What does it mean that the Father is the first Person of the Trinity?

A document may have to be signed by three persons. They must of necessity be placed in order of first, second and third. But that does not mean necessarily that first, second and third in order of importance. We might illustrate it by a chandelier with three arms at equal distances. If it were necessary to distinguish one from the other, how would we begin? They are alike in appearance and use. They are equally distant from each other. How would we begin? We should be obliged to number them one, two and three. But that certainly would not designate any difference in importance.

Here it would be well to give a word of warning. We might be inclined to look upon the Father as first in importance; the Son as second in importance; the Holy Spirit as third in importance. But this would be an utterly wrong thought. If the Father is God, He is supreme, and none higher. If the Son is God, He is supreme, and none higher. If the Holy Spirit is God, He is supreme, and none higher.

Think of Three Persons in One God. They are not Three, in the same sense as They are One, nor are Father, Son and Spirit different names for one and the same Person. The Father counsels and sends the Son; the Son comes to reveal the Godhead, a revelation which stands good for the whole creation; and the Holy Spirit, Whose work is the subjective part, comes to make good, in the souls of the heirs of purpose, that which has been revealed.

So the bare fact is this: if the One commonly spoken of as the First Person only became the "Father," and the Second Person only became the "Son," by reason of the incarnation and the virgin birth, we have no real revelation at all. In that case, in Father, Son and Spirit, we should only have the knowledge of various parts assumed by the Divine Persons; of what They were pleased to become, not what They really are.

This is a most ineffable name of God. In a perfectly unique way it stands in relation to the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a relationship He shares with none besides. There ever was the Father. There ever was the Son, the "only begotten" Son of God. (John 3:16). As the old divine put it: "LIFE—the Father from all eternity gives it; the Son from all eternity receives it." There ever was the Holy Spirit. Their Godhead glory they share with none.

This truth of the eternal relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is vital. To have three beings coequal in deity without relationship would be three Gods, not one Triune God.

In these chapters we are reading we see that the Spirit is sent by both the Father and the Son… Both the Son, and the Spirit, were sent, yet both came forth in a voluntary way. This shows the Father, so to speak, at the Head of the whole, wondrous plan. He remains in His own absolute Godhead, in divine immutability, for ever; "Who is above all, and through all, and in you all."

The Father's Name has been manifested by His Son in the world—manifested in pure and sovereign grace. Of old He was revealed as the Creator, as the Almighty, or as the All-sufficient One, and as Jehovah; but by the Son the ineffable Name of Father has been manifested. Until the Son came to reveal Him as Father He could not so be known, for Jesus said, "Neither knows any man the Father save the Son."

To us He is Father. He has adopted us into His family, making us His sons, but if He had done that and no more, we might have felt utterly strange in such a relationship, but now having the Spirit of His Son, we are not strangers in it. We know the Father, we can enter into His thoughts and enjoy His love… The very way in which Jesus confidingly addressed Him is the way we address Him now.