4 posts tagged “attributes of god”

 

When Paul brought his letter to the Romans to a close he emphasized the wisdom of God. Verse 27 says, “To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.” But what is wisdom? Theologian J.I. Packer defines wisdom as “the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal together with the surest means of achieving it." God’s infinite wisdom is His ability to see what is best for His creation and to see how to make it come to pass. It spans the ages and is outside of time. It is through God’s wisdom that creation, from the beginning, pointed towards the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and it is through God’s wisdom that creation can look back to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ to receive redemption. Romans 11:32-34 says, “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”

Wisdom is an attribute that God freely gives man. When God offered Solomon anything in the world, Solomon wisely chose wisdom because he wanted to be able to govern God’s people and discern right from wrong (1 Kings 3:9). Solomon wrote Proverbs in order for others to also gain wisdom and discipline—but was careful to acknowledge that wisdom begins with fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1) and that God is the One who gives wisdom (Proverbs 2:6). The believer who follows the commandments of the Lord and walks in wisdom is one who will be saved “from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse” and “from the adulteress.” The believer who walks in wisdom will be protected by discretion and understanding (Proverbs 2). He will be blessed (Proverbs 3). The believer is commanded to be wise, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is” (Ephesians 5:15-17). Once a believer understands what wisdom is and begins to walk in wisdom, then he will begin to understand what needs to change and how to change in order to become like Christ.

 

When we speak of the holiness of God, we are speaking of an absolute fundamental and moral purity. He is completely pure in who He is and what He does. The prophet Isaiah repeatedly refers to God as the “Holy One of Israel” (1:4, 5:19, 5:24, 10:20, 12:6). God calls himself holy throughout the Old Testament. In Isaiah 6:3, the prophet drives the point home when he writes the cry of the seraphims: “Holy holy holy is the Lord of hosts…” They do not merely repeat the attribute, but they say it three times! This is the only aspect of God repeated in Scripture three times because all other attributes of God flow from His holiness. His power is a holy power, not a tyranny. His love is holy love, not some soft emotion.  His wisdom is holy wisdom, not a spiteful shrewdness.  And His holiness is not simply the best we know raised a little higher. Everything about God is above and beyond our comprehension. That's why God is so holy.  We can only know about God what He has told us—and He has been gracious enough to give us the Holy Scriptures.

When we begin to comprehend the holiness of God, it is awe-inspiring. God is holy, and no one in His creation is. This holy, pure, set apart God has decided to encounter our stained, sinful, unholy humanity. Everyone—every counselor and counselee—is marked by sin. We are the exact opposite of a holy God, yet He chooses to extend His hand and be actively involved in our lives. And when we allow God to be actively involved, we are set apart and begin the process of sanctification, or the process of being made holy, in the image of God.

One of the most awe-inspiring parts of the Gospel message is the love of God. This is a love that is so great that it loves even when that love is not returned. To understand this kind of love is to understand the character of God. A God who gives us free will, who lets us choose whether or not to love Him, who has given us the reigns of our lives hoping that we’ll give them back.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

In Exodus 20, God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments. The first two commandments are given in the first person: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below…for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…” It is believed this is because God was speaking directly to the Israelites, but they became fearful and overwhelmed:

“When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.’” (Ex. 20:18-19).

The last eight commandments were given to the Israelites by Moses because the power of God was too great for the Israelites to bear. Just listening to His voice was too overwhelming. So how does a God express love for His creation when just showing up is overwhelming? If He came the way He is He’d scare everybody away. The last thing people would perceive is love.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God met people on their level, in their world, on their soil. He came to earth in the form of a man, Jesus the Christ, in order to show His creation ultimate love. (Adapted from Rob Bell’s Sex God).

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Love. This is the essence of God. The essence of the Gospel. No one can be saved without acknowledging this love: “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:4-5

Once someone has accepted this great love, then a process has begun to bring the believer into conformity with Christ. Believers are commanded to love one another, and that by following this command, God’s love will be made complete:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 1 John 4:7-12

Understanding the full meaning of biblical love will change the believer’s heart and the believer’s relationships with both God and man.

One cannot accept God’s free gift of grace if he first doesn’t understand what grace is. Exodus 35:6-7 proclaims the graciousness of God: “And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

What is grace? The definition that we’re most familiar with is simply “undeserved favor.” It’s getting something you don’t deserve. So how do you come up with this definition biblically? It must be noted that in order to get an accurate view of what the Bible says, you must view the Bible as a whole. It must be “precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, and there a little” (Isaiah 28).

Ephesians 2:89 says that we are saved by grace. We know that we all deserve death because no one is righteous (Romans 3:23), but that God gave us a “pardon” by sending his Son to take the punishment for us (John 3:16). It is through that pardon that we are saved (if we accept it). That’s a clear example of God giving us something that we don’t deserve (salvation/eternal life) and how the Bible says that is grace.

Paul’s message is consistently about grace. He uses the term (the Greek word charis or charisma) more than 100 times in the New Testament. From the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (NIDNTT):

“For Paul, grace is the essence of God’s decisive saving act in Jesus Christ, which took place in his sacrificial death, and also of all its consequences in the present and the future (Rom 3:24-26).
…
Paul unfolds the reality and power of charis in a stubborn conflict with rabbinical ideas of justification by works and synergism. This leads him to set up and then contrast two antithetical, mutually exclusive series of ideas: grace, gift, the righteousness of God, superabundance, faith, gospel, and calling on the one side; and law, reward, sin, works, accomplishment owed, one’s own righteousness, honor, worldly wisdom, and futility on the other side. The person and work of God’s Son has made it possible for justice in the Judge’s pardon not to conflict with grace. In Christ, therefore, God’s grace is given as a precious gift. Apart from him there can be no talk of grace. But this also means that grace can never become a quality that someone possesses in one’s own right.”

Paul constantly contrasts grace with the law. In Romans 4 (specifically vv. 4-16), the ideas of grace and debt (a reward for work accomplished) are mutually exclusive. In the previous chapter it is also clear that righteousness comes from faith by grace and not through the law (emphasis mine):

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.”

Romans 11 tells us that being chosen by grace and a life based on works have nothing in common. Grace would not be pure grace if they did; it would be compromised by the principles of accomplishment and achievement—“So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace” (vs. 5-6).

In Galatians 2:21, Paul offers the high point of his theology of grace: “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

In Galatians 5, Paul warns the church that those who try to find their justification through the law or through their works that they are alienated from Christ:

“You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

Grace is a free gift from God. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin are death but the gift of God is eternal life! Salvation is a work of God for man, rather than a work of man for God. No aspect of salvation, according to the Bible, is made to depend, even in the slightest degree, on human merit or works.

It is only by understanding this concept that one becomes a child of God and can begin to conform to the image of the Son of God.