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September 28, 2014 |
| The Nature of God | ||
What is God like? What is his true nature? How can we know?
When people get to know each other, they learn about their natures in two ways, by what a person says, and by what a person does. What a person says about himself tells us at least how they want you to think of them. The things they say to others also show their nature. The things they do also speak about their nature.
All of these should be in agreement. What a person says about himself, what he says to others, and what he does should all show the same nature. If not, that person is not being truthful. Either that person has deceived himself or is trying to deceive others.
In the same way we learn the nature of God. We have what he says about himself and many stories of what he has said and done in the Bible. We also have what he has done for us and others as a testimony about his nature.
If all we knew about the nature of God was what he said about himself, we would have to ask, "but what if he is lying?". The Bible and our lives, however, testify that God is a truthful god because he has shown over and over that he is what he says he is.
In this lesson we will look at the nature of God.
God speaks about his own nature when he is re-introducing himself to his people Israel. When God first spoke with Moses and commissioned him to lead God's people out of Egypt, Moses asked him the first question anyone asks, "What is your name?". God tells Moses his name, which we believe is pronounced Yahweh.
Later on God decided to reveal more of his nature to Moses. As Moses met with God on Mount Sinai with the second set of stone tablets, God reveled more of his nature which we see in Exodus 34:5-7.
5 Then Yahweh came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, Yahweh. 6 Then Yahweh passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in kindness and truth; 7 who maintains kindness for thousands, who bears [forgives] depravity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the depravity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."
Let's look at what God said there. But first you need to know that you will not find these verses exactly this way in any translation. This is a composite of NIV, NASB, and a Hebrew - English Interlinear translation.
In verse 5 we see God proclaiming his name. The word 'name', however, is used in many ways on Hebrew just as we do in English. Here the word 'name' means character, or nature. So God is about to proclaim his nature to Moses.
In verses 6 and 7 God says this is his name (character / nature):
Most of these are obvious but the 5th item is less so. The Hebrew word should be translated as 'bears' but it is often translated as 'forgives'. The word 'bear' in this context means "to hold or remain firm under (a load):" The word 'forgives' makes it sound like those who commit depravity, transgression and sin will be forgiven but the next item in the list says they will be punished.
This would be like your bank saying "we see that you can't make your car payments so we've decided to forgive the loan … but we are going to punish you." You might wonder what kind of forgiveness is that.
The truth is that, because God is slow to anger, God bears the depravity, transgression and sin for a time in the hope that there will be repentance but ultimately the unrepentant guilty will be punished.
The 7th item is also interesting. In the 5th item God says he bears "depravity, transgression and sin" but in this item he says only depravity is visited on the sons. In the book of Ezekiel God makes it clear that the sins of the father are NOT visited on the sons; the sons do not share in the guilt of their fathers.
The depraved things the father has done, however, are visited on the sons. We know this to be true from our experience. Bad fathers (and mothers) tend to raise up bad sons (and daughters). The sons and daughters learn from the examples set by their fathers and mothers.
There is a general consensus within the Christian community that all of the characteristics of God's nature are expressions of two broader characteristics. For example, in these verses God says that the guilty will not go unpunished which is an example of justice. God also says that he bears depravity, transgression, and sin which is an example of mercy. These characteristics of justice and mercy can then be said to come under the broader characteristic of love.
A theology book1 "says that God is in essence Holy Love. It says that there are many things true about God - that he is good and kind and just and pure and faithful - but that all of these qualities are a part of either his holiness or his love. Today the most we know about God is that he is Holy Love, yet that was exactly what God told Moses 3500 years ago."2
God's holiness is his nature of perfect goodness. Because he is perfect goodness he cannot accept badness. Holiness is part of his immutable (unchangeable) nature. It is similar to people who like doughnuts. It is part of their nature to like doughnuts. They can dislike what doughnuts do to them. They can stop eating doughnuts. Yet, it is still part of their nature to like doughnuts.
If God is perfect goodness then why does he allow badness at all? God desires that his creations would choose him. For them to choose him they must have freedom of choice which includes the freedom to choose badness.
The Bible speaks of God as both loving and wrathful. It may seem odd that God can be both, if he is perfect goodness. The world thinks that a perfectly good God could never be wrathful, because wrathful is bad. But there is a time for wrath and there is righteous anger. God's wrathful side is the expression of his perfect goodness, which is slow to anger, acting against the badness that is so contrary to his nature.
God's love is his nature of perfect love. Because he is perfect love he cannot accept hate. Love is part of his immutable nature.
But this love is not a love of everything. Obviously God does not love badness. To love badness would cause God to be in conflict with himself. The world thinks pure love should love everything.
Neither can God's love ignore badness. Badness means that someone has been injured in some way. Love cannot ignore that. To do so would be to allow badness to succeed, to allow those who do badness to succeed over those who do not. Therefore God's love calls for justice, for the wrongs to be righted.
But God's justice is not a harsh brutal justice. Instead this is a justice of love, justice mixed with mercy. For it is God's desire that those who do badness should have an opportunity to repent. Through this the true love of God is shown. But the unrepentant guilty will be punished.
God calls on us to be like him when we are injured, to respond with love. In fact, God calls on us to leave the punishment to him (Romans 12:19)
When one person wrongs another person, that puts a barrier between them. The only way to clear that barrier is repentance, restitution and forgiveness. It is the same way when we disobey God but the problem is that we have nothing that we can give God as restitution. Everything we have came from him. God's love is such that he provided a way that the restitution could be paid for us, through the death of his son.
Although many places in scripture speak of various parts of God's body (the Hand of God, God's wings, etc.) or speak of God in anthropomorphic terms (God walking in the garden of Eden, etc.), God has no body. Any reference to God's body is simply a figure of speech, a means of making God's actions more comprehensible to beings living in a material world.
Because God has no physical form, no body, he cannot be male or female as we understand those terms. The Bible refers to God using masculine terms for the benefit of beings living in a material world. For example Jesus is referred to as the groom and we, his people, as his bride.
God is not a biological father to us. He is involved in our biological birth however. Without God there would be no spirit in us and we would be no different from the animals.
He is our father in many other ways though. The Bible uses the idea of father to teach important concepts like the nature of our relationship to God. Even Jesus referred to him as father.
God is always near for us to call upon and He sees all that we do, wherever we are. Closely tied in with this is the idea that God is universal: He is not just the God of the Jews and Christians, but the God of all nations.
God is in control of everything. It is said that the only thing that is beyond His control is the fear of Him; that is, He has given us free will, and He does not compel us to do His will.
God knows all things, past, present, and future. He knows our thoughts.
God transcends time. He has no beginning and no end. When Moses asked for God's name, He replied with a phrase that is generally translated as, "I am that I am", "I am what I will be" or "I will be what I will be". The ambiguity of the phrase is often interpreted as a reference to God's eternal nature.
We called to be holy as God is holy and to love as God is love. The better we know our God the better we can understand what it means to be holy and to be love.
1 An Outline of Christian Theology by William N. Clarke
2 Getting to Know God and other sermons by John A. Redhead
3 http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/god.htm