Who is God?
What are the essential truths to know about an infinite God? What are is irreducible minimum about God? To know and worship God truly, we must acknowledge at least three truths about Him.
First, He is a triune God. He is one in
essence and three in person and the three persons (they are not manifestations
or modes) are distinct in relationships and equal in authority (1 Pt.
1:2). “There is only one and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead
there are three co-eternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but
distinct in subsistence” (B. B. Warfield).
So, as the Father is not the Son and the Son is
not the Holy Spirit, and yet the Father is in the Son and the Spirit is in the
Father — all the members of the Trinity are in each other without being equal
to the other members — and combined, the three distinct persons of the Trinity
make up one God. Further, the three members of this Tri-unity have
distinct functions and roles, yet all serve to glorify the others and none is
any less God than the others.
We tend not to think too much of the Trinity, yet
the Trinity is essential because it establishes the uniqueness and
transcendence of God, establishes the deity of all the members of the Trinity
(which is important because the deity of the Son and Spirit are sometimes
denied), and because it is intrinsically connected to the gospel and our
spiritual life. Fred Sanders has noted, “Christian salvation comes from the Trinity,
happens through the Trinity, and brings us home to the Trinity.…The more we
explore and understand the depths of God’s commitment to salvation, the more we
have to come to grips with the triunity of the one God. The deeper we dig
into the gospel, the deeper we go into the mystery of the Trinity.” [The
Deep Things of God]
Secondly, we can only comprehend the character of
God as we contemplate His attributes as they are revealed in Scripture.
These attributes can be divided into two broad categories — communicable and
incommunicable attributes — demonstrating both His transcendence and
approachability. Here is a compilation of some of the most basic of His
attributes:
Finally, because God is God, all life terminates
on Him. Life is not about us; we’re not ultimate. He is. We
live for Him, to please Him, and to glorify (reveal) Him (2 Cor. 5:9; 1 Cor.
8:6; 10:31). All life is therefore theocentric (God-centered) and not
anthropocentric (man-centered).
In summary,
“What comes into our minds when we think about
God is the most important thing about us.…For this reason the gravest question
before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any
man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart
conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move
toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual
Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church.
Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as
her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for
her silence is often more eloquent than her speech.” [Tozer, The Knowledge
of the Holy]
