First Person of the Trinity
God the Father
GOD thuh FAH-ther · Also called Father in heaven, heavenly Father, Abba, Father, Abba! Father!
The first person of the Trinity, whom Jesus addressed intimately as 'Father' and taught his disciples to call 'Our Father in heaven' — the eternal source to whom the Son and the Spirit are, in classical Christian understanding, fully equal in nature yet distinct in person.
Life and work
Throughout the Old Testament, God relates to Israel corporately as a father to a son (Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 63:16; Hosea 11:1), but it is Jesus who makes Fatherhood the defining, personal way of addressing God — teaching his disciples to pray 'Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy' (Matthew 6:9), and repeatedly calling God 'my Father' in a manner so intimate that his Jewish hearers understood it as a claim to deity, provoking accusations that he was 'making himself equal with God' (John 5:18). In the garden of Gethsemane, facing the cross, Jesus cries out using the Aramaic term of a child's trust, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible to you' (Mark 14:36) — a term of address so personal that Paul later says believers themselves receive 'the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!"' (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6), extending the same filial relationship to all who are in Christ.
The Father is presented throughout the New Testament as sending the Son (John 3:16-17), being glorified by the Son's obedience even to death (Philippians 2:8-11), and raising Jesus from the dead (Romans 6:4; Galatians 1:1). At Jesus's baptism, all three persons of the Trinity appear together in a single scene: the Son is baptized, the Spirit descends on him 'as a dove,' and the Father's voice from heaven declares, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased' (Matthew 3:16-17) — one of the New Testament's clearest joint appearances of Father, Son, and Spirit. Jesus closes the Great Commission by instructing baptism 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28:19), naming all three under a single 'name,' not three.
Classical Christian doctrine, worked out over the church's first several centuries and articulated in creeds like Nicaea (AD 325), holds that the Father is not a different, lesser, or earlier God than the Son or the Spirit, but one of three co-equal, co-eternal persons within the one God — a teaching the New Testament assumes and displays (in scenes like the baptism above) more than it defines in a single formula — see the Trinity for the doctrine's fuller development and the range of Scripture that undergirds it.
Extra-biblical evidence
As with the Holy Spirit, questions of 'extra-biblical historical record' don't apply in the way they do to a human figure — the New Testament's testimony to the Father, and the church's doctrinal reflection on that testimony (councils, creeds, and confessions), is the relevant historical record.
Scripture references
- Matthew 6:9-13 — The Lord's Prayer: 'Our Father in heaven'
- Matthew 3:16-17 — The Father's voice at Jesus's baptism, alongside the Son and the Spirit
- John 5:18 — Jesus's claim to call God his own Father provokes accusations of blasphemy
- Mark 14:36 — Jesus in Gethsemane: 'Abba, Father, all things are possible to you'
- Romans 8:15 — Believers receive 'the Spirit of adoption,' crying 'Abba! Father!'
- Matthew 28:19 — Baptism 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit'
Further reading
Capstone Bible is a free interactive study app — a map of every place in this library, a zoomable timeline of biblical and church history, the Bible text with every name in it linked to its article, reading plans and personal notes.
Open Capstone Bible