WHO IS GOD?
Photo from Unsplash.
God is not an old man in the sky. God created time and space and is therefore beyond time and space. This means God is not short, tall, male, female, young, or old. The challenge of talking about God is that God’s nature is so far beyond our own that we can only catch a glimpse of God’s glory; it is impossible to use human minds to understand everything about God or to use human language to capture everything about God.
How do we know about God?
What we do know about God, we primarily know through the Bible. God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Old Testament (Exodus 3:15; Acts 7:32). He also describes himself as “I am.” By these two names, we know that God is both intimately personal and concerned with individual people he loves dearly and he is the most supreme being, even “being” itself.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are no random handful of names. In the Old Testament, God makes covenants, which are oath-bound relationships, with each of them. God proposes this covenant to Abram (who will be renamed Abraham) in Genesis 12:1-3:
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
When God makes covenants with his people, he always gives them a glimpse of the kind of God he is first. In the case of Abram (Abraham), he miraculously gives him and his wife Sarai (Sarah) a child in their old age. Much later on, God frees Israel from slavery in Egypt and helps them across the Red Sea to freedom. Then, he proposes to them that he be their God and they be his people in Exodus 19:
“Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.’”
In each generation, God’s relationship with his people is a story of rescue, love, and commitment.
Then, God becomes incarnate — becomes a human being — revealing himself to us more than ever before. In the Old Testament, God’s people had hoped for, longed for, heard prophesies about, and looked forward to their “Messiah,” translated into Greek as “Christ.” The Son, who was to be named Jesus, was that long-awaited Christ.
God institutes the New Covenant, or New Testament. In Luke 22, we see Jesus instituting this “New Covenant” — or God’s new way of having a relationship of love and commitment with his people — at the Last Supper. He says,
“Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
Just after this, Jesus is crucified for the sins of the world. In the words of 1 Corinthians 15: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures…” Jesus Christ’s dying and rising from the dead in order to save humanity ushered in a new epoch, or way of God being in loving communion with his people - a way which had been longed for and prophesied until that point.
What is the Trinity?
One of the most important aspects of the Christian understanding of God is that God is triune. The fancy theological way to talk about the Trinity is to say that God is one God and three persons (tri meaning three). Christians do not worship three gods, but the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each distinct “persons” (not individual, separate people as we know people) who are not each other, but are all the same God. This is extremely mysterious to the human intellect, and it is okay to be perplexed. If you’ve ever wondered “Is Jesus God?” or “How did God create the world?” or “Does God sustain the world or is he more hands-off?” or “Does God listen to my prayers?” you have already been asking questions about the Trinity.
An excellent and helpful example of Trinitarian thinking is the Nicene Creed, which is a statement of faith recited each Sunday in multiple denominations of Christian churches around the world. The Nicene Creed expresses the Son’s relationship with the Father with these words to express this reality:
“God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.”
Another tool for understanding the trinitarian dynamics is the shield of the Trinity, which has been around for centuries and is pictured below.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
It is tempting to try to compare the Trinity to physical objects or realities that we can see and understand, like an egg (yolk, white, shell) or water (solid ice, liquid water, gas vapor). However, these illustrations ironically tend to illustrate incorrect or “heretical” ways of thinking about the Trinity more than they help. Water, for example, is a great illustration of what is called “modalism,” which is the misunderstanding that God becomes Father, Son, or Holy Spirit in different contexts, rather than always being all three, unified. As frightening as “heresy” might sound, it is really just a way of helping us stay within the boundary lines of Christian theology. If we can describe what God is not, we have a better idea of what God is.
The point of Trinitarian theology is not that we describe God as three, but that we encounter God as three. We primarily understand the Trinity by means of the Trinity’s interaction with us. In creation, God the Father created by means of the Word (who is the Son), as the Holy Spirit hovered (or brooded, if you like) over the face of the waters as they formed and separated. The trinitarian God brings about our salvation similarly, which is sometimes thought of as re-creation: God the Father brought about salvation by means of Jesus’ becoming human, dying a human death, and rising from the dead as the “firstborn from among the dead” (Colossians 1:8). After Jesus ascended back to God the Father, God sent the Holy Spirit to be with (and indeed in) his people. The church, as God’s people, are now charged with the identity and task of being the body of Christ on the Earth.
It can be helpful to keep God’s Trinitarian life in mind in order to understand how we pray — We pray to God the Father (Matthew 6:9), through Jesus as he unites our humanity with divinity (Hebrews 7:25), and in the power of the Holy Spirit who moves us to pray (Romans 8).
Is God gendered?
God is neither male nor female. Although we are in the habit of using the pronoun “He” when we refer to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, or the Trinitarian God, it is a categorical error to apply gender to the Trinity or any of the three persons of the Trinity. The words Father and Son are used to help us envision the kind of relationship the “persons” have wherein the father begets the Son (John 3:16). We could just as well be talking about God our Mother as indeed some have done throughout Christian history. In Genesis 1:27, we are presented with a poem which emphasizes the climactic moment in the creation narrative:
“So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”
This poetic structure communicates clearly that to be in the image of God is to be male and female. This poem about humanity would be absurd if God were strictly male. There are plenty of metaphors in the Bible that portray God as motherly, and these are good to remember (Genesis 1:1-2, Genesis 2:7, Deut. 32:11-12, Proverbs 1:20, Matthew 11:19, Luke 3:22, John 3:5-6 for a start).
What is God like?
One way Christians like to think about God is by remembering God’s attributes, sometimes called Divine Perfections. Here are some of them:
God is one. Deuteronomy 6:4, a line called the Shema, says “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (See also Mark 12:29 and James 2:19.) This is first and foremost a statement about monotheism — there is one God. Additionally, within Christian doctrine, the three persons of the trinity are one. The human and divine nature of Christ is one. All of God’s attributes are one. They are not aspects or characteristics of him, but God is One, Almighty, Wisdom, Love, and more. (This is sometimes called “divine simplicity,” meaning that God and his attributes are perfect, whole, and unified.) While we may divide these attributes into lists and fragments due to our finitude of understanding — as we are locked in time, space, and language — God is uniquely one. God is the one God of the universe, and he in his being is one. This is a wonder and a mystery for us to behold.
God is omnipresent (all-present). God is not a thing among other things. He is not an object somewhere in the universe, for he is the Creator of all things. He is invisible; this is even sometimes called “divine hiddenness.” It is because of this that God can be our refuge and hiding place. Although the Son took the form of a human and now — even today! — is forever a resurrected human being, the One Trinitarian God is not confined to one specific place. As the Psalmist says, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” (Psalm 139:8). God is present everywhere in his created order. God is with me and with you, always and everywhere.
God is omnipotent (all-powerful). The Almighty God is sovereign over all of creation. It is not that God has power or exerts force; he is power. Yet, unlike most earthly power, he cannot become corrupt. It is by this power that, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). It is by this power that he created and sustains our universe out of a superabundance of love. And it is in this power that he chose to take the form of an infant, giving up kingly glory in an act of humility and love, in service of humanity’s good (Philippians 2:6-11). This is the kind of power that God is — God is, at once, Power, Goodness, Humility, and Love.
God is omniscient (all-knowing). This means more than that God knows every fact there is to be known. God is Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding, and Truth. God, having created the universe himself, knows it from the inside. God, having created every person himself, knows each person in the deepest way. God, being perfect in goodness, perfect in power, and perfect in wisdom, is Righteousness, Justice, and Truth itself. He is wholly transcendent and wholly perfect. God being as Truth and Righteousness is often illustrated as Radiance and Light. In the words of 1 John 1:5, “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” In the words of Psalm 119:105: “Your word is a lamp to my feet / and a light to my path.”
God is love. This is said specifically in 1 John 4:8, but can be seen throughout the entire Bible. Inside God’s own Trinitarian life, he is love, and in his relating to all of creation, including humanity, God displays intense, unchanging love:
“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:8-12)
God relational, and he creates, sustains, and saves us because of his unchanging love for us. God did not create humanity and the universe out of a need or lack within himself. There is no such thing. He is Perfect and whole. Rather, out of a superabundance of love, God willed that we might exist and experience a glorious, harmonious reality motivated by and marked by love.
We can never fully describe God, and knowing God relationally is much more feasible than knowing him intellectually. At the same time, we are curious about what place God holds in the universe, what he is like, and what he is not like. Even though some of this is beyond our comprehension, God has graciously revealed so much about himself to us.
To know God is to know Light, Life, and Love itself in all its fullness and glory. It is to be adopted into God’s family and to know the love and care that God has for you and the whole family of God’s people. It is to know the Creator of the universe and to be able to be wrapped up into the life of the Trinity through prayer.
