Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith (IVP Signature Collection)

by Michael Reeves

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 Jn 3:1).

if God had no word to say to us, we simply would not know him or dream of his deep benevolence.

This God does not give us some thing that is other than himself, or merely tell us about himself; he actually gives us himself.

in revealing himself, not only does the Father send his Son in the power of his Spirit; together the Father and the Son send the Spirit to make the Son known.

The Son makes the Father known; the Spirit makes the Son known.

As the Son makes his Father known, so the Spirit-breathed Scriptures make the Son known.

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.

we do not have life in ourselves.

In giving us life he comes in to be with us and remain with us.

he stays to make that life blossom and grow.

he enlightens us to know the love of God, and that light warms us, drawing us to love him and to overflow with love to others.

A man cannot look upon the love of God and of Christ in the gospel, but it will change him to be like God and Christ.

My new life began when the Spirit first opened my eyes (there’s the light) and won my heart (there’s the heat) to Christ.

And through Christ, for the first time, I began to enjoy and love the Father as the Son has always done.

by revealing the beauty, love, glory and kindness of Christ to me, the Spirit kindles in me an ever deeper...

less self-obsessed and more Chri...

the turn from God in Genesis 3 meant a fall into physical decay, rot and death; but all of that will be more than undone by the Spirit, who will transform our moldering bodies to be like Christ’s glorious, resurrection body

that I might know the Son, and that I might be like him—meaning that the whole point is that my eyes look out to him.

If we would at once overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by “looking unto Jesus.”

At the heart of our transformation into the likeness of the Son, then, is our sharing of his deep delight in the Father. In our love and enjoyment of the Son we are like the Father; in our love and enjoyment of the Father we are like the Son. That is the happy life the Spirit calls us to.

Loving familial relationship, this God makes a man and a woman, a husband and a wife; he creates a family and makes people designed for fellowship with each other. As the Father, Son and Spirit have always known fellowship with each other, so we in the image of God are made for fellowship.

Aristotle believed that the perfection of God’s majesty means that everything else is beneath his consideration.

God’s majesty is displayed when he goes out and acts, when he saves his people and shakes evil from the earth.

God’s holiness, God’s wrath and God’s glory. How does the Trinity brighten and define them?

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.

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.

Love for the Lord, love for neighbor—that is the heart of holiness and how the triune God’s people get to be like him.

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn 4:7-8).

God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.

God’s glory—his nature and character—is like a pure and dazzling light radiating outward and shining forth.

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.