The Father in Relationship
God’s good plan started long before He created us. Think about this: He was Father before He was Creator. He didn’t become the Father. He’s always been Fathering within the Trinity. And out of the overflow of love within the Trinity, He created us. You exist out of love, created by love, to be so moved by His love for you that you love Him in return (1 John 4:19). That’s why you’re here on earth. You weren’t an accident or an oversight but a carefully planned, lovingly designed, image bearer of God who is now also a child of God, intentionally adopted into His family—for His glory and delight, and for your freedom and joy.
He didn’t need to do this. He didn’t need us. He wanted to create us out of his divine overflow of love. Nothing in Scripture indicates that He was lonely or bored before we showed up on the scene. Instead, when Scripture points to what reality was like before time itself was created, it points to each Person of the Trinity being occupied with love for the other Persons of the Trinity. Even without creation or redemption, God would still be who He is, which is who He has always been—Triune, self-existent, and full of love.
Creation is where we first see the roles of the Trinity emerging. But before God took any direct action toward creating humanity, He existed in all of His perfection and glory. Before He was a Creator, He was a Father—not the Father of us (not yet, anyway), but the Father within the Trinity itself. He needed nothing, and the fullness of His triune nature—Father, Son, and Spirit—dwelled together in perfect love. Out of the overflow of their love, God the Father set His plan in motion to create us and establish a relationship with us.
Creating is the first way we see Him taking action in Scripture, but that’s because this is where we enter the story. Of course, God’s story began long before ours did. He was fully God before He made anything. It’s important to note that His God-ness isn’t contingent upon Him being the Creator; otherwise, He wouldn’t have been God until the moment when He created. His position as Deity would have relied on causing us to exist. In that sense, He would need us in order to be who He is. But He is dependent on nothing, and everything is dependent on Him. Even before time began, the Father has always been the Father.
In John 17:24, when Jesus was speaking to the Father, He said, “…You loved me before the foundation of the world.” Before there was ever a creation or a command, there was a Father and His love. He has always loved the Son and the Spirit. The fact that the Father has been loving perfectly for all eternity tells us a lot about who He is. Whenever Scripture peels back the curtain on eternity, we see a glimpse of His great love and His plan to demonstrate that love.
It’s common for people to first consider God as merely “Creator” in the Old Testament, ruling and reigning over all the peoples of the earth in whatever way He sees fit, and then switch to considering Him as “loving Father” in the New Testament once Jesus comes on the scene and speaks often about God the Father. But when we hold such a fractionated view of the Father, it’s impossible to have an accurate understanding of how His words and actions connect us to His heart. Gaining a fuller understanding of who He reveals Himself to be throughout the whole of Scripture is the only way we’ll ever grasp the magnitude of His love for us!
God knew we needed to see our need for Him, and He had a brilliant, generous plan to help us realize it, not just at the start of the New Testament, but all the way back at the beginning of the Old! Like any parent with a willful, rebellious kid, He let Adam and Eve experience the natural consequences of their own defiance. As a result of the sin they brought into the world, in the first few chapters of Genesis, God’s good creation devolves into murder, slavery, and oppression, clearly needing some sort of rescue plan.
It’s not just Adam and Eve’s sin that needed redemption; our sin makes it obvious that we need a rescue plan, too—one that can only come from outside ourselves. And the good news for us is this: God planned that rescue before the fall of man ever happened. Just listen to how Paul explains it in the book of Ephesians:
Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time—to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him.
In him we have also received an inheritance, because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory. (Eph. 1:3-12, emphasis mine)
In Bible passages like Matthew 25:34 and Revelation 13:8, we get a glimpse of what it looks like for the Triune God to exist outside of time, and they reveal that His love and His plan preceded not just our existence, but the world’s existence. According to these verses, the names of His children were written in the Book of Life, and a kingdom was prepared for them to enjoy “before the foundation of the world” (ESV).
The Father was loving perfectly within the Trinity and making plans and provision for His children before the earth was founded. This gives us a glimpse into His character and His heart toward His kids. Before we even fell, God had a plan to redeem us from the fall. Sending His Son Jesus to pay our sin debt wasn’t Plan B. Jesus was always Plan A. God has no Plan B. Rescue and redemption have always been the Father’s plan.
Learn more about Tara-Leigh Cobble’s new book The Joy of the Trinity by visiting joyofthetrinity.com.
Excerpted with permission from The Joy of the Trinity by Tara-Leigh Cobble. Copyright 2024, B&H Publishing.
