Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith

by Michael Reeves

for it is only when we see that God rules his creation as a kind and loving Father that we will be moved to delight in his providence.

But God the Father is not called Father because he copies earthly fathers. He is not some pumped-up version of your dad. To transfer the failings of earthly fathers to him is, quite simply, a misstep. Instead, things are the other way around: it is that all human fathers are supposed to reflect him—only where some do that well, others do a better job of reflecting the devil.

Have you ever known someone so magnetically kind and gracious, so warm and generous of spirit that just a little time spent with them affects how you think, feel and behave? Someone whose very presence makes you better—even if only for a while, when you are with them?

MH

The tragedy is that so many think that the living God is the devilish one here, as if he created us simply to get, to demand, to take from us. But the contrast between the devil and the triune God could hardly be starker: the first is empty, hungry, grasping, envious; the second is superabundant, generous, radiant and self-giving.[3] And thus the triune God can and does create. Grace, then, is not merely his kindness to those who have sinned; the very creation is a work of grace, flowing from God’s love. Love is not a mere reaction with this God. In fact, it is not a reaction at all. God’s love is creative. Love comes first. He gives life and being as a free gift, for his very life, being and goodness is yeasty, spreading out that there might be more that is truly good.

It is not, then, that God needed to create the world in order to satisfy himself or to be himself. The divine majesty of this God is not dependent on the world. The Father, Son and Spirit “were happy in themselves, and enjoyed one another before the world was.” But the Father so enjoyed his fellowship with his Son that he wanted to have the goodness of it spread out and communicated or shared with others. The creation was a free choice borne out of nothing but love.

One of his favorite words was harmony. Declaring that the Father, Son and Spirit constitute “the supreme harmony of all,” he believed, like Bach, that when we sing together in harmony (as he often did with his family) we do something that reflects God’s own beauty.

So next time you look up at the sun, moon and stars and wonder, remember: they are there because God loves, because the Father’s love for the Son burst out that it might be enjoyed by many. And they remain there only because God does not stop loving. He is an attentive Father who numbers every hair on our heads, for whom the fall of every sparrow matters; and out of love he upholds all things through his Son, and breathes out natural life on all through his Spirit.

Her act of sin was merely the manifestation of the turn in her heart: she now desired the fruit more than she desired God. And this, says James, is just how it is with all sin: it flows from our desires, from what we wrongly love: “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (Jas 1:14-15).

That is what went wrong in Eden, the garden of God: those who were made to enjoy the beauty of the Lord turned away to enjoy their own. Love’s longings and the desires of their hearts shifted from the Lord to themselves. And thus, instead of running to him, they would now hide from him.

Moreover, our problem is not so much that we have behaved wrongly, but that we have been drawn to love wrongly. Made in the image of the God of love, Augustine argued that we are always motivated by love—and that is why Adam and Eve disobeyed God. They sinned because they loved something else more than him. That also means that merely altering our behavior, as Pelagius suggested, will do no good. Something much more profound is needed: our hearts must be turned back.

Such a person might well behave morally or religiously, but all they did would simply express their fundamental love for themselves.

The Father so loves that he desires to catch us up into that loving fellowship he enjoys with the Son. And that means I can know God as he truly is: as Father. In fact, I can know the Father as my Father.

And so, as the Son brings me before his Father, with their Spirit in me I can boldly cry, “Abba,” for their fellowship I now freely share: the Most High my Father, the Son my great brother, the Spirit no longer Jesus’ Comforter alone, but mine.

That, indeed, is why the Father sent him, that we who have rejected him might be brought back—and brought back, not merely as creatures, but as children, to enjoy the abounding love the Son has always known.

“If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity very well at all.”[4]

Knowing God as our Father not only wonderfully gladdens our view of him; it gives the deepest comfort and joy. The honor of it is stupefying. To be the child of some rich king would be nice; but to be the beloved of the emperor of the universe is beyond words. Clearly the salvation of this God is better even than forgiveness, and certainly more secure. Other gods might offer forgiveness, but this God welcomes and embraces us as his children, never to send us away. (For children do not get disowned for being naughty.) He does not offer some kind of “he loves me, he loves me not” relationship whereby I have to try and keep myself in his favor by behaving impeccably. No, “to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (Jn 1:12)—and so with security to enjoy his love forever.

Only when God is known as a loving Father is he known aright.

But when you see that Christ is the subject of all the Scriptures, that he is the Word, the Lord, the Son who reveals his Father, the promised Hope, the true Temple, the true Sacrifice, the great High Priest, the ultimate King, then you can read, not so much asking, “What does this mean for me, right now?” but “What do I learn here of Christ?” Knowing that the Bible is about him and not me means that, instead of reading the Bible obsessing about me, I can gaze on him. And as through the pages you get caught up in the wonder of his story, you find your heart strangely pounding for him in a way you never would have if you had treated the Bible as a book about you.

it comes from the fear that we’ll merely study the Scriptures as interesting texts instead of hearing them as God’s very words that hold out Christ and draw us to want him.

A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.”[7]

Our problem is with our desires, that naturally we have no appetite for God, and we place all our affections elsewhere. Our only hope of life is to be found with the Spirit, who “bringeth lust [that is, desire!], looseth the heart, maketh him free, setteth him at liberty.”a

As the sun gives of itself—its own light and warmth—in shining on us, so God gives us himself and the blessedness he has always enjoyed. He does so in giving us his Son, and he does so in giving us his Spirit.

When Christians talk of God giving us “grace,” for example, we can quickly imagine that “grace” is some kind of spiritual pocket money he doles out. Even the old explanation that “grace” is “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense” can make it sound like stuff that God gives. But the word grace is really just a shorthand way of speaking about the personal and loving kindness out of which, ultimately, God gives himself.

But there is One who is holier than any mother, One who is more sensitive against sin than the purest woman who ever walked this earth, and who loves us as even no mother ever loved. This One dwells in our hearts, if we are really Christians, and He sees every act we do by day or under cover of the night; He hears every word we utter in public or

in private; He sees every thought we entertain, He beholds every fancy and imagination that is permitted even a momentary lodging in our mind, and if there is anything unholy, impure, selfish, mean, petty, unkind, harsh, unjust, or any evil act or word or thought or fancy, He is grieved by it.[3]

This, in fact, is the heartbeat of what it means to be godly, to be like this God. It is why Jesus says: “If God were your Father, you would love me” (Jn 8:42). The Father’s very identity consists in his love for the Son, and so when we love the Son we reflect what is most characteristic about the Father. It is the prime reason the Spirit is given. The Puritan theologian John Owen wrote that “therein consists the principal part of our renovation into his image. Nothing renders us so like unto God as our love unto Jesus Christ.”[8]

exercise your thoughts upon this very thing, the eternal, free, and fruitful love of the Father, and see if your hearts be not wrought upon to delight in him.a

“You can no way more trouble or burden him.”

Now, to pray like this—to pray “Abba” in Jesus’ name, empowered by the Spirit—isn’t just the flashy Christian’s way of showing off his theological virtuosity; it is to revel in the shape of God’s own fellowship and beauty.

the Spirit is not about bringing us to a mere external performance for Christ, but bringing us actually to love him and find our joy in him. And any performance “for him” that is not the expression of such love brings him no pleasure at all.

But the Spirit’s first work is to set our desires in order, to open our eyes and give us the Father’s own relish for the Son, and the Son’s own enjoyment of the Father.

We cannot choose what we love, but always love what seems desirable to us. Thus we will only change what we love when something proves itself to be more desirable to us than what we already love. I will, then, always love sin and the world until I truly sense that Christ is better.

The Spirit of the Father and the Son would never be interested in merely empowering us to “do good.” His desire (which is the desire of the Father and the Son) is to bring us to such a hearty enjoyment of God through Christ that we delight to know him, that we delight in all his ways, and that therefore we want to do as he wants and we hate the thought of ever grieving him.

As the shining of the sun enlargeth the spirit of the poor creatures, the birds, in the spring time, to sing, so proportionably the apprehension of the sweet love of God in Christ enlargeth the spirit of a man, and makes him full of joy and thanksgiving. He breaks forth into joy, so that his whole life is matter of joy and thanksgiving.[13]

Sibbes was quite right, for “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt 12:34). If I don’t enjoy Christ, I won’t speak of him. Or, perhaps worse, I will, but without love and enjoyment—and if my mouth does give away my heart, people will hear of an unwanted Christ. And who would want that? The Spirit, of course, can use such loveless evangelism. But his real work is to bring us to, and keep us in, the sunshine of God’s love. It is there that we will sing heartily; it is there, abiding in Christ, that we will bear fruit. The Spirit shares the triune life of God by bringing God’s children into the mutual delight of the Father and the Son—and there we become like our God: fruitful and life-giving.

People even say things like, “Yes, God is loving, but he is also holy”—as if holiness is an unloving thing, the cold side of God that stops God from being too loving.

Holiness is a most beautiful, lovely thing. Men are apt to drink in strange notions of holiness from their childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely. ’Tis the highest beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties; ’tis a divine beauty.[6]

What is holiness, then? The words used for holiness in the Bible have the basic meaning of being “set apart.” But there our troubles begin, because naturally I think I’m lovely. So if God is “set apart” from me, I assume the problem is with him (and I can do all this in the subtlest, most subconscious way). His holiness looks like a prissy rejection of my happy, healthy loveliness. Dare I burst my own bubble now? I must. For the reality is that I am the cold, selfish, vicious one, full of darkness and dirtiness. And God is holy—“set apart” from me—precisely in that he is not like that. He is not set apart from us in priggishness, but by the fact that there are no such ugly traits in him as there are in us.

For what we think God is like must shape our godliness, and what we think godliness is reveals what we think of God.

But with this God, no wonder the two greatest commands are “Love the Lord your God” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” For that is being like this God—sharing the love the Father and the Son have for each other, and then, like them, overflowing with that love to the world.

I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.[11]

That all means that “glorifying” God cannot be about inflating, improving or expanding him. That is quite impossible with the God who is already superabundant and overflowing with life. Instead, when we give God the glory, we simply ascribe to him what is already his, declaring him to be as he truly is. “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name,” said David (Ps 29:2).