The Trinity explained

God the Son

God the Son is the second person of the Trinity: Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, truly and fully God and, since the incarnation, also truly and fully man. He is not a lesser or created being, not merely the greatest of creatures, but God from God, of one being with the Father. The New Testament does not hint at this quietly; it declares it, calling Jesus God plainly and worshiping Him without apology.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.John 1:1 (KJV)

The eternal Word who was God

The Gospel of John opens with the boldest claim in all of Scripture: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Two things are said at once. The Word was with God, so the Word is distinct from the Father, a genuine other. And the Word was God, so the Word shares the very nature of God, not a similar nature, but the same. Then John says the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. The Word is Jesus of Nazareth. He was with God, and He was God, before the world began.

This is the heart of the doctrine of the Son. Jesus is not a good man who was later promoted, nor an angel, nor a demigod halfway between God and creation. He is the eternal God who took on flesh. The One through whom all things were made entered the world He had made, and was born of Mary, and walked among us.

Before Abraham was, I am

Jesus said things no mere creature could say. When His hearers questioned how He could have known Abraham, He answered, Before Abraham was, I am. He did not say I was; He said I am, taking upon His own lips the very name God gave to Moses at the burning bush, I AM THAT I AM. His hearers understood exactly what He meant, for they took up stones to kill Him for blasphemy, because He, a man, made Himself God. He was not being misunderstood. He was claiming to be the eternal God.

Again He said, I and my Father are one, and again they reached for stones. Jesus never corrected them by saying they had misheard. The claim stood. This is why the church confesses that Jesus is not merely close to God or filled with God, but is God the Son, one with the Father from all eternity.

In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead

The apostles proclaimed the same truth in plain words. Paul wrote of Christ, For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Not a portion of God, not a spark of the divine, but all the fullness of the Godhead, dwelling bodily in Jesus. To meet Christ is to meet God, not a representative of God, but God Himself in human flesh.

And when doubting Thomas finally saw the risen Jesus, he did not merely believe in a resurrection; he fell before Jesus and said, My Lord and my God. Jesus did not rebuke him for going too far. He received the worship and blessed all who would believe. Throughout the New Testament Jesus is prayed to, worshiped, and called God, by men who would rather die than worship anyone but the one true God. They worshiped Him because they had come to see that He is that one true God, the Son.

The rest of the New Testament sings the same note. The Son upholds all things by the word of His power. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, by whom all things were created. He forgives sins, which the scribes rightly said God alone can do. He accepts worship that angels and apostles refuse. Every strand of the record points one way: Jesus is not a creature honored above others, but the Creator come among us.

What about the verses where Jesus seems lesser?

Honest readers notice that Jesus also says things that sound less than divine. He says the Father is greater than I. He prays to the Father. He says He does not know the day or the hour of His return. He grows tired and weeps. Do these unsay His deity? The church has always answered no, and the answer is the incarnation. The Son, without ceasing to be God, truly took on our human nature, and so He lives a genuinely human life within it.

As the eternal Son He is equal with the Father; as the Son made flesh, taking the form of a servant, He willingly lives in humble dependence, obeys, prays, and submits. The Father is greater not in nature but in the order of that mission the Son freely accepts. So the lowly sayings do not lower His deity; they reveal the astonishing humility of God, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself and became obedient unto death. The One who could say Before Abraham was, I am is the same One who wept at a grave. Both are true, because He is truly God and truly man.

Truly God and truly man

The church confesses that in Jesus, God the Son took on a full human nature without ceasing to be God. He grew tired, wept, hungered, and died, as truly man; He forgave sins, stilled storms, and rose from the grave, as truly God. He is one person in two natures, fully God and fully man, and this is why He alone can save. Only one who is truly man could stand in our place; only one who is truly God could bear the weight of the world's sin and rise victorious.

This is the center of everything. Colossians says all the fullness of God dwells in Him bodily, and that is where the whole doctrine of the Trinity finds its focus. We do not reach God by climbing past Jesus to some higher deity. In Christ we have already met the fullness of God. To have seen Him is to have seen the Father. He is God the Son, and He is the way home.

Why the deity of Christ is such good news

The full deity of the Son is not a cold technicality to be defended; it is the ground of everything we hope for. Because Jesus is God, His words carry the authority of the Maker, His promises are as sure as the God who cannot lie, and His forgiveness reaches all the way down, for only God can forgive sins against God. Because Jesus is God, His love for you is not the affection of a fellow creature but the very love of God with a human face.

And because the One who died and rose is God the Son, death itself could not hold Him, and it cannot hold those who are His. When we say Jesus is Lord, we are saying that the tender, patient, self-giving man of the Gospels is exactly what God is like, that there is no hidden God behind Jesus who is different from Him. In the Son, the invisible God has made Himself known and near. That is why the church has clung to His deity through every storm: to lose it would be to lose God Himself, and to keep it is to know that God has come all the way to us.

This is the answer to the anxious question that lies under so much religion: what is God really like toward me? For the Christian, the answer has a face. Look at Jesus, welcoming the outcast, touching the leper, weeping with the grieving, dying for His enemies, and you are looking at God the Son, and therefore at the very heart of God. He is not a window onto a colder deity behind Him. He is God with us, and to trust Him is to be safe forever in the hands of God.

Confessed by the whole church: the Trinity is not the belief of one denomination but the historic faith held in common across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity, summed in the Nicene Creed of the fourth century. At the same time the church has always been humble that this truth stretches human language to its limit. God is greater than our words for Him. We confess what He has revealed of Himself, we do not claim to comprehend Him, and we hold the mystery with reverence rather than pretending to explain it away.

Related: God the Father · God the Holy Spirit · Is the Trinity in the Bible? · The Trinity explained