God is
Love. Through acceptance and abiding in
this Love we learn to love aright in a fallen world. From it we worship in spirit and in
truth. It is the foundation upon which
we function as a disciple of Christ. We
grow in knowledge from the overwhelming awe this love invokes within our hearts
and mind. God, being Pure Love, gives
sinful creatures the ability to love Him.
It is truly breathtaking when one takes the time to meditate, pray, and
study out God as love. But not
many Christians embark on such a spiritual journey. Why?
Because one word will ultimately surface when studying God as love
because it cannot be avoided:
Trinity. The oddity, the
complexity, the mystery of the Trinity is alluring to many who believe in the
God of Bible, but those same things which attract can cause
one to regard it as a part of faith best left unknown. Yet if there is one area of truth which the
church needs today in this world of relativity, it is the Trinity; known and
understood to the best of our ability this side of Paradise. Not just for our own faith, but to share with
all who will hear that our God is the only God who loves, and thus because of
the Trinity.
As
someone who spent a few years curiously picking up random literature with a
focus on the Trinity, and putting them down because of their complexity, I was
delighted to have Michael Reeves book arrived in our mailbox. As soon as my husband opened the package and
showed his excitement over the content, the book was snatched from his hand to
mine and the pages were turning. It came
at just the right time, as I had felt a pressing need to delve into the truth
of the Trinity for months, but I wasn't sure with which book to begin. And here it was, delivered to our house. It was just what this disciple of Christ
needed to begin her journey with the Trinity, and Love.
With witty
writing, strong evidence from the writings of early church fathers and
historians, as well as clear and precise explanations to accompany historical
writings, Reeves has written a book that is easy to read, yet makes the reader stop
periodically to ponder the content. I
would describe it as Trinity 101. I hope
the following details of the book will encourage you to read it for yourself and use it as a springboard to study the being and nature of God.
I
begin with a quote from the Introduction:
“….what we assume would be a dull or peculiar irrelevance turns out to
be the source of all that is good in Christianity. Neither a problem nor a technicality, the
triune being of God is the vital oxygen of Christian life and joy” [p. 18]. Reeves goes on to say that his hope and prayer, as the reader goes forth into his book, is that the “knowledge of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit will breathe fresh live into you.”
[p. 18] If read with the full intent to know God more,
the answer to his prayer will find its fullness in you.
Throughout
the book, Reeves adopts a writing style of repeating and building, repeating
and building. For some this may seem a
weary read, but I argue that it is necessary.
What is continually repeated is that the Father loves the Son, and that love
is through the Spirit. This is repeated
in every chapter and built upon so that one understands: if the Father were God
alone, there would be no love because it would be a selfish love; the Son has
always existed with the Father so that there is One who loves and One who is
loved; there cannot be love with a mutual Spirit of love. Love is found pure in the Trinity; and because the love the Father has for the Son
was so beautiful and pure, it was shared through creation and given to the
creatures made in His image. In that love we have the
beauty of creation. We have the beauty
of salvation. We have the beauty of a
Christian life empowered by the Spirit, given by the Father and Son, because of
love.
Brilliantly,
Reeves takes the reader into the final chapter (and the 5th one at
that!) to challenge atheistic arguments such as those found in Christopher Hitchen’s
book God is Not Great (that God is a
Ruler, a Big Brother, a Stalin-in-the-sky) as well as the New Age and neo-paganism
dislike and foundation that God is greedy, selfish, and a huge bore. Reeves also addresses evil and God’s wrath in this chapter. We quickly come to understand that the Trinity answers these counterfeit claims of God’s being extremely well and Reeves allows the
reader to build strong support for such claims.
This is accomplished through the repeating and building of the book from
the introduction to the conclusion. The
last paragraph of the last chapter thus begins, “And so we come to where we
started: Jesus as the bright lane to knowledge of the true God. As the Glorious
Spirit-anointed Son, he reveals the Father.
He reveals God to be Father, Son and Spirit – and thus he reveals the
only God who is love, and he shows us the true glory of that love on the
cross. In him we see a God far beyond
the bores and tyrants we all rush to reject.
In him we see the good God. And
how good he is" [p. 128]!
A strong and full introduction, five chapters written with wit and wisdom, and a challenging conclusion
to the one who names himself a disciple of Christ comprises this book. It allowed this reader to finally begin to
truly grasp that God is love. We live
with dim reflections here in this fallen world, but we do have a choice as to
how dim that reflection is by how much we delight and desire to know God. This book will allow the dimness to decrease
a few more degrees; it will allow the reader to see more fully the God who
allowed him to see in the first place.
This book review was written by Danielle Gross. She holds a Master's Degree in Elementary Education and is a homemaker. She also home schools our two girls.
