Watch or read: The Triunity of God (Dr. Michael Reeves)

The Triunity of God
Dr. Michael Reeves

We are the children of the Reformation. We care about the sort of truth that Luther, Calvin, and their friends fought for in the Reformation. We care about salvation as a gift of pure grace, being declared righteous by God not because we've been righteous ourselves, but because Christ clothes us with His righteousness. We care about those sweet truths. But what has the Trinity to do with all that? What possible difference can the Trinity make to those beautiful truths about salvation that the Reformers fought for and that we love? How does the Trinity shape the gospel that we cherish?

What we are going to see is that the triune nature of God is the mold for the gospel. The fact that God is Father, Son, and Spirit shapes the gospel. Everything beautiful about the gospel is only so because God is triune. The Trinity gives our gospel its character, its flavor. All the gratuity and comfort of the gospel that Luther fought for in the Reformation, all of it found its source in the triune nature of God. Luther was absolutely clear on this. Right at the very beginning of the Reformation, Luther called the Trinity the highest article on which all others depend.

Trinitarian gospel

So, let's look at the Trinity, particularly through Paul's letter to the Romans. I want to get a big-picture view of Romans, but let's start with the first few verses, how he introduces the letter. Romans 1:1-4, here's how Paul introduces the gospel: 

For Paul, do you see, the gospel is Trinitarian. It is verse 1, "The gospel of God," that is, it is the good news of the Father, verse 3, "concerning His Son," who, verse 4, "was declared Son of God in power according to the Spirit." Now, straightaway this is a very different way to start thinking of the Trinity than what we often see.

Haven't you been in a Bible study group, and a young Christian says, "Can someone tell me about the Trinity, please?" And what sort of answers do you get? You'll get someone going, "Ah yes, the Trinity, hmm, I like to think of the Trinity a bit like a shamrock leaf. It's one leaf but it's got three bits sticking out of it, just like God." And someone else says, "No, I find it really helpful to think God is like H2O. It's like one thing but three kinds of ways of being that one thing; it could be ice, water, or steam." So, you know, you have the Father. Warm Him up a bit and He becomes Sonny. Keep warming it up and it will become more spiritual. Or someone else says, "Trinity is like an egg. There's the shell, the yolk, and the white, but it's one egg." And we wonder why the world laughs. And people think, "Of course, this is irrelevant. Who is going to bow down in awe of the eggishness of God?" And so, we think, "Of course, let's leave this bizarre doctrine to the sort of socially disastrous theologians who like discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin." 

But Paul here believes in the Trinity, not because he senses God's similarity to eggs or H2O, but because of the gospel. And what we will see throughout Romans is the importance of knowing Chapter 1:7, God our Father who sends His Son that we might have peace with Him. He sends the Spirit of sonship that we might be sons of God, crying, "Abba! Father!" What Paul sees in the gospel is that the living God is eternally a Father. Why eternally? Well, if at any time, the Father did not have a Son, He simply would not be Father. It's not as if God the Father is something else underneath that at some point, He chose to become a Father. If that's how it is, then it's like He's got a nice blob of fatherly icing on top, but He is something else deep down before He chose to become a Father. No, no, He is Father all the way down. That is His eternal identity. For that to be true, for His essential identity to be Father, He must eternally have a Son. And so, to be who He is, this God the Father must have a Son. To be Father then means to love, to beget the Son. And therefore, this God would not be who He is if He did not love.

For eternity, before the foundation of the world, the Father has been loving the Son, John 17:24, pouring out His Spirit on Him. And so, we see, because our God is triune, and only because our God is triune, we can say God is love. And so, we begin to see why the Trinity is such good news. God is love because God is Trinity. Because, for eternity, the Father has been positively bursting out with love for His Son. You get a picture of this in the baptism of Jesus, and if you ever want an illustration of the Trinity rather than H2O, this is the place to go. There at the Jordan at the baptism of Jesus, the Father declares His love for the Son and His pleasure in Him as the Spirit rests on Him like a dove. For the Spirit is the one who makes the love of the Father known causing the Son to cry, "Abba!"

And there's this lovely moment in Luke 10, where we read, "Jesus, full of joy in the Holy Spirit, cried, 'I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.'" For the Father's love for Him poured out through the Spirit, fills Him with an answering delight in the Father. So, I hope you see it, when you start with the gospel, the triune God doesn't come across as an irrelevant philosophical headache. Here is a God who is love, a Father loving His Son in the fellowship of the Spirit. And all this means that the very nature of the triune God is at complete odds with the nature of all other gods.

Human religion

Have you ever thought about the gods of human religion? All of them share something in common. They are needy. They need us to serve or worship them. They are weak. So, just imagine a god who is a single person, sitting alone on his throne for eternity by himself. What's he like? Lonely, solitary. So, why would he create the world? To get some friends, to get some slaves. You see, such a god needs us. His glory is like a black hole sucking in. But the triune God doesn't need us at all. The Father has never been lonely. For eternity, He's been perfectly satisfied in His glorious Son. Needing nothing, He has life in Himself, and so much so, He is brimming over with it. His glory is radiant and outflowing.

The Son shows this glory in going out from the Father. The Father begets His Son eternally, and the Son then goes out from the Father as the bright radiance of His Father's glory. That's what this God is like; not needy but full, overflowing, fruitful. And that is why this God can relate to us by sheer grace. No other god can do that. And I think this is an enormous challenge for the church here today: we must make it more obvious that we do not believe in just any god; we believe in this God. For people assume when we say, "God," that the living God is just the same as all the idols and bores of human imagination and religion. But in the gospel, we see the only God who is love, who is overflowing, who is sufficient, the God beyond the tiresome idols of human imagination. And therefore, only with this God is there the possibility of salvation by grace, or salvation at all.

Let's take Islam as an example. In Islam, there is no word for salvation because there is no such thing. In Islam, the closest word you have would be translated as "success." Isn't that revealing? The triune God of love offers salvation; Allah requires success. No, there is no salvation without the Trinity. 

Trinitarian salvation

We can see this in Romans 3. Let's start jogging on a bit through Romans. Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood." Now, you see, if God were not triune, if the Father had no Son to die in our place, God would have to make some third party suffer to achieve atonement. In other words, we would have to provide a perfect man to die in our place. We would have to provide the substitute because God would have none to offer us. We would have to produce the perfect one, but that's not grace. It is only because the Father has a Son that God can accomplish the entire work of salvation Himself. He provides the sufficient sacrifice. It is because God is triune that the cross works. So, there is no salvation without the Trinity.

But I think Christians often present a Trinity-lite gospel. Try this as an account of the gospel. See if it sounds familiar. It's the story of the heavenly school principal and his naughty students. It goes like this: We have all been caught breaking the rules, and so we are due a long detention. But then along comes a nice classmate called Jesus, and He takes the punishment for us so we can go home with a clean report. Sound familiar? Now, there's much in there that does echo some of the lines of the gospel, but there was nothing about the Trinity there. And therefore, that account of the gospel was deeply defective because you started with a God who is not a Father eternally loving His Son.

But what if, what if, before all things in eternity past, you do start with a God who is a Father, whose very life has been about loving, delighting in His precious Son? Who has so enjoyed loving His Son, He wants to spread that love. Then you see a different gospel. Then you see the gospel of a God whose ultimate aim is not to send us home with a clean school report, but to draw us into His life and joy. To embrace us with the very love which He has for His dear Son.

The nature of God radically shapes the nature of the salvation He would offer. You see, if God is just a solitary individual who has decided He wants a creation to rule over, then salvation is just about becoming a law-abiding citizen under His rule. That's it. But if God is a Father loving His Son, then the gospel is something far sweeter. Salvation is about becoming Spirit-anointed sons of God. More than just forgiven, more than righteous; adopted. And here, ultimately and beautifully, is how the Trinity shapes the gospel.

Sons of God

So, come and have a look with me at Romans 8 now, which captures this Trinitarian shape to our salvation so wonderfully. And I want to start with a surprise. Okay, this is outrageous language that Paul uses. Ladies, pay special attention to how culturally offensive this is. Verse 14, ladies, "All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." Ah, misogyny! Well, Scripture does sometimes speak generically of children of God, but Paul here wants us to be clear. The status all believers are given is quite specifically the status of the Son Himself. You know, the men have to make peace with being part of the bride of Christ, so we've all got issues here! But it means this isn't a sexist thing to talk about sonship; it's about being clear: all believers share in nothing less than what the Son Himself has naturally, because the Father doesn't just give us some exalted semi-angelic status. The Son shares with us His own sonship.

Paul goes on in verse 15, "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'" The Spirit of adoption. Or in Galatians 4:4, he calls Him, "The Spirit of His Son," united to the Son. And so, adopted in Him, sharing His sonship, the children of God receive the very Spirit, the Comforter of the Son, which is why He makes us cry the very cry of the Son, "Abba!" And isn't that strange in this epistle written in Greek, there is this one Aramaic word "Abba" to remind us of Mark 14, where Jesus praying in the garden in private is talking to His Father, and calls Him, "Abba! Father!" Echoing that, Paul is showing us as intimately as he can: sonship means being given by grace the very relationship with the Father that the Son Himself eternally and naturally has enjoyed.

So, we come before the Father, the Most High as Jesus does. The Father's eternal love for the Son encompasses us. John Calvin said that Christ's aim in all that He did was "to restore us to God's grace, and so make the children of men, children of God; to make the heirs of Gehenna, heirs of the heavenly kingdom." That is the aim of redemption.

Family closeness

Now, friends, if God was not a Father, He could never give us the right to be His children. If He did not enjoy eternal fellowship with His Son, you have to wonder, "Does He have any fellowship to share with us? Does He know what fellowship is?" A single-person God wouldn't. If, for example, the Son was a creature, distant from the Father, what sort of relationship with God could He share with us? If the Son Himself had never been close to the Father, how could He bring us close? If God was a single person, if the Father has no Son, salvation would look entirely different.

Such a God possibly might allow us to live under His rule and protection, but it would be at a distance. We'd probably have to approach Him through intermediaries. Maybe, He might offer forgiveness, but He couldn't offer closeness; He just couldn't do it. And since, by definition, He wouldn't be eternally loving, you have to ask, would He deal with the price of sin Himself and offer forgiveness for free? No. Distant hirelings we would remain if God was a single person. And we would never hear the Son's golden words to His Father, "Father, You have loved them even as You have loved Me" (John 17:23). Brush your teeth with those words every morning!

The gospel of this God gives us such intimate access to the Holy One, 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. Without this God, we could never say, "Our Father." But we can! We pray, as it were, through the mouth of Jesus. And our Father delights to hear the calls of His children. And that enables a hearty prayer life. You see, that's what it is. I can approach the Emperor of the universe as my loving, pure Father. That means prayer becomes a delightful privilege.

And once again, it all means you've got a salvation that is by grace from first to last. You see, if salvation is not about being adopted into the family of the Father, the grace is not so clear. You see, we often speak of salvation like this. We say, our problem is God's standards are really high and our standards aren't good enough. That's our problem. But if that's our only problem, you know what we are all going to do? "God's standards are high, I know we're not doing well enough. We will try a bit harder." 

But if salvation is to be adopted as children into the family of the Father, then our performance can have nothing to do with it. It's simply a wrong category. You cannot earn your way into a family. God's blessing is sonship, so effort can have nothing to do with it. Your efforts can make you a slave, but no amount of effort can make you a Son. All our efforts to win God's salvation by our own strength will only produce slaves; slaves who do not inherit. But sonship is free. And this is right at the heart of the Christian battle, knowing that the only blessing God has is completely of grace; free adoption for real sinners. Because, naturally, I go through life thinking, "I'm so inconstant, I'm so faithless, I'm so riddled with sin. My Christian life is so poor," and so I doubt God could love me. But that's why our Christian lives are so poor, because we bought this satanic inversion of the gospel: "Once I sort myself out, then God will love me." What would any kind father think hearing that from his child--the Father hearing His child think that she needs to earn His love?

Loving God

And you know, that "Abba" cry, it tells us something else as well about how the Trinity shapes the gospel, for that cry is not just about our new status before God. Those who call on God as their Father do so, not just because they can, but because they've been transformed. You see, the natural, sinful mind, Paul says earlier in Romans 8:7, is hostile to God; it hates God. But in salvation, God has poured His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit He has given us (Romans 5:5), turning our hearts. This is what the Spirit does. He turns our hearts from our natural love of sin and hatred of God. He turns our hearts so that we love God and hate sin. And so, believers cry, "Abba," not just because they're allowed to, but because they now adore Him as their Father.

For eternity, God the Father has delighted in His perfect Son. The Son has delighted in His Father in the fellowship of the Spirit. And we've been created that we might share that, that we might glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Just as the Spirit moves on the firstborn Son, He works on all the sons of God. God pours His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and we too cry out, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth." As it is with the Father and the Son, so it is with us. The Spirit catches us up to share their mutual pleasure.

And this, friends, is the heartbeat of what it means to be holy with this God, what it means to be godly. It's why Jesus says in John 8:42, "If God were your Father, you would love Me." For the Father's very identity consists in His love for His 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 to us. You know, the Puritan, John Owen, wrote, "Therein consists the principal part of our renovation into the image of God. Nothing makes us so like God as our love for Jesus Christ." That's when you are really being like God: when you love the Son as He does. So, the Spirit makes us love the Son like the Father does. And the Spirit gives us the mind of Christ. And what is characteristic of the Son? John 14:31, "I love the Father." The heart of our transformation into the likeness of the Son is our sharing in His deep delight in the Father. And so, in our love and enjoyment of the Son, we are being like the Father. In our love and enjoyment of the Father, we are being most like the Son. That is the happy life the Spirit calls us into.

So, how great and lovely then is the work of the Spirit! He unites us to the Son so that the Father's love for the Son encompasses us. He draws us to share the Father's enjoyment of the Son. He causes us to share the Son's delight in the Father. What could be more delicious than to keep in step with the Spirit whose purpose is that? And it means something wonderfully transformative. For the Spirit is not just about bringing us to some mere external performance for God, but bringing us to find we love Him, we find our joy in Him. 

What we love and enjoy is foundationally important. And you should think about this today: what do you really enjoy? It's far more significant than your outward behavior, because it is your desires that drive your behavior. What you want, what you long for, drives how you live. The Father, Son, and Spirit love and enjoy each other. And our problem is that our desires have been off-kilter; we have desired other things. We are made to enjoy God: that's what humanity was created for. We've turned to love and enjoy other things; things that aren't able to satisfy. 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, the Son's own enjoyment of the Father. You know, the Heidelberg Catechism captures this brilliantly. It asks, "What is the coming to life of the new man?" What is regeneration? "Answer: It is wholehearted joy in God through Christ, and a delight to do every kind of good as God wants us to."

You see, the Spirit would never be interested merely in empowering us to do good. His deeper 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, therefore, because we delight in Him, we want to do as He wants, and we hate the thought of grieving Him. That is the life the Spirit gives. He gives us Himself, opening up to us the lovely fellowship of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He wins our hearts to share their satisfaction and pleasure in each other.

Loving Each Other

There is just one more brief thing to note from the last few chapters of Romans. In the gospel from Romans 12 on, we see the Spirit not only reconciles us to God, He reconciles us to each other. So, you see, the Spirit leads us to, Romans 12:10, love one another with brotherly familial affection. The God of peace and fellowship reconciles male and female, black and white, Jew and Gentile, all to the same uniting love of God which spills over into a heartfelt love of each other. Father, Son, and Spirit share their heavenly harmony that there might be harmony on earth; that people of different genders, languages, ethnicities might be one in peace and love; and that one day, with one heart, one spirit, one voice, we might cry, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb." Only such a relational, intrinsically harmonious God could or would do that.

So, how does the Trinity shape the gospel? The Trinity makes the gospel. With the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, we have a God of love, a God we would want to know, a God we can trust. The Trinity makes salvation possible and the Trinity makes salvation sweet. Only with this God are we freely welcomed in together as brothers and sisters to share the very joy of God and cry together, "Our Father!"

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Recommended book:

Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity