I remember clearly in the summer of 1985 when I first met Kim. She took my breath away. I was entranced. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Over the next few weeks I tried to talk to her, but I’m sure I was just stammering, not really knowing what to say. So I did what guys have done since the dawn of time. I asked a friend to ask Kim, “If Richard were to ask you out, would you go out with him?” Come on, guys, you know you’ve done that before, too. Kim’s response was classic: “Tell Richard that if he wants to know whether I would go out with him, then he needs to be a man and ask me himself.” So began our journey together over 35 years ago.
One thing I remember from those days in the summer of ’85 is that I wanted to know everything about Kim. I wanted to know her history, who she really was inside, her dreams, her faith journey, her likes and dislikes, her favorite food, and, vitally important, could she cook? I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted to know who she was.
As Christians, we believe in God, worship God, pray to God, trust God, doubt God, complain to God — everything in our belief system revolves around God.
But what do we really know about God? I’m sure each of us could rattle off some characteristics of God that come to mind, but I want to spend time here looking at God to see who he really is. We’ve placed our lives and our eternities completely in the hands of someone we call God, but who is he?
Before we start, we need to know that God is not discovered by us. He’s not like the “gold in them thar hills” waiting to be discovered by someone looking for fortune. We know about God because he has chosen to reveal himself to us. He’s done this through nature, through miracles, through direct communication, through the Bible, and through Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2), but all of that is God choosing to reveal himself to us. We could never know God without his action. Knowing God always starts with God, not with us.
It’s also true that God will never be completely understood by humans. That’s impossible. We will never be able to fully comprehend God. He is so far above us, so completely other than us, and we are limited in our capability of knowing and understanding God.
Sometimes we create our own ideas about what God is like. In my experience, people tend to think of God in two very incorrect ways. Some think of God as a heavenly policeman ready to pounce on us for our every false move. You know, like the usher who walks down the aisle of a theater with a flashlight to make sure you didn’t sneak in a Coke.
When it comes down to it, what God really cares about is whether we are following the rules. For some people, their entire religious experience is trying to satisfy a God who cares more about rules than he does about people. They live in fear that they’ll break God’s rules, and then they tend to point fingers at everyone else who fails to follow the rules, and as a result they become judgmental and self-righteous.
Others see God as an indulgent old man who wants to give us everything we want. Kind of like a year-round Santa Claus, always happy and always there for us when we need something. Oh, he might have a naughty list, but you have to be really, really bad to be on that list.
With this kind of God, we don’t have to spend our lives looking over our shoulders to see if he’s coming after us. He’s a loving God, so he doesn’t care about what I’m doing with my life, as long as I’m not hurting anyone else. Yet he’s also powerful, so when we’re in trouble, God is always there to bail us out. He’s like Mermaid Man — really old and out of touch, but still there whenever the conch shell blows. (Okay, that’s a shout out to my fellow SpongeBob fans).
These are both very flawed images of who God is. He is neither a heavenly policeman nor an indulgent old grandpa. If we’re going to know God, we must look at what he has revealed about himself and take our understanding of God from that. If we’re to know who God is, we need to look at what he’s told us.
Let’s start by looking at some of God’s “natural” characteristics. By that I mean God’s traits that are neither moral nor immoral, just simply facts about him. I’ll elaborate more on some than on others, and when I think I’ve listed enough for one post, I’ll stop and continue in the next post.
As you read each characteristic, pause and ponder what it means to you in your daily life. Ask yourself if you truly believe that particular truth about God. If not, why not? And if so, what difference does it, or should it, make?
First up, God is spirit.
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)
That means that he doesn’t have a physical body, and he is not composed of matter of any kind. After all, he created all matter, so he can’t be made up of matter. He has no physical nature.
Obviously the Bible uses what we call “anthropomorphisms,” which is the act of giving characteristics of humans to a non-human entity. This is done to help us understand how God acts. When the Bible talks about God’s hands, eyes, and mouth, for example, the writers are using human terms to help us understand non-human truths.
But God is not human. He is spirit, and because he’s spirit, he is not confined by any of the limitations of a physical existence. We’ll talk more about this, but God is not limited by space or time.
God is also alive. That seems obvious, but focus for a moment on a brief but profound statement in Exodus:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14)
“I am.” God simply is. He exists, and he is alive, and he didn’t obtain that life from any other source. God is alive, and there never was a time when he wasn’t alive. In the beginning, God already was. He is and he will always be.
Finally, God is also personal. He’s not some kind of cosmic force. He is an individual being who can feel and choose and love and grieve. When we sin, our sin isn’t against an idea, it’s against a person. When we are forgiven, we aren’t forgiven by some abstract consciousness, but by a person. As Albert Mohler says in The Apostle’s Creed, “this is not some distant, unknowable deity but a God with whom we have a personal relationship.”
As a person, God is our Heavenly Father (Matthew 6:9) and we can have a personal relationship with him. In one sense, all people are made in God’s image and therefore are his “children.” Every human being in existence is God’s creation, made in his image, and deeply loved by God, but every person is not actually a child of God in a personal way.
We’re only considered to be his children when we are united to Jesus Christ (Galatians 4:4-5; Ephesians 1:4-5). When we accept Christ’s forgiveness, we are “adopted” into God’s family (Romans 8:15). Because we’re adopted into God’s family as his children, we gain all of the privileges of being a child of God. We can even call him “Abba,” a very personal word that expresses an intimate, loving relationship with God our very personal Father. Because God is a person, we can have an intimate relationship with him.
God is spirit. God is alive. God is a person. Ponder those three characteristics of God over the next week. Read over the passages in this post. Talk to God about them, and praise him for who he is. If you have accepted Christ, thank God for your adoption into his family, and worship him as your personal Heavenly Father.
Until next time…