To write everything about God would take a very large book with many pages. What the author is trying to do here is not write a book but to write what the Christian needs to know about God and what the Bible says on the subject. This article offers a brief overview of some aspects of God discussed in the Bible that Christians should know.
Christianity is the only religion on earth that God Himself founded. What you need to know is that human beings founded all other religions, and they are false religions.
The first thing the Christian needs to know is that finite beings can’t define God with finite words. We know that God is infinite. However, His finite creatures know that He is knowable, but He is nevertheless incomprehensible. The author of this article has written an article about this entitled “About God – Knowable But Incomprehensible” and published it on this blog; read it.
Through what God has revealed to human beings, they can understand what they need to know about God by studying His Word and His creation to learn who He is and what He does. They therefore worship the only God in spirit and truth (John 4:24).
HEBREW AND GREEK
Here is a brief discussion of the Hebrew and Greek words translated as God.
The word אֱלֹהִים, transliterated elohiym (pron. eh-lo-HEEM), is the Hebrew masculine plural form for God, referring to the supreme being. It is most often used and appears over 2,000 times in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word translated into English as God is occasionally written in Hebrew as יְהוָֹה, transliterated Yhwh, the tetragrammaton without vowels (pron. yah-veh), and is the Jewish national name for God, Jehovah. The word means self-existent or eternal.
In the New Testament, the Greek word θεός, transliterated theos (pron. theh-os’), appears over 1200 times and is translated into English as God. It means a deity or the supreme divinity.
ONLY ONE GOD
That God exists is the great presupposition of Christian theology. They believe this because of their faith. Christians believe in monergism — that there is only one God, the Supreme Being of the universe. This is affirmed and reaffirmed in the Bible, the revealed word of God (Ex. 20:3; Dt. 6:4; Is. 44:6, 23 45:5; Mal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:6). God is eternal (Ps. 90:2), self-existent (Gen. 1:1; John 5:26), and glorified (Ps. 24:8; Phil. 4:19). He is not a created being and is not caused outside of Himself (John 5:26). And He is personal and immanent (Ps. 23:1-6; Col. 1:17). He uses the masculine pronoun in all His writings (Eg, Ps. 149:1, 3, 4, 9).
God has revealed in Holy Scripture what He wants His creatures to know about Him. It is because of His revealed Word that we know that He, for example, is self-existent, eternal, personal (Zeph. 3:17), transcendent and immanent (Jer. 23:23), and that He exists as a Spirit (John 4:24) and a Trinity (Matt. 28:19).
The revealed word of God makes Christians’ belief by faith, anything but blind. Though it doesn’t specifically state that God is eternal and self-existent, the Word clearly indicates that God is such as He told Moses, “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Ex. 3:14).
FEAR OF GOD
The awe and respect for the one God of the universe, the self-existent, eternal, first cause, and autonomous being, lead believers to consider Him perfectly wise and righteous (Prov. 1:7, 8:13, 9:10). Through faith, believers seek a close relationship with Him that results in obedience to His Will. We know that He is the God who is perfectly wise, just, and merciful. Believers fear the condemnation of God and the judgment of hell, but these and other fears of Him lead to a desire to be voluntarily obedient to God’s Will and to seek the comfort of God’s loving and voluntary love (Dt. 6:2; Heb. 12:3-14).
But one can fear the Lord and not believe His entire revealed Word. Those who remained Jews are examples of this. Christians fear God and believe all His revealed Word, including the part about the messiah to come (Gen. 3:15). Abraham, Moses, Job, and David, for example, did. but only a remnant of Jews did (Jer. 31:7; Rom. 9:27).
A true fear of God requires the proper understanding of the complete revealed word of God. Anything less makes a person an unbeliever.
HIS ATTRIBUTES
As finite creatures, human beings still want to know the who, what, where, and when of the infinite God. To do that as best we can, humans look at the characteristics of God.
Although the term ‘attributes’ is used to describe God, it may also be used to describe things added to God’s being. Since we know that nothing can be added to God because He is unchangeable (or immutable), His thoughts and actions should be described using the terms ‘properties,’ ‘virtues,’ ‘perfections,’ or ‘excellencies (1 Pet. 2:9 ESV),’ which do not suggest any change to the essence of God.
However, the author of this article will use attributes, as Christians commonly use them, provided everyone understands that these attributes of God do not in any way change Him.
But how do Christians learn of God’s attributes?
Christians know that God has revealed Himself to human beings through His creation, but this provides only incomplete information about Him. The best and only reliable way to know God is by His self-revelation in Holy Scripture.
The attributes of God are usually divided into two types. The author has decided to use the more commonly used classification of incommunicable and communicable attributes. The author of this article has also written an article on this blog entitled “About God: His Attributes” that you should read.
Incommunicable
It is generally held that the incommunicable attributes of God are unique to him alone and do not belong to any other thing or creature. These characteristics describe the being of God. God’s incommunicable attributes include the following.
- Self-existent (aseity), (Gen. 1:1; John 5:26),
- Autonomous (a law unto Himself), (Gen. 1:1),
- Immutable (unchangeable), (Mal. 3:6),
- Omnipresent (exists everywhere at once), (Ps. 139:7-10),
- Omniscient (knows everything), (Is. 46:9, 10),
- Omnipotent (all-powerful), (Ps. 33:6),
- Infinity (free from all limitations), (Rev. 1:8),
- Eternal (has no beginning and no end), (Ps. 90:2),
- Perfect (in all his thoughts, acts, and sayings), (Dt. 32:4),
- Transcendent (God exists independently from the physical universe), (Jer. 23:23),
- Immanent (God is present and active within His creation), (Jer. 23:23),
- Glorified (Ps. 24:8; Phil. 4:19)
- Wisdom, (the ability to perfectly choose the proper ends and means), (Ps. 104:24; Rom. 11:33),
- Unity (not made up of parts), (Dt. 6:4; Mark 12:29),
- Righteous (morally and ethically correct), (Ps. 11:7, 89:14, 119:137; 2 Cor. 5:21)
- And more.
Communicable
Regarding communicable attributes, they are attributes that God has perfectly but shares with His creatures, and that are perfectly reflected in them, but imperfectly exercised by them. Communicable attributes focus on God’s personality. They are not of a divine nature like God’s and include the following, which you will know when you see it happening.
- Love (Gal. 5:22, 23; 1 John 4:19)
- Mercy (Luke 6:36)
- Truthfulness (John 8:32)
- Joy (Gal. 5:22, 23; Ps. 47:1)
- Peace (Gal. 5:22, 23; Matt. 5:9)
- Patience (Gal. 5:22, 23; Rom. 8:25)
- Kindness (Gal. 5:22, 23; Col. 3:12)
- Goodness (Gal. 5:22, 23)
- Faithfulness (Gal. 5:22, 23)
- Gentleness (Gal. 5:22, 23; Col. 3:12)
- Self-control (Gal. 5:22, 23)
- And more.
THE TRINITY
The Trinity is a central tenet of Christianity. The word “Trinity” is never mentioned in the Bible. However, the triune nature of the Trinity appears several times in Scripture (Gen. 1:26, 3:22, 11:7; Is. 6:8, 48:16; Matt. 3:16, 17, 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14).
God appears several times in the book of Genesis. In Genesis 1:26, 3:22, and 11:7, we find the word translated as “us” indicates that the godhead consists of more than one person. In fact, the Hebrew word for “one” (echad) refers to a unity in the Godhead that is more than one. One of the Hebrew words for God is the noun Elohim. And though it doesn’t explicitly state that the Trinity exists, the word does suggest that the one God is plural.
God has one essence, in which 100% of it is located in each of the three persons of the Trinity. So, each person of the Trinity is God (1 Peter 1:2).
The Trinity is specifically stated in Matthew 28:19, when Jesus gives the apostles The Great Commission, using the terms “the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The apostle Paul writes it again in 2 Corinthians 13:14 when he writes, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” This clearly states that the godhead is three persons united with one essence. Many more scriptural proofs in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible indicate that a triune godhead oversees everything.
God, being the only self-existent being, lived before time was created, and He was tri-personal from eternity (Matt. 28:19). Without this tri-personality, God would not exist as the divine being. It is necessary and not simply His choice. Consequently, God has one essence and three persons. He is tri-personal, but His human creatures are uni-personal. God possesses His tri-personality with perfection. His tri-personality results in the fullness of deity in Him (Col. 2: 9). His human creatures possess their uni-personality with imperfection. However, there are minor similarities to God’s personality in the uni-personality of human beings.
Personality only develops when a person communicates with others of a similar personality. God is above all, and therefore God could not exist unless He had someone to communicate with as an equal. Consequently, the Godhead consists of three persons, not one person. God could not develop His personality by speaking to any of His creatures. On a similar note, human beings cannot develop their personalities by communicating with animals.
These three persons share the essence. They do not have a third of the essence. Each person of the Trinity has all of it, 100% of it. Therefore, for example, if one person of the Trinity wills something, the other persons of the Trinity will it also. That is because each of them shares the essence of the godhead in its entirety.
In short, the Doctrine of the Trinity is the following. There is in the divine being one indivisible essence. The one divine being consists of three persons, and the entire essence of God is expressed completely in each of the three persons.
There is no subordination in the Trinity ordinarily. Each person of the Trinity is God, and each has the complete essence of God. But this does not prevent them from taking on “roles,” such as in the Plan of Salvation. After all, God can do anything He wants to do.
NAMES OF GOD
The names of God are the result of the self-revelation of God to humanity. Even though there are several names for God in the Bible, it speaks of God’s name in the singular in several verses (Ex. 20:7; Ps. 8:1, 48: 10; Prov. 18:10).
God has revealed Himself to human beings in the names that He gives to Himself. He lowered Himself to the level of man by naming Himself with anthropomorphic names, names humans could understand. Though God is incomprehensible to humankind, these anthropomorphic names are knowable by humanity.
Some of the names for God in the Bible include Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, El-Shaddai, Jehovah, Kurios, and Theos. The Israelites had a superstition based on their reading of Leviticus 24:16, and would not use the name Yahweh in their writings. Instead, they substituted one of the other names for God in the writings.
NAME
In Hebrew thought, a person’s name was not just a label. It encompassed everything about a person: their authority, reputation, identity, and renown. When the Bible mentions God, Christ, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, for example, it is talking about everything that comes with the name: the actions, the personality, and the identity of the person.
When we see the phrase “in” or “in the name of,” We know that this includes everything about that person. This applies to both the Old and the New Testaments.
GOD’S REVEALED WORD
God revealed Himself to humanity through His natural creation. However, due to Fall, humanity’s view of the natural world became obscured and remains unclear to humankind. Therefore, He published the truth that He wanted human beings to know through His word. Because of the Plan of Salvation, and through the Holy Spirit, Christians have an unobscured view of God’s revealed Word.
Both the natural world and the revealed word of God are supernatural, in that they come from God supernaturally.
In God’s revealed Word, its original manuscript is both infallible and inerrant. The Word is God’s way of transmitting knowledge to believers. It is actually “breathed out” by God. (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). The Greek word for being breathed out by God is theopneustos. These inspired writers, who received the Word from God, had the purpose of infallibly teaching it. He provided human beings with everything they needed to know about His creation and their salvation through His Word.
The Canon of Scripture that we have today contains 66 books written by individuals chosen by God and inspired to write what He told them to write. It contains two testaments, the Old Testament and the New. This Canon of Scripture, which contains the 66 books, is called the Bible. Christians commonly refer to this revealed word of God as Scripture, Sacred Scripture, Holy Scripture, and the Bible.
According to the Holy See website, the Roman Catholic Church includes the books of the Apocrypha in its Old Testament. This should not be the case because they weren’t originally written in Hebrew, were not part of the Jewish Old Testament, and Jesus himself never quoted them, among other reasons. The Apocrypha does not qualify as Holy Scripture. It is therefore not a part of the canon of Scripture held by most Protestant and all Reformed churches.
The Bible should be read repeatedly by all Christians. They should look up the definition of a word if they do not recognize it. It is also important that if something appears to be a contradiction in Scripture, then you are interpreting or reading it wrongly. Ambiguous passages must always be interpreted in accordance with clearer scripture. There are no contradictions in the Bible.
Another point is this. Sometimes a Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek passage is interpreted into English with the same word, but that word has several meanings in the Bible. One must know the proper meanings of that word to interpret the passage correctly.
God wants all Christians to read his revealed Word because that is the source of all truth and wisdom given to us by God Himself.
COMMUNICATION
Christians believe that God is spirit (John 4:24). They also believe that He is the only God (Ex. 20:3; Dt. 6:4; Ps. 86:10; 9014 Is. 45:5, 46:9 Ex. 23; 1 Cor. 8:4-6) and only He is to be worshiped (1 Chron. 16:29; Ps. 95:6; Matt. 4:10), and that He must be worshiped in spirit and truth (John 4:24). It is through the Holy Spirit and by our faith in Jesus Christ that we communicate with God (Phil. 3:3).
We communicate with God through prayer, and there are many examples in the Bible. Prayer is talking with God. The Bible teaches this (Phil. 4:6). Jesus teaches His apostles and all Christians how to pray (Matt. 5-15). Believers communicate with words, either orally, in writing, or by thought. Sound alone is not communication with God. So, music, clapping, or any sound that is not a word is not a way for humans to communicate with God. Although He knows what we are thinking and what we want to say to Him, it is a Christian’s responsibility to volitionally and sincerely communicate our awe of God, confessions, repentance, thanksgiving, supplications, etc., not His.
PLAN OF SALVATION
The Trinity existed from eternity, with each person having all of the divine essence (1 Peter 1:2). Knowing that the human beings they would subsequently create could not follow God’s commands perfectly, they each voluntarily agreed to assume roles in the Plan of Salvation. This plan would be given to certain chosen ones, the elect, not to all humans that God (or the three persons of the Trinity) would create (Gen. 1:26, 27).
However, though we do not understand it, they remain the godhead together. The Plan of Salvation did not change the godhead in any way. Each person of the Trinity still knew everything, had the same Will, and all three were the persons of the one almighty God. However, for purposes of the Plan of Salvation, there was subordination among the three persons, and each would be responsible for different aspects of the Plan.
The Trinity in eternity had the same essence and therefore the same Will, thoughts, and attributes, etc. But when they voluntarily took on the roles in the Plan of Salvation, each had their own Will, thoughts, attributes, etc., for which they were responsible in the Plan of Salvation. However, during the Plan of Salvation, the Trinity, which was God, remained the same despite their roles in the Plan.
How could the three persons that constitute God and are each fully divine with the same essence be God on the one hand, but act differently under the Plan of Salvation, with one person mainly acting as a human? This is a mystery to humanity. But it is nevertheless God’s plan. Because the Trinity had to play these roles to accomplish the Plan of Salvation, it was necessary!
One person took on the role of the Father, to whom the Son prayed, chose the individuals who would make up the human chosen ones or the elect, and made them the responsibility of His Son as their surety or guarantor.
The second person of the Trinity would have the role of the begotten Son of the Father. As John Calvin wrote in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, chapter 14, paragraph one, “He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.” He would be given the elect human beings as their surety or guarantor of salvation. He would accomplish this by forming a human nature that was attached to and inseparable from His divine nature. In this human nature, He would be conceived by the Holy Spirit as a human being to fill the human nature and would live a life of perfection as a human. His human name would be Jesus, and his hometown was Nazareth.
He had a ministry that lasted about three years, during which He veiled His divinity for most of that time. He would end his life by paying the ransom price to God for the sins of the elect, by dying on the cross. Jesus would be resurrected by the Holy Spirit after His death and reign over the kingdom of God in heaven, body and spirit, until the Last Day.
He was the second person of the Godhead in His divine nature, and He was fully God. In his human nature, He was the Son of man, and he was fully human. The human nature of Jesus was inseparable from the divine nature of the second person of the Trinity.
He needed to assume human nature and live as a human to earn His righteousness and to be the proper sacrifice to pay the price to God for our salvation. Jesus, the man, was the Messiah and the surety or guarantor for all Christians’ salvation. As a result, we refer to that person as Jesus. We know that the Son of God was a part of the Trinity. But in His human form, He became the Prophet, Priest, and King of the Kingdom of God.
A third person would be the Spirit for the Father and Son and would effectuate all things in the Will of the Father and Son. For example, He would conceive Jesus in the womb of Mary, Jesus’s surrogate mother on earth. His father would be Joseph, her husband, and Jesus’s earthly father. He would do everything the divine Father and Son willed.
Again, the ability of the Trinity to take on these roles is, like their original existence, a mystery to human beings and is not revealed in the word of God. But the concept of the Trinity is revealed numerous times in the Bible, including its roles in the Plan of Salvation.
