What is the Father in the Trinity?

The last words of this verse, "My Father is greater than I," have been made into an occasion of stumbling to some. But here we have speaking the Word made flesh, and He speaks in His estate as the lowly Man upon earth. Hence in position or station the Father was greater than He, whilst as to being and nature He and the Father were one.

“My Father!” From the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ those two precious words often fell. Their full meaning we may not yet have grasped, but the Spirit is here to lead us into all truth. It is plainly evident that Jesus must have been speaking as a Man when He said, “MY Father is greater than I” This therefore explains to us how He stood in relation to His Father as “the Son of the Father,” for when He spake of Himself as the Son, one with the Father, He did not then say “My Father,” but speaking as God the Son He told those who listened to His words, “I and THE Father are one” (N.Tr.). There is therefore no contradiction between John 14:28 and 10:30, but each Scripture glows with divine beauty, one revealing Him to us as Man and the other as God, the first in His obedient place as the Son of the Father, the second in His equality as the Son with the Father.

The words of the Lord Jesus above may seem a contradiction to His words in John 14:28, "My Father is greater than I." But there He is not speaking of the Father being personally greater than He, but rather that He had taken a place in manhood on earth lower than the Father, and He speaks there of His returning to the Father.

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.

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.

This baptizing is "unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The name, not the names, of the Triune. This is the Christian revelation of God; and what is not done in this way is not Christian. The "name" in Scripture gives the real character of what it stands for; and the name here is the truth of the Godhead as now made known to us: thus "baptism" and the "faith" are once more, as in Eph. 4 ("one faith, one baptism,"), connected together.

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).

But if God is one in Essence, there are within that Essence, or Substance, three Persons, each standing in relation to the other as Father, Son and Spirit. Essence gives us an impersonal thought by which we can understand that He fills all space and permeates the universe with life, glory, and majesty. Eph. 4:6. "Heaven is My throne." Ps. 11:4. Acts 7:49. As such there is one mind, purpose, will and plan, hence, what is true of One, is true of all Three. This explodes for ever what speculative theology has pre-supposed namely, a conflict within the Godhead. To raise a moral question like that would be equal to saying, that God can be at variance with Himself.

333 It is another thing to have the secret of the Lord, and go forth with it in power; yet here with no pretension, for in this unity it is common to all; yet hence evidently divine, for for fellowship one with another we must be in the light, as God is. The last is evident in the display in glory: "I in them, and thou in me" is the form it takes. The glory is the same. Still in it the Son displayed the Father, and He will be displayed in us; but then for that it must be the same glory, His glory, or He is not displayed; and then perfectly in result. They are kept in the name in which Christ knew the Father. They are kept in immediate relationship as children with the Father, and in the holiness of the divine nature; and so in the power of the Holy Ghost are one, nothing diverse entering in.

In a divine sense, I assuredly believe our Lord Jesus bears this title. He is called Son of God, when His full, unqualified, eternal Deity is expressed, when revealed as one with the Father and the Holy Ghost (three Persons in one God). For John says, "Therefore the Jews sought to kill Him, because He had not only broken the sabbath, but said also that God was His Father;" making Himself equal with God (John 5:18). And again, after speaking largely of Himself as Son of God, He closes with assuming full divine glory, saying, "before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). And the divine dignity of this title clearly appears from John 10:30-39, and from 1 John 1, 2. Indeed on the truth, that there is Father and Son in the Godhead, the very life of the christian seems to depend; for this life is fellowship with God in love; which will be found to be fellowship with the Father and the Son. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father" (1 John 2:23). "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God; he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son" (2 John 9).