Category: study

There is a mistake of saying that God is mainly Love or mainly Holy. This mistake tames God in our merely human eyes because we can easily understand people like that—who are mainly loving. What God shows in Scripture is that God, in all three persons, is the glorious definition and perfection of all his attributes.

• The Father loved the world and gave his Son to satisfy God’s holy punishment of sin (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2; Rom 8:3)
• The Son only does the things He sees the Father doing so he loved us and gave Himself for us as the one who rightly can condemn sin (John 5:19-20; Eph 5:2; John 5:22; Rom 8:34)
• The Holy Spirit, as knowing the mind of God by being God, and taking the place of the Son on Earth, creates fruit in the lives of God’s people by creating love, holiness, purity, and godliness (John 14:16; 1 Cor 2:11; Gal. 5:22; 1 Peter 1:16; 1Thes 4:7)

This tells us that God, in all three persons, is: love, holy, truth, light, life, (and so on) all at the same time! There is no person in the Trinity that is love while another is holy, and another is judge. There is no attribute that is more indicative of who God is in His essence, than any other. God is love through His holiness and He is holy through his love and both through His truth and all through His life and life through all. That is a confusing sentence but also starts to reflect the bigness of God.

God is not loving or holy or truthful because there is some concept of love, or holiness, or truthfulness out there in space. God is the definition and example of all His attributes. We can only love or tell the truth or do right or be kind because God, in His essence, known in all three persons, is the meaning of those things! Christian, shudder! Stand back in awe! Shut your mouths in utter wonder! This is the basis of the constant Biblical refrain: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!

From the earliest chapters in Scripture, God refers to Himself in a unique way.

• God’s single name is written in the plural form. (Gen 1:1)
• God refers to Himself saying, “Let US make man in our own image” (Gen 1:26) then the text proceeds to say that God made man in His own (singular) image (Gen 1:27).
• God commissions Isaiah saying, “Whom will I send? who will go for US?”! (Isaiah 6:8)
• The Lord’s anointed says He is in the beginning with God, and that He and God’s Spirit are sent by the Lord God (Isaiah 48:16)

God is, in the cases listed above acting of His own power and authority and referring to Himself at the same time as ONE and MORE-THAN-ONE. Unlike Allah, the one God of the Muslims, the Living God knows what it is to be in a relationship! Yes, he’s the only God, there is none beside him, but He is not a lonely god.

Of course, this wasn’t very clear in the Old Testament. God’s self-revelation wasn’t made crystal clear until later. For now, we can come to terms with this truth.  In our loneliest and darkest moments, we can take comfort in the fact that God, making us part of His family, does not start a relationship but rahter brings us into a truly unique and eternal relationship.