Delighting in the Trinity Review

An Introduction to the Christian Faith by Michael Reeves

Book Review by Lorraine Triggs

What does an apple, candy corn and a shamrock have in common? No, not a beginning of a bad joke, but what turned up on Pinterest when I did a quick search for “explaining the Trinity to children.” I am certain that Michael Reeves, the author of Delighting in the Trinity, would be cringing about now. As he would with an adult’s dismissive, “Oh, the Trinity is too mysterious to understand.”

For Reeves, however, that is not a good excuse for ignoring the Trinity or turning the Trinity into an intellectual game. Says Reeves, “. . . the triune nature of God effects everything from how we listen to music to how we pray: it makes for happier marriages, warmer dealings with others, better church life; it gives Christians assurance, shapes holiness and transforms the very way we look at the world around us. No exaggeration: the knowledge of this God turns lives around.”

I decided to munch on the apple and candy corn as I read the book.

Reeves sets out to help us think about who God is through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and not through “trying to work God out by our own brainpower.” Our brainpower leads us to God as the uncaused cause. The Creator. The One in Charge.

According to Reeves this is all reasonable and unobjectionable, but if that is one’s basic view of God, one “will find every inch of my Christianity covered and wasted by the nastiest toxic fallout. If God’s very identity is to be The Creator, The Ruler, then he needs a creation to rule in order to be who he is. For all his cosmic power, then, this God turns out to be pitifully weak: he needs us.”

This is when I began to realize that the book was going to by my reintroduction to the Triune God, who as Reeve’s describes is “not Creator, Ruler or even ‘God” in some abstract sense: he is the Father, loving and giving life to his Son in the fellowship of the Spirit. A God who is in himself love, who before all things could ‘never be anything but love.’ Having such a God happily changes everything.”

It’s this God that Reeves brings the reader to again and again, whether through his illustrations and sidebars—aplenty throughout the book—and his quotes from church fathers, Puritans and even an Inkling. With the current resurgence in the Reformed Puritans, there were times when Delighting in the Trinity reminded me of the run-away best seller Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund. (As a fiction reader, just the fact that there were two non-fiction books I read should be a recommendation in and of itself.)

The heart of Reeves’ book is the middle three of his five chapters: chapter two, “Creation: The Father’s Love Overflows;” chapter three, “Salvation: The Son Shares What Is His; and chapter four: “The Christian Life: The Spirit Beautifies.” What? Not, Creation: Made in God’s Image; Salvation: Rescued from Sin; The Christian Life: Obeying God.

From the start of the book, Reeves emphasizes the outward, overflowing love of the Father, and “If I am to be anything like the outgoing and outward-looking Father, Son and Spirit, the Spirit must take my eyes of myself (which he does by winning me to Christ).” According to Reeves, the Spirit’s purpose is far deeper than helping me keep the rules. The Spirit comes 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.

Reeves than quotes Charles Spurgeon, which is a good summation of the book:

". . . We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul. If we would at once overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by ‘looking unto Jesus.’"