The Father is Father by His eternal relation to the Second Person of the Trinity--the Son. The Son is not a created being or a man who was adopted by God. The Son is the Second Person of the eternal Trinity.
Who Is The Son?
The Son is the only eternally begotten Son of the Father. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”
What does it mean to be begotten? It means to come forth from someone. As I mentioned yesterday, at one point I wasn’t a father and at another point became a father. My son comes forth from me and my wife. This is an earthly analogy to the Son’s eternal relation to the Father. It is not identical.
Psalm 2:7 says, “Today I have begotten you.” But when is “today” for God? God is outside of time. For God, “today” is always. What does this mean? It means that the Son is eternally begotten by the Father. Yet, what is also different about the Son’s relation to the Father than Knox’s relation to me is that the Son is of the same essence as the Father.
Everything that makes God God is the Son. There is nothing about God that is lacking in the Son. There is nothing about the Son that makes Him subordinate or lesser than the Father. He is distinct not in His Being but in His eternal relations among the three Persons.
Let me put it to you this way. Brightness is always in existence where there is light. Light always produces brightness. You could also think about it this way: Garlic is always producing its aroma.
The Son never had a time when He came into being. He has always existed alongside the Father! If at one point in time the Son came into being then that means that at one point in time the Father was not the Father.
In John 14:6, Jesus calls Himself “the truth”. Here is what one of our church fathers, Athanasius, says about this verse: “If the Son of God is the truth and if there was a ‘time’ when the Son of God didn’t exist then that means at one time the Father did not have the truth.”
We could say the same thing about the Son being the wisdom of God and the glory of God. Has God ever been without wisdom or without the radiance of His glory? If He was, He would not be God.
The Nicene Creed says that the Son is “Very God of very God.” He is equal to the Father and Spirit in every way. He is the same in essence with the Father. He is only distinguished by His relation to the Father.
Why is that important? If the Son of God is not eternally of the same essence then when the Son of God comes to take on flesh and die for us then there is no real salvation. The Savior for humanity must be God and human at the same time.
What Does The Son Do?
Because of who the Son is, He comes down to us to save us. The Father sends the Son and the Son willingly comes to redeem us. The Son being sent by the Father reflects His eternal origin from the Father. Jesus being sent by the Father reflects this eternal relation but it is not absolutely identical. This is important because if we look at Jesus’ relation to the Father in His time on earth and say that in eternity it must be the exact same way then we get ourselves into trouble.
Using this line of logic, we would say the following: If Jesus is subordinate to the Father while on earth then the Son must have always been subordinate to the Father in eternity.
You see the problem here right? If the Son is always eternally subordinate to the Father then it implies that He was forced to come save us. It is a kind of divine child abuse. It also would mean that the Son is somehow lesser than the Father rather than equal to the Father.
Let me paint it this way. It’s like looking at the Mona Lisa. Now, we know that the actual woman is not made of canvas and paint. The painting is reflecting her but the painting itself is not her.1 So, the Son being sent by the Father to come and save us reflects (but is not 100% identical to) the eternal relation between the Father and Son.
Once again, you might be saying, “Why does this matter?” Here is why: The man Christ Jesus, who was nailed to the tree, was none other than the eternal Son of God in our flesh. It means that God loved us so much that He did not just offer us salvation from afar. It means He Himself took on our flesh. He became a baby in a feeding trough. He ran around on this earth with the other children of His day. He worked a normal job as a carpenter. He went around teaching about the kingdom of God. Finally, when He went to the Cross, He didn’t just die an excruciating physical death. He died as the substitute for His people. He being God and Man bridges the infinite gap that sin created between us and the Triune God.
Why Does It Matter To Know The Son?
It means that in Christ, we receive that infinite and eternal love that the Son has always received from the Father. That’s what Jesus prayed in John 17. In 17:26, He prays that “the love with which the Father loved the Son might be in us.” That same quality of love! Nothing less. It means that you can never and will never think high enough of God’s love for you.
It means you stop playing the “He loves me; He loves me not” game. You know that classic example of a young teenager thinking about their crush. They pick up a flower and begin picking off the petals one by one. Each petal either has a “He loves me” or a “He loves me not”. And whichever one you end up with, that’s your destiny. God doesn’t do that with us! He is never saying “I’ll love them today” or “I won’t love them today”. He is Love! When we run to Jesus with all our sin and trust Him for our salvation, we receive the God of infinite and eternal love!
It also means this: Because Jesus is the Son by nature, we can become sons and daughters by grace. We are not barely brought into the kingdom of God when we are saved. We are brought into the highest and most intimate relationship with God possible for created beings.
But yet again, it also means something else. Because the Son is God and shares the same essence as the Father, it means that there is no difference in Father’s relationship to us in heaven than there is to Jesus’ relationship to us on earth. Jesus is perfectly imaging the Father. In John 14:8-9 it says, “Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
Do you realize what this means? It means that the gentle and lowly Jesus we see in the Gospels is not contradicting the Father. The Father too is gentle and lowly towards His people. Isn’t this amazing? Don’t you see how this doctrine of the Trinity changes you? What you know influences who you are.
Much of these illustrations are taken from and inspired by Matthew' Barrett’s book Simply Trinity.