desire that believers might be with him there (John 17:24), that we might be brought before the Most High—not just as forgiven sinners, but as dearly beloved children sharing the Son's own "Abba!" cry. Because God is Father, Son, and Spirit—and only because God is Father, Son, and Spirit—we can bask in those gorgeous words of the Son to his Father: "you … have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:23). The Father's eternal love for the Son now encompasses us. Thus with this God we have a gospel better even than forgiveness—we can have the security and intimacy of children. Beloved children of the Most High! No other God could bring us so close and have us so loved; no other God could so win our hearts.
