What is God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

"The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light." There are three persons in the Godhead. They are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is He Who is often called "The Heavenly Father". If we are His children we may call Him, "Abba, Father". That is something like, "Dear Father." The Son of God is Jesus. If we belong to Him, we call Him, "Lord Jesus". He is God, but He once became a Man, and lived on the earth. He died to put away our sins and rose again from among the dead and went up to heaven. He is truly God and truly Man, the risen Man in the glory. The Holy Spirit is also God. He lives on the earth in those who belong to the Lord Jesus. He also speaks to people.

Our title at the head of this paper is one such. Yet there is abundance of teaching in the Holy Scriptures that God reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not three Gods, but a Triune God, though Scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet one God indivisible.

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.

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.

We are speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ as “the Son,” and not of His distinctive glories as “the Son of David,” “the Son of Man” and “the Son of God,” nor even of Him as “the Son of the Father,” but rather of His deity as God the Son. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; yet there are not three Gods, but one God, “God is one” (Gal. 3:20; 1 Tim. 2:5, N.Tr.). Baptism is to the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” we are told in Matthew 28:19. This indicates for us the trinity of Persons in the Godhead, all of whom share in that supreme glory.

The Holy Ghost is a separate Personality in God. His Name is seen in conjunction with the names of the Father, and the Son, in Matthew 28 Christian baptism commits one to the confession of God as revealed by Christ, the full revelation of the one true living God being Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There are not two Gods, or three Gods, as ignorant objectors allege; but three Personalities in one God. These three ever subsisted in the Godhead; and with regard to the Holy Spirit, He is expressly called the Eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14). Before the worlds were made, God is (Heb. 11:3, 6); but even when heaven and earth were created these material things were not capable of bringing to light all that God is. Moreover, though Enoch and Noah walked with God, and Abraham was called God's friend, and the lord spake face to face unto Moses as a man speaks to his friend, their great intimacies did not bring to light the full truth. He was known to the patriarchs under His name of Almighty God, for the attribute of All-might pertains to the whole Godhead. Later, an advance was made when God especially linked His name of Jehovah with the nation of Israel (Exodus 6:2-3), for eternal existence and unchangeable glory (which are implied in that name) belong equally to the whole Godhead. Yet amid all the glories unfolded by the prophets, the Godhead secret w as never fully disclosed until in the fulness of time Christ came When it was no longer a question of the creation of worlds, or of the power that could sustain faith and reward it, as in Old Testament times, but rather of making purgation of sin and of revealing all that God is, the appearance of the Son of God in a concrete human form, apart from sin, necessarily brought to light His relations with the other Persons in the Trinity. Christianity therefore is based upon the knowledge of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

For the Son, see questions 2 and 3. For the Father, there are so many references to Him as the ‘God and Father’ (e.g. Eph. 1:3). The Spirit is eternal (Heb. 9:14), omnipresent (Ps. 139:7) and co-equal (‘on the same level with’) the Father and the Son (Mt. 18:19; 2 Cor. 13:13; Rev.1:4).

There are three Persons in the Godhead—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Till the Lord Jesus revealed the Father by His coming into this world as the Son sent of the Father, God was not known in His fulness. Moreover, it waited the advent of the Spirit of God on the day of Pentecost to complete the fulness of the revelation in the apprehension of the believer, for the Holy Spirit is the power by which these things are known and enjoyed.

The Holy Spirit is God, as the Father is God, and the Son is God, in the Unity of the Godhead, of One Substance, One in knowledge, counsel, will, purpose. We are obliged in speaking of them together to put their names in a certain order. Scripture gives the order in baptism, that those baptised are baptised in the name (not names) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. (Matt. 28:19). But we must be careful not to make any distinction in the Persons of the Godhead in the way of One being more prominent than the Other.

So if the Son takes a place of apparent subordination to the Father and the Spirit takes a place of apparent subordination to the Son, yet it is apparent only, for in fact, each is willingly doing His own part in conjunction and concert with the other two in carrying out one common purpose and will. All three are coequal in deity, essential in being and nature, but distinct in personality and in eternal unchanging relationship to the other and each having His own part and activity which He willingly does in carrying out one divine plan and purpose. Understand it we cannot, speculate on it we dare not, believe it we must, or else we make the divinely inspired Word of God a lie.