Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith

by Michael Reeves

Yet it was not simply that Sibbes was born with a sunny disposition; he himself was adamant that it is our view of God that shapes us most deeply. We become like what we worship.a And Sibbes clearly saw the triune God as winning, kind and lovely: he spoke of the living God as a life-giving, warming sun who “delights to spread his beams and his influence in inferior things, to make all things fruitful. Such a goodness is in God as is in a fountain, or in the breast that loves to ease itself of milk.” That is, God is simply bursting with warm and life-imparting nourishment, far more willing to give than we are to receive. And that, he explained, is precisely why he created the world: If God had not a communicative, spreading goodness, he would never have created the world. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were happy in themselves, and enjoyed one another before the world was. Apart from the fact that God delights to communicate and spread his goodness, there had never been a creation or redemption.b 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. It was the kno...