Review: Mike Reeve’s Delighting in the Trinity
Right off the bat I’m going to tell you that you need to buy this book. It’s the kind that you’ll read over and over again. It’s the kind that could be considered a classic. What stood out to me as I read Delighting in the Trinity is the way Reeves took something that could be considered complicated, and made it warm and approachable and practical. That’s a rare feat especially for a book published by an academic imprint. “For God is triune, and it is as triune that he is so good and desirable” (9).
You can guess right off the bat that Delighting is about the Trinity, but as Reeves focuses in on the trinune God of Christianity we see clearer and clearer that God is love. There’s this cascading and overflowing love that God the Father shared in community with Son and Spirit from eternity past that’s shared with mankind when we were created. “It is that the Father has always enjoyed loving another, and so the act of creation by which he creates others to love seems utterly appropriate for him” (42). And that love is crystallized in God’s move towards us in the gospel. Reeves sojourns with us as he shares, loves, and delights in these truths.
For eternity, the Father so loves the Son that he excites the Son’s eternal love in response; Christ so loves the church that he excites our love in response; the husband so loves his wife that he excites her to love him back. Such is the spreading goodness that rolls out of the very being of this God ” (28)
In the best possible way, I felt like a child exploring the beauty of the woods for the first time. New beauty after new beauty after new beauty, I was left astounded at the depth of God’s triune awesomeness. “There is something gratuitous about creation, an unnecessary abundance of beauty, and through its blossoms and pleasures we can revel in the sheer largesse of the Father” (57). I can think of very few books that I’ve read that have succeeded in such a profound way as Delighting has. I finished truly delighting deeply in the trinity. Have you ever been so taken back by something so beautiful, the fall out hasn’t fully registered? That’s where I am right now--restless somberness. I almost feel the need to sit down and just immediately read the book again. And in another way, that I should be sharing this overflow of Trinitarian love I’ve enjoyed.
Now some families like to keep themselves to themselves, but not this one. No, the outgoing Father, that original fountain of all life and love, is the head of an outgoing family. His life and being is one of going out with his love, and that is the life of his children are brought to share. . . . The truth is God is already on mission: in love, the Father has sent his Son and his Spirit. It is the outworking of his very nature” (105).
You will not read Delighting and sit still. It’s a book that will make you squirm. It will cause you to overflow with the love of God for others around you. It will compel you towards God’s mission—to bring all his scattered children home.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
Mathew Sims is the author of A Household Gospel Fulfilling the Great Commission in Our Homes and has written for CBMW Men’s blog, Gospel Centered Discipleship, Borrowed Light, and Servants of Grace. He also works as the managing editor at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. They attend Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Greenville, SC.