What is Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

There are three divine persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Each of them is ‘God’.

So we must be careful in using the terms, first, second and third Persons in the Trinity, not to think there is any difference in importance. The Father is God; the Son is God; the Spirit is God—the Spirit equal in nature and substance to the Father and the Son. If the three Persons of the Godhead are each of them God, it does not follow that there are three Gods. That were impossible. There can be only one God, supreme and unique. Orthodox Christendom believes in three Persons in the Godhead, yet one God, indivisible and unique—the three Persons in the Godhead with one will, one purpose, each sharing to the full every thought and desire and purpose in the minds of the others. We may not, nay cannot, comprehend this. It is a mystery hidden in the Godhead, yet the Godhead is pleased to reveal Itself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This clearly shows that whilst Scripture affirms that there are three distinct Persons in the Godhead, yet there are not three Gods, but one; not a trinity of Gods, but a triune God.

Perhaps the triune constitution of man—spirit, soul and body, yet one man—may very dimly illustrate for us this still greater mystery. If we cannot understand creation, how can we understand the Creator; if we cannot understand ourselves, how can we understand God, if we cannot understand the finite how can we understand the infinite?

Scripture is most plain, whatever unbelief may say, that there are three distinct persons in the Godhead, equal in power, majesty, and glory, each taking His own part in all that is done, whether in creation or redemption, yet ever acting in perfect unity and communion.

The Holy Spirit also now takes a place in the present dispensation that appears to be subordinated, He "proceedeth from the Father" and is "sent" by the Father and the Son. And having come, He does not speak of Himself but whatsoever He hears He speaks. His mission is to "glorify Christ" in receiving the things that are His and showing them unto us. (See John 15: 26; John 16: 13, 14). All such expressions as these appear to give a place of subordination to the Spirit as others appear to do to the Son but it is in appearance only and in respect to the place they have taken and the part they play in carrying out the divine purposes and not in anywise as to the dignity of their Persons. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are coequal in deity and all are one in thought, will and purpose though each has His respective part and sphere of action in the carrying out of the divine purposes.

A word only used to convey the thought of a plurality of Persons in the Godhead. This was revealed at the baptism of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit descended 'like a dove' and abode upon Him; and God the Father declared "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." That the Father is a distinct Person and is God is plainly stated, as in John 20:17. Many passages prove that the Lord Jesus is God: one will suffice: ". . . . in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." 1 John 5:20. That the Holy Spirit is a Person and is God the following passages clearly prove: Gen. 1:2; Matt. 4:1; John 16:13; Acts 10:19; Acts 13:2, 4; Acts 20:28; Rom. 15:30; 1 Cor. 2:10. The three Persons are also named in the formula instituted by Christ in baptism. Matt. 28:19. Yet there is but one God. 1 Tim. 2:5. Satan will have an imitation of the Trinity in the Roman beast, the false prophet, and himself. Rev. 13:4, 11; Rev. 20:10.

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.

Each of these errors destroys the Trinity in Unity, the first by denying the Unity of the Essence, the second by denying the Trinity of the Persons. The true and scriptural doctrine of the Trinity steers between these two erroneous extremes, and holds a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Essence. Now, the Lord Jesus, as the eternal Son of the Father, is distinct from Him as His Son, and yet necessarily one with Him as partaking of the same Essence; and the Holy Spirit, as proceeding from the Father and the Son, is distinct also from those Persons of the Trinity, and yet, as eternally proceeding from both, partakes of their Essence likewise. Thus we have a Trinity of Persons, but a Unity of Essence—One God, but eternally subsisting as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Eternal Sonship gives to the Son a Unity of Essence with the Father, and yet a distinctness of Person; thus, as the Son He is one with the Father (John 10:30), and yet as the Son He is distinct from the Father. So eternal procession from the Father and the Son gives to the Holy Spirit Unity of Essence with the Father and the Son, and yet a distinct Personality. Upon this firm basis the Trinity stands. But if you remove the eternal Sonship of Christ, you also must take away the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit; and by so doing you destroy the Unity of Essence and inter-communion of Nature of Israel’s Triune God. If the denial of the eternal Sonship of Jesus involve such consequences, well may we tremble at such an error as removes the very foundations of revealed truth. All other views of the Sonship of Christ lower His essential and eternal dignity and, however craftily disguised, tend to, and usually end in, Arianism. If His Sonship be not His eternal mode of subsistence, it must, in some way or other, be created Sonship, and what is this but Arian doctrine in its very root and essence? How the Son can be eternally begotten, and how the Holy Spirit can eternally proceed, is a mystery which we cannot understand, much less explain; but we receive it by faith, in the same way as we receive the “great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” If once we begin to reason on these matters, we are lost at the very threshold of our inquiry. To believe, not to speculate; to receive the testimony that God has given of His Son; not to doubt, argue and cavil, is the only sure path, as well as the peculiar blessedness of a child of God.

In human language when we speak of a person, we think of separate entity, separate existence, separate will, different characteristics, thoughts and plans peculiar to each person, not shared with any others. Carry that human thought into the subject before us, and the truth of the Trinity is entirely perverted and lost. Instead of the Trinity—Father, Son and Spirit, ONE God—we should have three Gods, an absolute impossibility, for there can only be one God, unique and incomprehensible.

The Holy Trinity—Three in One, and One in Three—is in its essence a mystery beyond human comprehension, even when the comprehension is that of the renewed mind of the believer. In the very nature of things this must be so. How can the creature comprehend the Creator; the finite, the Infinite; the relative, the Absolute.