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How does the doctrine of the Trinity shape our understanding of the Gospel?
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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 in to his life and joy, to embrace us with the very love which he has for his dear Son.
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Can you explain the doctrine of the should we as Christians even bother? Or is it merely something for academics and theologians to discuss? In addition to being an essential doctrine of the Christian faith, as you'll hear today on Renewing youg Mind. When we understand the trinitarian nature of God, it profoundly shapes how we understand the good news of the Gospel. I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and our featured teacher today is Michael Reeves. He serves as president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in the United Kingdom. And as we announced last month, he is also one of our newest teaching fellows at Ligonier Ministries. Dr. Reeves has taught extensively on the Trinity, which is why he was invited to speak on it at our 2023 national conference. And it's that message you'll hear today. But I would encourage you to request his book Delighting in the Trinity when you give a donation in support of Renewing youg Mind before midnight tonight@renewingyourmind.org well, here's Michael Reeves on the tr triunity of God.
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We are the children of the Reformation. We care about the sort of truths that Luther and Calvin and 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, that we love? How does the Trinity shape the gospel that we cherish? And what we're going to see this morning 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. So let's look at the Trinity, particularly through Paul's letter to the Romans, Romans 1:1:4. Here's how Paul introduces the Gospel Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, which he God promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. So for Paul, do you see, the Gospel is Trinitarian. It is verse one, the Gospel of God. That is, it is the good news of the Father, verse three, concerning his Son, who was declared Son of God in power according to the Spirit. Now, straight away, this is a very different way to start thinking of the Trinity to what we often see. Haven't you been in a Bible study group? And a young Christian says, so 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. 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, I find it really helpful to think of God is like H2O. It's like one thing, but three kind 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 sunny. Keep warming it up and it all becomes more spiritual. Or someone else says, no, no, 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 at the egg? 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'll see throughout Romans is the importance of knowing. Chapter one, verse seven, God our Father, who sends his Son, that we might have peace with him, that he sends the spirit of sonship, that we might be sons of God, crying, abba, Father. And so what Paul sees in the Gospel is that the living God is eternally a father. And 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's 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
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world,
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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. And 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 there the Father of 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 that 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, it is at complete odds with the nature of all other gods. 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're weak. So just imagine a God who is a single person sitting alone on his throne for eternity by himself. What is he like? Lonely. Solitary. So why would he create the world? To get some friends, to get some slaves. See, such a God needs us. His glory is like a black hole, sucking in, taking. But the triune God doesn't need us at all. The Father's 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 these 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. For 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 there's an enormous challenge for the church here today that 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. Do you know? 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. And we can see this in Romans 3. Let's start jogging on a bit through Romans. Romans 3 from verse 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, well, 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. God would have done nothing for us, and that's not possible. 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 do often present a Trinity light gospel. So 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've all been caught breaking the rules and so we're 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's not a father eternally loving His Son. But 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 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 in to his life and joy, to embrace us with a very love which he has for his dear Son. The nature of God radically shapes the nature of the salvation he would offer. See, if God is just a solitary individual who's 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. So come and have a look with me Romans 8 Now, which captures this trinitarian shape to our salvation so wonderfully. And I want to start with the surprise. Okay, this is outrageous language that Paul uses. Ladies, pay special attention for how culturally offensive this is. Verse 14, ladies. All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Oh my Sogny. 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 of our sonship. It's about being clear. All believers, we share in nothing less than what the Son Himself has. Naturally, the Father doesn't just give us some exalted semi angelic status. We can imagine that, can't we? Yes, the Father loves His Son and then the children of God. No, 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. You've 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 holy Greek letter, Paul inserts this one Aramaic word 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. 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 might, possibly, might allow us to live under his rule and protection. But he'll 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. Brush your teeth with those words every morning.
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I love that expression. Brush your teeth with those words every morning. This Is Renewing youg Mind on this Thursday. And that was Ligonier Teaching fellow Michael Reeves. Today's message was from our 2023 national conference in Orlando. And Dr. Rees will be back this year for our conference in April. The theme this year is Crucial Questions. Over three days, our speakers will address many of today's crucial questions. We'll also enjoy times of fellowship and singing, and I'll be recording several episodes of this program live. It's a highlight of the year, so I invite you to learn more and to register@ligonier.org 2026Michael Reeves is known for his teaching on the Trinity and the way he so warmly helps our understanding of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to magnify the wonder of the Gospel and the redemption we enjoy as Christians. So take the time to read his book Delighting in the Trinity. We'll send you a copy to thank you for your donation in support of Renewing your mind at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. This is a one day offer and it expires tonight, so visit renewingyourmind.org or use the link in the podcast Show Notes while there's still time. Thank you for helping to fuel the global reach of Renewing your mind. In addition to Michael Reeves, Joel Kim joined Ligonier as one of our Teaching Fellows and he'll be with us tomorrow teaching on the Great Commission. So be sure to join us Friday here on Renewing your Mind.
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