Who is God

So, who is God? He is the Universe's Creator, Sustainer, Governor, and Judge. And in his justice and mercy, he devised a way for sinners like us to be forgiven and adopted into his eternal family as God's children and as a kind of bride for his Son, Jesus Christ, so that by sharing the joy God has in himself, our joy in him would reveal the fullness of his own glory.

 

The first thing I believe I perceive in God's disclosures of who he is is this. To begin, Jesus declares that God is a spirit. The Bible says in John 4:24, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." In other words, he's not physically active. He isn't material. He lacks a physical body. He is unnoticed. He is a spirit.

God Is a person

Second, God is an individual. When you consider that absolute reality could have been anything — there was nothing before absolute reality to make it what it is — this is incredible. And to believe it's personal is mind-boggling! He has shown himself as someone who thinks, reasons, plans, loves, rejoices, and feels rage and compassion.

 

• Isaiah 55:8: “My thoughts are not your thoughts.”
• Jeremiah 29:11: “I know the plans I have for you.”
• Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, let us reason together.”
• Hosea 11:8: “My compassion grows warm and tender.”
• Zephaniah 3:17: The Lord “will rejoice over you with gladness.”
• Numbers 11:10: “The anger of the Lord blazed hotly.”

Amazing! God is not a faceless being. He lacks substance. He's not only a force. He is not a material, such as an element or a gas. He's more than just an influence. God is a real person. Personhood is derived from him. This is why humans are so distinct among God's creatures: he created us in his image; we are persons.

God is.

Third, he revealed himself to be absolute, self-existent, and unaffected by any other reality. Exodus 3:14 is, in my opinion, one of the most essential verses in the Bible: "God said to Moses, 'I Am Who I Am.'" And he said, "Say to the Israelites, "I Am has sent me to you."" "I Am Who I Am" is a proclamation of complete freedom from being made, formed, steered, swayed, or determined by anything other than himself. Whatever God is or does, he is the ultimate source and cause of all of it.

Here are some of the consequences of that revelation for who God is, that revelation of his "I Am Who I Am."

1. It implies that he never had a beginning. Nobody created God. God simply is, has always been, and has no origin.

2. God will never come to an end. He is the ultimate being. There is no place to go outside of being if you have been being forever. You can't help but be.

3. There is no reality in front of him. There is no reality outside of him until he wills and creates it.

4. God is completely self-sufficient. Nothing can bring him into being, support him, guide him, or make him what he is.

5. Everything that is not God is completely dependent on God. Everything else is secondary and relies on God. The entire universe – billions upon billions of galaxies — is completely subordinate to God.

He is consistent. Yesterday, today, and forever, he is the same. He can't be bettered. He is not developing into anything. There is no progress or development in God. It is impossible to improve on absolute perfection.

7. He is the unrivalled standard of truth, goodness, and beauty. There is no lawbook to which he can refer to determine what is correct. There is no almanac to establish facts for God, nor is there a guild to define what is good or lovely. He is the standard for what is right, true, and lovely.

8. Everything God does is always good, just, beautiful, and in accordance with truth — that is, himself. It is appropriate. All things considered, it is just, excellent, and beautiful in that sense.

As a result, God is the most significant and valued fact in the cosmos. He is more deserving of our interest, attention, appreciation, and happiness than any other reality, even the entire cosmos.

All of that — all nine of the implications of "I Am Who I Am" — is conveyed in God's word to Moses, "Tell them, 'I Am has sent me to you.'" The same implications can be found throughout the Bible, for example, in the letter to the Romans.

This is one of my favorite passages: Romans 11:33–36.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
     or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
     that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

In other words, because God's knowledge and wisdom are boundless, he cannot be counselled. God cannot be bargained, bartered, or bribed since he owns everything. He will never be in debt to anyone. Everything starts with him. He is the source of all that is. And the objective of everything is to demonstrate his glory, beauty, greatness, and value: "From him and through him and to him are all things." As a result, "to him be glory forever."

God is the Trinity.

And the Bible makes it clear that, from all eternity, God has had a perfect picture of himself, the light of his splendour. It is described in the Bible as "the exact imprint of his nature" (Hebrews 1:3). And because this picture is so complete with everything that God is, the Bible refers to it as the second person in God and uses the terminology of Son of God, not because he's a son in any biological sense — like he had sex with Mary and produced a baby; that's not what the Bible teaches. He's a son, the second person who has always existing in and as God's perfect image.

 This Son is a son to show that they are of the same kind. They're both intimate, and love reigns supreme between them. The Bible speaks of God the Father loving God the Son and God the Son loving God the Father, and the Bible emphasizes the fact that this Spirit between them — this love between the Father and Son — carries, as it were, such a fullness of all that they both are that a third person exists, stands forth, and has always stood forth in God.

So, according to the biblical conception, there is only one God — not three — and this one God mysteriously exists as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is one of the reasons why, as stated in 1 John 4:8, "God is love." Love has been surging from the beginning of time in the communion of the three persons of the one God.

God took on human form.

Now, if that wasn't incredible enough — I know, we're in over our heads; I'm just pointing. If it isn't stunning enough, consider the most amazing aspect of God in his completeness, independence, and fullness. He is not only entirely righteous, just, and holy, but also overflowing with his own beauty, goodness, and joy, so that his creatures can know him, love him, enjoy him, and live with him forever. In other words, God seeks to share with his creatures the love that he has always enjoyed (and enjoyed is the appropriate word) in the company of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

To accomplish this, God the Father sends God the Son into his creation to be born as Jesus Christ, the God-man. This is what the Scriptures mean when they declare, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). "And the Word became flesh [that is, became a human being] and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 3:14). And you can see the shift in categories from Word to Son to emphasize who we're talking about — the everlasting Son, the other, second person in God. 

God saves the undeserving.

Why? What is the significance of God's alleged incarnation? Because all of God's human beings had failed to worship, love, and obey Him as they should have. We have earned our punishment. God would be completely justified in punishing us all in hell for our failure and rebellion. But, in the fullness of his God-like compassion, he prepared long before the world's foundation – he is not only just, but also merciful — to invade into the world to rescue his own creatures, who deserve punishment, from his punishment. He saves us from his own anger via his own pity. 

 

The Son of God becomes human and is punished in our place. Here’s how the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament Scriptures, the Jewish Scriptures, put it:

He was pierced for our transgressions;
     he was crushed for our iniquities. . . .
All we like sheep have gone astray;
     we have turned — every one — to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
     the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5–6)

"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life," says the New Testament (John 3:16). Whoever believes, trusts, receives, and values Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord becomes his substitute, bears God's punishment, supplies God's righteousness, and ensures eternal joy in relationship with God.

Everything God Is For You

So, who exactly is God? He is the universe's Creator, Sustainer, Governor, and Judge. And in his justice and mercy, he devised a way for sinners like us to be forgiven and adopted into his eternal family as God's children and as a kind of bride for his Son, Jesus Christ, so that by sharing God's joy in himself, our joy in him would reveal the fullness of his own glory.

I invite you to embrace Jesus and everything that God is for you in him. God is shown in Jesus.