What does the Father represent in the Trinity?

The spring and source of all is in the Father's love, but the relationship itself is in the Son. This excludes, in His glorious Person, all thought of generation, offspring or subordination. Such thoughts are not consistent with the co-existence, mutuality and co-equality of that God Who is One yet God all Three. "I and the Father are One," and again, "I am in the Father and the Father is in Me," (John 10:30; John 14:10), speak of the relations and intimacies of Godhead, from eternity to eternity, yet spoken in Manhood in time, by the Son. In coming out to reveal, He is Himself what He reveals, and being Man, while still abiding in the unity of Godhead, all the blessed joys and affections proper to the filial relation are His without a break, in the Manhood He took. In this way the communications that belong to the relationship, in its heavenly and eternal blessedness, is brought before us from the Son's own lips, in the seventeenth chapter of John. There, God the Spirit records, through John, the words of the incarnate Son in His prayer to the Father, and as units in the great aggregate that was before Him in that prayer we are privileged to listen and adore and to link ourselves with the home of Divine Love, and the counsels of eternity from which all has come.

"There never was a moment when God was incomplete, as He would have been without Son or Spirit. The whole three Persons are co-equal. God would be still incomplete if Son or Spirit were not in everything 'such as the Father is' … The union of the Three is not one of barren necessity. It is a free and living union in which all are bound together by an absolute outpouring of each to other in love. We may think of the joy which the Father has in giving—in communicating without reserve to the Son 'all the fulness' (Col. 1:19) of His being … and it is the joy of the Son to receive—to feel the infinite flow of the Father's love concentrated in Himself, and … the gladness with which He welcomes most those wishes of the Father which will cost most to Himself … It is the glory of them all to be One … by a moral living for and in each other, in a mutual devotion such as serves as an example for men." (emphasis ours,),

Here we must remember that we are dealing with deep and blessed things, things indeed which are beyond our creature minds. 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. This revelation includes every family in the heavens and earth, and indeed, it will go out to the place of eternal punishment, for the lake of fire will be an everlasting witness to the righteousness, holiness and majesty of God.

In these chapters we are reading we see that the Spirit is sent by both the Father and the Son; it reminds us of the prophetic announcement of our Lord's first coming in Isaiah 48:16, "And now the Lord God, and His Spirit, has sent Me." 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."

Thus we see that there could be no full revelation of God, but through the Son by the Spirit, and thereby of the Father. The full revelation of the one God is only thus - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This, this only, is what the one God is, one identity of will and being, so that they are essentially one and one only, yet distinct in willing and acting (and we can distinguish them in willing and acting: hence we commonly speak of persons), yet never willing or acting but in the common will and unity of nature.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are equally God. The order in which the names are put in Matthew 28:19 does not indicate any difference in status, but is casual: the Father sent the Son; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

When I say it is by necessity of nature, I do not mean that the divine nature, in which the divine Persons subsist, distinguishes Them; for that nature is one and common to Them all. The nature of the Son is the same with that of the Father; and the nature of the Spirit the same with that of the Father and the Son; and this nature, which They in common partake of, is undivided; it is not parted between Them, so that one has one part, and another a second, and another a third; nor that one has a greater and another a lesser part, which might distinguish Them, but the whole fullness of the Godhead is in each.

“To come to the point—it is the personal relations or distinctive relative properties which belong to each Person which distinguish Them from one another; as paternity in the First Person, filiation in the Second, and spiration in the Third; or, more plainly, it is begetting Psalm 2:7 which peculiarly belongs to the First, and is never ascribed to the Second and Third, which distinguishes Him from Them both, and gives Him; with great propriety, the Name of the Father; and it is being begotten, that is the personal relation, or relative property of the Second Person, hence called the only begotten of the Father (John 1:14), which distinguishes Him from the First and Third, and gives Him the name of the Son; and the relative property, or personal relation of the Third Person is, that He is breathed by the First and Second Persons; hence called the breath of the Almighty, the breath of the mouth of Jehovah the Father, and the breath of the mouth of Christ the Lord, and which is never said of the other Two Persons, and so distinguishes Him from Them; and very pertinently gives Him the name of the Spirit, or breath” (Job 33:4; Psalm 33:6; 2 Thessalonians 2:8). “Body of Divinity,” Book 1., ch. 28.

It will be seen from these extracts that a distinction is drawn between Essence and Person; but as some of my readers may feel a difficulty in gathering up the distinction between the two, I submit the following idea as an illustration, but, be it remembered, only as an illustration. Human nature is distinct, or at least distinguishable, from the individual men and women who in common possess that nature. Thus we may say that, human nature is common to alt men and women, and yet that men and women are distinct from one another as individuals. So, in a high and mysterious sense, the Essence of Deity, which is self-existent, may be distinguished from the Persons in the Deity, who sustain to each other a peculiar and eternal relationship. In Their Essence They are One, in Their Personality They are Three; in Their Essence They are self-existent, in Their Personality They subsist, the Father as Father to the Son, the Son as Son to the Father, the Holy Spirit to both as proceeding from the Father and the Son. Thus we establish a Trinity in Unity. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” There is the unity of the divine Essence. “There are Three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.” There we have the Trinity of Persons in the divine Essence, “for these Three are One” (1 John 5:7).

In this connection Dr. Mason rightly says: "The only approach which we can make to a right understanding of what is revealed lies in the doctrine of the derivation of the Son and Spirit from the Person of the Father… 'God' is always the Father. 'To us there is but one God, the Father' (1 Cor. 8:6). … "The Son is God, but God is not the Son… The Spirit is God, but "God is not the Spirit. But in regard to the Father it can be said, "The Father is God, and God is the Father… There never was a "moment when God was incomplete, as He would have been without Son or Spirit… The whole three Persons are co-equal; God would be still incomplete if Son or Spirit were not in everything 'such as the Father is.' And yet the ancient Greek teachers made no mistake "in doctrine when they interpreted the saying of Our Lord, 'My Father is greater than I' (John 14:28) to refer to the Father and the Son in their eternal relations."

The passage then states, not simply that there is one God—the Apostle had already stated this in verse 4—but "there is but one God, the Father." And then these most significant words are added: "Of Whom are all things and we for Him." What is the force of this? "The Greek preposition ek (of) expresses the source of being, the origin of all things." Now, when did the Father become "the source of being, the origin of all things?" Was it only at the Incarnation? How preposterous is such an idea. No reading backwards will avail here. For what is stated here is in the most distinct and absolute way predicated of God the Father alone and as such. He is declared to be the source of all things. Such a declaration could not apply to time merely.

Thus we have the Father as well as the Holy Spirit in relation to eternity. This necessitates the existence of the Son. The Persons cannot be separated. It cannot be supposed that one, or even two, existed alone.

Mr C.A.C. is inconsistent and even contradicts himself. He will not apply names to Divine Persons in eternity, but apparently he has no objection to apply numbers!! He speaks of Them as first, second and third. On p. 14, he says "It had been known to the Father and to Himself (the Son) in the inscrutable glory of Deity." Yet on p. 18 he declares: "We cannot carry the names Father and Son even back into the Old Testament." Why then does he carry such names back into a past eternity? On p. 19 he tells us, "the thought of God is presented to us in the Father," and a little later he quotes the words of Scripture: "To us there is one God, even the Father." (1 Cor. 8:6.) Yet on p. 20 he states just as emphatically: "Of course, there is no change in God: what He is now, He ever was and ever will be." If there is no change in God, and the thought of God? is presented to us in the Father, then how could there ever have been a time when God was not the Father? He must have been always God the Father, or else not God. The very Scripture he quotes proves this. "To us," says the Apostle, "there is one God, the Father." (This is the correct quotation not as C.A.C. gives it "even the Father.") But the verse contains a very important addition, namely, "Of Whom are all things." That is, the Father is the origin and source of everything. The introduction of the word Father here, is of the utmost significance and to omit it would completely destroy the force of the passage. The Apostle does not state that God, that is, in the Trinity of His Being, is the source of all, but that God the Father is. May we ask C.A.C. when this began? Only concurrently with Incarnation? Who could think it? There can be only one meaning to the statement, namely, that whenever God began to be the source of all, that is when Fatherhood began. Of the Father it is, Paul affirms, "Of Whom are all things." We shall see later how this agrees with other Scriptures. Therefore if as C.A.C. says, and says truly, "There is no change in God." (p, 20), then He was always the Father, for the Father is the source of all things.

There is what comes into existence yet will endure to eternal ages. As creatures we have had a beginning of existence: as redeemed creatures we shall dwell in life with God and with His blessed Son for ever. But the Father's love had no beginning of existence. Nothing has brought, or could bring, that love into existence. It is inherently and essentially DIVINE; it reveals what GOD IS IN HIMSELF, in His Nature, not anything that He becomes. It was the eternal Source of those purposes which gave us sonship's place, that on account of which He both foreknew us and predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son. But only the Father's love could possibly be the source of an eternal counsel which actually willed sonship for us. Hence it was the Father's love, active in past eternal ages, which could alone be the utterly Divine Source of that purpose, and of all the unmingled blessing enshrined in it.