Christ will subject himself to the Father

Paul’s words in the middle of his great resurrection chapter in 1 Corinthians 15 can be kind of confusing. But that’s because he is demonstrating the mystery of the divine Trinity: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he ‘has put everything under his feet.’ Now when it says that ‘everything’ has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:25-28).

Jesus and the Father are one in substance, but they work together in a system of authority. We confess in the Athanasian Creed that the Son is “equal to the Father to his deity, less than the Father as to his humanity.” Or as we confess in the Nicene Creed that the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds. We are trying in our weak human language to describe the unity and the distinction of the persons of the Trinity – all without going too far and saying too much and thus undoing this marvelous mystery of the Holy Trinity.