Page 24 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

There would seem to have been a special counsel of the triune God looking to the
creation of a personality with a nature distinctive from previous creations. “And God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion

over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

This is one of the most significant verses in all Scripture. Here is the first

indication of the Trinity, in the use of the plural from in the “Let us” etc. The three
persons of the Godhead are absolutely united in every purpose, though they maintain
varying relationships and adopt different functions with respect to these purposes. We
may postulate three great epochs of divine dealing with this cosmos: Creation,

Redemption, Judgment-Rule. In each of these great works the Father is the projector,
the Son the performer, and the Spirit the preserver. Otherwise stated, the Father is the
architect-designer, the Son the builder, the Spirit the administrator.

In Heb. 1:2, speaking of the first great event, we read, “By whom [the Son] also
He [the Father] made the worlds.” In John 1:3 and Col. 1:16, where the eternal Logos
is clearly represented to be the Creator, the Greek preposition used indicates that it
was not entirely of His own initiative but that He was the agent of Another. Likewise,

the “upholding” of the creation was by the “word of His power” to Another, the Spirit,
Who also brooded over the original chaos (Heb. 1:3; Gen. 1:2).

In the matter of redemption these same corresponding functions of the Three

Persons are much more clearly defined. In many Scriptures it is seen that the Father
sent the Son, Who became incarnate in the body that was prepared for Him (John 1:14,
Heb. 10:5) to destroy the adversary through death (Heb. 2:14), and then in turn, when

the work of the Son was complete, He sent the Comforter (John 14:16, 16:7) to
preserve and administer the values of that work. Of judgment we are told that the
Father actively judges no man but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, and the
Apostle Paul declared on Mars Hill, “He [the Father] hath appointed a day in the
which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man Whom He hath ordained.”

The Father will judge the world only through the agency of the Son. That the Spirit
will be the executor of this judgment that the Father designed and the Son performed
is the logical conclusion from the fact that when the Son was Himself the bearer of

judgment it was through the Holy Spirit that He was offered up (Heb. 9:14).

Returning to Gen. 1:26, we find that the Deity counsels within itself to create a
man after its own image—Tripartite. As the Deity itself is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
so will this fairest of creatures have a triple nature—spirit, soul, and body. It was the

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