The Trinity explained

God the Father

God the Father is the first person of the Holy Trinity, fully and truly God. He is named first not because He is greater, older, or more divine than the Son and the Spirit, for the three are equal and coeternal, but because within the life of God He is the source, the one from whom the Son is eternally begotten and from whom the Spirit proceeds. To know the Father is to know the God whom Jesus revealed and taught us to call our Father.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:Ephesians 1:3 (KJV)

First, but not greater

When the church names the Father as the first person of the Trinity, it does not mean He is the most important or the most divine. The whole point of the doctrine is that Father, Son, and Spirit are equal in nature, glory, and eternity. None came into being; none is lesser. The Father is called first because of a relationship within God, not a ranking of worth. He is the fountain, the source, the one from whom the Son is eternally begotten and from whom the Spirit proceeds.

That relationship is eternal. There was never a time when the Father was without the Son, for a father is only a father if he has a child, and the Father has always had the Son. The names Father and Son do not describe God making a decision at some point in time; they describe who God has always been. The Father eternally loves the Son, and the Son eternally loves the Father, in the bond of the Spirit.

The Father in the Old Testament

Long before the coming of Christ, the God of Israel was known as a Father. He calls Israel His firstborn son, carries His people as a father carries a child, and pities His children with a father's tenderness. The one God, the LORD who is one, was already revealing a fatherly heart. The full brightness of that fatherhood would only be seen when the Son came, but the seed was there from the beginning.

This matters because the Trinity is not a New Testament novelty grafted onto a different Old Testament God. It is the same God, more fully revealed. The one God of Israel is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit who moved over the waters of creation is the same Spirit poured out at Pentecost. One God, one story, unfolding. The Father did not begin to be Father when Jesus was born in Bethlehem; the eternal Son was made flesh in time, but He was the Son of the Father from all eternity.

The Father is not the Son, and not the Spirit

A careful word is needed here, because it is easy to blur the persons. The Father is truly distinct from the Son and the Spirit. He is not the Son wearing a different name, nor the Spirit under another title. Throughout the Gospels the Son speaks to the Father as to another: He prays to Him, submits His will to Him, is sent by Him, and returns to Him. In the garden Jesus prays, not my will, but thine, be done, words that make no sense if the Father and the Son were the same person.

Yet this distinction never divides the one God. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit share a single, undivided being; they are never in competition, never at cross-purposes, always one in will and love. So we hold two truths together: the Father is genuinely a distinct person, and the Father is not a separate God. He is the first person of the one God, and to see the Son is to see the Father, for the Father and the Son are one.

The Father whom Jesus revealed

Jesus did not come to introduce a stranger. He came to reveal the Father. He spoke of Him constantly, prayed to Him openly, and did nothing but what He saw the Father do. And astonishingly, He taught His followers to come to the same Father as their own, teaching them to pray, Our Father which art in heaven. The infinite God, maker of galaxies, is a Father who counts the hairs of your head and knows what you need before you ask.

Paul begins his letter to the Ephesians by blessing this Father: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Every blessing of salvation flows from the Father's heart, planned before the foundation of the world, and reaches us in the Son, by the Spirit. The Father is the beginning of the whole work of grace.

The Father from whom every good gift comes

Scripture ties the Father especially to the work of creation and to the giving of every good thing. He is the Father of lights, from whom comes down every good and perfect gift. The one God makes and sustains all things through the Son and by the Spirit, yet the fountainhead of that stream is the Father. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He turned their eyes to the Father who feeds the birds and clothes the lilies and knows what His children need before they ask.

This guards us from a subtle error, that of imagining a stern Father held back by a kinder Son, as if Jesus had to change the Father's mind. Not so. It was the Father who so loved the world that He gave His only Son. The Son did not win a reluctant Father's love; He was sent by a Father whose love came first. Behind the whole rescue stands the Father's glad, generous heart, the source of every mercy we have ever received. When you see the compassion of Jesus, you are seeing the very heart of the Father, for the Son does nothing of Himself but only what He sees the Father doing.

Coming to the Father

Here is the wonder of the gospel: the Father is not distant or reluctant. Jesus told a story of a father who ran to meet a wandering son while he was yet a great way off, and that father is a window into the heart of God. The Trinity means that when you come to the Father, you do not come alone or on your own strength. You come through the Son, who opened the way, and in the Spirit, who cries within you, Abba, Father.

To know God the Father is not to master a doctrine but to be welcomed home. He is the God who so loved the world that He gave His only Son, and the whole of the Christian life is learning to live as a beloved child of such a Father. That is where the doctrine of the Trinity finally leads: not to a diagram, but to a Father's embrace.

This is why the very first word Jesus taught His followers to say in prayer was Father. Not judge, not master, not force, but Father. Through the Son and by the Spirit, the maker of heaven and earth becomes, for all who come to Him in Christ, our Father which art in heaven. Every fear that God might be cold, distant, or reluctant is answered in that one word. The Father is the beginning of the gospel and its end: we came from His hand, and He is the home to which grace is carrying us back.

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.

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