Who is God?

Excerpted with permission from Word by Malcolm B. Yarnell III. Copyright 2026, B&H Publishing.

Who is God? Jesus provided the most complete answer in the Great Commission he gave to his church. The one true God must be named in the initial Christian confession of baptism, “the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). Paul repeated this truth in his confessional prayer at the end of his second letter to the church of Corinth: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:13). In other words, both Christ and his apostle command us to confess God is Trinity.

First, we must learn to confess that the one Lord God is the Father. Most scholars agree that when theos is used in the New Testament, the term typically refers to the Father. Karl Rahner concluded from his studies of the use of theos in the New Testament that the term does not merely sometimes indicate the Father. Rather, the New Testament use of ho theos “signifies the First Person of the Trinity” without exception. “God,” therefore, always refers to the Father.

However, theos also encloses the identity of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father. Diminishing the identification of God as Father is improper. To diminish him is to pervert the truth of the Trinity. Rahner restated a classic theological distinction from this profound reality: On the one hand, “the word and concept ‘God’ signifies the Person to whom the divine nature is proper.” On the other hand, “‘God’ can stand for each of the three Persons who possess this nature, or again ‘God’ can stand for all three Persons together.”

In the second place, therefore, we must affirm that the Son, too, is the one Lord God. At the high point of the Gospel of John’s witness to the deity of Christ, the Apostle Thomas responded to Jesus with the greatest confession about the deity of the Son. After he saw Jesus truly was the resurrected Son of God, this previously doubtful disciple proclaimed in deep reverence, “My Lord [kurios] and my God [theos]” (John 20:28).

This remains a necessary confession for every orthodox Christian regarding Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, the Son, is both “Lord” and “God.” With those who fostered the Nicene Creed, orthodox Christians have learned to confess the Father possesses the divine nature “unoriginately,” while the Son possesses the same nature “by eternal generation.” Orthodox trinitarianism requires affirmation of the eternal relations of origin.

Thirdly, the Holy Spirit is likewise the Lord God. In the Old Testament, “the Spirit of the Lord” often acts with power. The Apostle Paul states rather directly, “the Lord [kurios] is the Spirit [pneuma]” (2 Cor 3:17). Similarly, according to the Apostle Peter, to sin against “the Holy Spirit [to pneuma to hagion]” is to sin against “God [theos]” (Acts 5:3-4).

To summarize the necessary confession of the eternal relations of origin, we must learn to say three things: the Father is the Lord God without origination; the Son is the Lord God by eternal generation; and the Holy Spirit is the Lord God by eternal “spiration” or “procession” (cf. John 1:14, 18; 15:26).