What does it mean that Jesus, the Son, is the second Person of the Trinity?

Answer

The Trinity is one God in three Persons. The Bible teaches three coexistent, co-eternal Persons who together form the one God. Jesus is identified as the second Person in the Trinity because in the “Trinitarian formula” mentioned in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19, Jesus, the Son, is listed second: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Referring to the Persons of the Trinity as first, second, and third does not imply varying levels of importance among them. The Athanasian Creed, an early summary of Christian doctrine concerning the Trinity, as well as the deity and humanity of Christ, affirms that “we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity”; furthermore, we distinguish the three Persons while maintaining their unified nature and substance. As the creed articulates, “There is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. Yet the godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, with equal glory and co-eternal majesty. . . . Within the Trinity, none precedes or follows another; none surpasses or is inferior to another, but all three Persons are co-eternal and co-equal.”

The Son is not subordinate to the Father, but the Son willingly submitted to the Father’s will. Jesus is termed the second Person of the Trinity because He, while existing eternally alongside the Father, chose to take on human form. In His humble human existence, the Son obediently lived in accordance with God the Father. Philippians 2:6–8 explains: “[Christ Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; instead, he made himself nothing by taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a maIn humility, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—yes, even death on a cross!” The Son holds the “second” position in the “economic Trinity”—that is, the Trinity as God has revealed Himself to us and interacts with us as human beings.

Through His obedience as the Son, Jesus secured our salvation and has now been exalted to the right hand of the Father “who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;”, (Hebrews 1:3).