Not only will this help us understand, but this apostate culture we live in is full of people who simply will not take the time to really consider Who God is. When we are confronted by others regarding what we believe and why we believe it, having a basic understanding of God's nature helps provide us with the answers we need.
Please note that the aspects of God highlighted in this post do not constitute an exhaustive list. Many theologians have written extensively about the nature of God...this post would go on for a long, long time if I attempted to talk about every aspect of God's nature!
God is...
Holy
There is no evil in God whatsoever—he is completely pure. He wants us to be as much like Him as possible, which is why the Bible says "be holy, because I am holy."
Leviticus 11:44, 45 (NIV)If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, then you have accepted His gift of forgiveness and salvation. We who have been forgiven must not continue to sin. There is somewhat of a paradox here, because we still have that sinful nature, and as fallible human beings, we do continue to sin. Yet, the Holy Spirit within us enables us to avoid sinning, if we continue to ask for His power to be at work in us. If we stay in that close fellowship with Him, then our propensity to sin can diminish, even as our walk with Him grows.
"I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy... I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy."
Thus, we strive to be holy—set apart—but do not always succeed. Thank the Lord that He is gracious and forgiving. Our sins are already covered!
These are my own thoughts on this matter based upon the studying I have done over the years. I think Scripture supports this, but it is a tough concept. Paul struggled with his own sin nature and expressed his frustration in Romans 7. He expressed it as an illustration to his audience...the grace of God is absolutely necessary for us as we battle our sin nature.
Part of knowing how to be "set apart" is to understand what sin is. God's got it covered, though. The Bible contains everything we need to help us understand what sin is—the Law of God defines sin. The Bible also describes for us how to avoid sinning. So as God has commanded us to be holy, He has provided for us everything we need to accomplish it.
Finally, I wanted to share with you a sample of some of my favorite passages about the holiness of God. They are found in the book of Revelation, where we observe the inhabitants of heaven praising God and calling him holy:
Revelation 4:8 (NIV)It's an amazing picture, and it demonstrates for us how important this aspect of God is. His holiness is so important that he receives never-ceasing worship for it.
"...Day and night they never stop saying: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.”
Incredible stuff.
Absolutely Sovereign
The human experience may make this seem problematic. Human beings who are given absolute authority over a nation are often corrupt and evil, making lives miserable for those under them. But that is not who God is. Because of God's holiness, because there is not even a trace of evil in Him, He can be fully trusted as our sovereign.
And since He is our sovereign, we must live in full submission to Him, without rebellion. It is a privilege to be fully submissive to God, because He reigns righteously and justly and always has our best interests at heart. The very best thing we can do for ourselves and the world around us is to be fully humbled and submissive to God.
Please note that if you are unwilling to regard God in this way, then really, any discussion we might have about God and His will for your life is moot. The sin nature in human beings makes them prone to rebellion, and they tend to put themselves on the throne, rather than God. But today, right now, in this life, God is using your own tendencies to sin to train you for your future destiny as the Bride of Christ! There are several places in the Bible that state we will reign with Him...consider this life's trials and temptations to be your training ground for that future. (For more on this topic, I highly recommend the book Destined for the Throne by Paul E. Billheimer.)
Just
As I described above, because of His holiness, He cannot tolerate evil. In fact, there is not a trace of evil in Him. His nature will not allow sin to go on unatoned for. Therefore, if a person rejects Jesus and His gift of forgiveness, then the sin in that person's life goes unforgiven, unpaid for.
That means that the sinner who has rejected Christ will have to pay for their own sin. The Law of God is absolute in this regard. Evil will not be allowed to continue. It must be eradicated.
The absolute rightness of God's judgments means that at some point, the wrath of God will be justly applied. Those who have accepted the gift of forgiveness that Jesus has supplied do not need to fear the wrath of God—it does not apply to them:
1 Thessalonians 5:9 (NKJV)Those who reject Christ are probably blissfully unaware that wrath awaits them. This saddens me. I know it saddens God, who loves them. God doesn't want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9). Jude urged believers to "save others by snatching them from the fire." (Jude 1:23, NIV)
For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Like so many other aspects of the nature of God, humans struggle with this. It seems appalling that such wrath should fall upon anyone. But then we consider people who have done truly horrible things, and we suddenly feel that THOSE people should indeed suffer wrath (think Hitler). We are fickle in our judgments, perhaps because we do not fully understand the concepts of God's Law. God tells us to trust Him, to trust in His righteousness, His holiness, and His perfection.
This is why He wants us to leave final justice up to Him. We as humans do the best we can, but no system of human justice is perfect. Our all-knowing God (another aspect of His nature) sees and understands everything, and therefore has the capability to be perfectly just in all His actions, and in His wrath.
All-Powerful (Omnipotent)
...the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.That Scripture has given me so much HOPE. When I have been faced with circumstances that seem simply impossible to overcome, I have gone back to this passage. It's helped remind me that I have direct access to THE all-powerful God, and I can ask Him for anything! He tells us that as long as we are operating within the confines of His will, we can rest assured that He hears us and will answer.
Let me just tell you...I have watched Him do things that men have deemed "impossible." I am so thankful that He is all-powerful!
Much like the concept of God's absolute sovereignty, the fact that He is all-powerful causes problems to those who look at God as having a nature similar to the fallible nature of humans. They want to impose upon Him the actions they feel He SHOULD take because, after all, He can do anything. But yet, He doesn't always act as humans feel He should.
It is at this point that many, many people reject His existence utterly, because it doesn't fit the schema in their way of thinking: "If there were an all-powerful God, surely he would [insert opinion here]!"
Fortunately, God is also patient! See the book of Job—this kind of thinking might have gotten poor Job into even deeper trouble than the mess his life was in, but the Lord instead corrected him. Job's attitude was perhaps understandable, given the circumstances, but when the Lord spoke to him, ultimately, Job fell on his face before God and repented. Job indeed recognized God's all-powerful nature.
The story of Job allows us to hear God expressing His own nature to us and how we must relate to Him. To take any other stance is downright unbiblical.
One final thought on the omnipotence of God that I touched on in my last post about the Bible...an all-powerful God is fully capable of ensuring that His Word is passed to us without error. This is where a lot of people trip up when they affirm that God is all-powerful, but that the Bible is full of errors and therefore is not our final authority. If God is indeed all-powerful, and if He wants us to have His Word as the final authority on all matters, then nothing could ever stop Him from making sure that it has been passed on to us intact throughout the centuries.
All-Knowing (Omniscient)
Psalm 139:1-4 (NIV)I take tremendous comfort in the fact that God is all-knowing. It means that He knows me better than I know myself. It means that He thoroughly knows everything that is going on with me, and therefore I can pray rather simply when I need to ask Him for something—I do not need to explain myself to Him. He welcomes us talking to Him about anything that's going on in our lives, of course! But we don't need to explain things to Him. We can rest in this knowledge, that because He already knows what's going on, He already knows the best situation or solution for us. We can simply ask Him to do it.
You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
It also comforting that God knows not only the past, but the future, as well. World events might be frightening to us, but when we understand that our all-knowing Father sees it all, we can trust that He has us in the palm of His hand.
There is so much more we could say on this subject, but there are just a couple more points I'd like to make...
Regarding our personal lives...Why do we fool ourselves into thinking we can sneak anything by Him?
Regarding Biblical prophecy and some of the discussions we will have on it in later sessions...Our all-knowing God has provided prophetic proclamations in the Bible to help us understand the things that are to come. The Bible is about 27% prophecy. Studying prophecy in the Bible helps us get to know God better and helps us make sense of what we see happening in the world around us.
Again, I cannot tell you how comforting this aspect of God is to me! The God who KNOWS me so well, loves me. We want desperately to be known...guess what? We already have that in God!
Immutable (Unchanging)
Hebrews 13:8 (NIV)
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Malachi 3:6 (NIV)
"I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed."
James 1:17 (NIV)This means that we can absolutely count on Him. If His nature is always the same, then anything we find in the Bible about Him and about His promises is still true today.
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Ever-Present (Omnipresent), Eternal, Transcendent...etc.
He is the great I Am. He has always been and always will be. He is always present, everywhere, all at once. He is not confined by anything, time nor space.
And He is transcendent—while a lot of the attributes of God are knowable, there is MUCH about him that is unknowable. He transcends all boundaries we as humans might want to put upon Him, simply because WE are bound to them, and we do not know any other way.
God tells us that His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8). We may not understand them, but He wants us to rest in Him, to trust in Him: "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10, NIV)
Essentially, God is telling us as much about Him as we need to know, and for the rest, He is telling us to trust Him. The Bible tells us that He is light and in Him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). It tells us that He is good (Psalm 34:8). It tells us that He is love (1 John 4:8).
Knowing all of this about Him, we can accept the aspects of Him that are mystery to us, because we know that we can trust Him fully.
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