WHAT IS GOD LIKE ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE?

 The Basics

WHAT IS GOD LIKE ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE?

According to the Bible, God is the creator and ruler of the universe, who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. He is the source of all morality and goodness and is described as being holy, just, and righteous. The Bible presents God as a personal being who is involved in the world and in the lives of individuals and is described as loving, merciful, compassionate, and forgiving.

For example, in the Old Testament, God is described as "merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:6).

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is revealed as the son of God, and God's love and grace is a central theme. For example, in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

God is also described as holy, just, and righteous, and as a God who keeps his promises and is faithful to his people. For example, in Psalms 145:17, "The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works."

It's important to note that the Bible is straightforward when comes to this subject matter, even though different passages and books may present different aspects of God's nature and characteristics. Different Christian denominations may also interpret passages of the Bible differently and have different beliefs about God's nature. The balance of the scripture with regard to this topic is our focal point.

In the time past "Every civilization throughout the history of the world has had some sense of what God is like," should be stressed. Some people believe that Deity controls the weather and have created depictions of a storm god hurling lightning bolts about (Baal worship in Canaan). Some people believed that God was extremely strong, so they worshiped the most powerful thing they could see, the sun (Ra worship in Egypt). Others have adored everything because they believe God is everywhere (pantheism in Stoic philosophy). Some have concluded that God is unknowable and have converted to agnosticism, while others have worshiped "An Unknown God" merely to be safe (Acts 17:23).

The drawback with each of these assumptions is that they only provide a partial image of God. Yes, God has influence over the weather, but He also has dominion over so much more. He is powerful, but not quite as powerful as the sun. He is everywhere, yet He is also beyond everything. And, happily, while we don't grasp everything about God, He is knowable. In reality, the Bible contains all of the information we need to know about Him. God wants to be recognized (Psalm 46:10).

Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, in their book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, state the following:

- Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyone’s knowledge of it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.)

- Truth is transcultural; if something is true, it is true for all people, in all places, at all times. (2+2=4 for everyone, everywhere, at every time.) 

- Truth is unchanging even though our beliefs about truth change. (When we began to believe the earth was round instead of flat, the truth about the earth didn’t change, only our belief about the earth changed.)

Therefore, as we try to ascertain what God is like, we are simply trying to discover truths already there.

First, God exists. The Bible never argues for God’s existence; it simply states it. The fact that God is should be self-evident through the works He has created (Psalm 19:1-6). Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is a simple yet powerful statement. The universe includes time, space, matter, and energy so all discernible elements in the universe came into being by God’s decree. Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity states that all time, space, and the matter had a definite, simultaneous beginning. What has a beginning has a cause. That is the law of causality, and the fact of God easily explains the ultimate cause. God is the creator of all that is, and so we know something else about Him: He is almighty (Joel 1:15), He is eternally self-existent (Psalm 90:2), and He exists above and beyond all of creation (Psalm 97:9).

The same God who made all things also controls those things. He is sovereign (Isaiah 46:10). He who creates an item owns it and has the power to utilize it as he sees fit. The ultimate cause has ultimate authority. In Isaiah 44:24 God presents Himself as the One “who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.” The next verse says that He “overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense.” This is obviously a God with the power to do as He pleases.

God is spirit (John 4:24) and cannot be represented by any created thing; in fact, the attempt to create such a representation is blasphemous (Exodus 20:4-6). God is unchanging (Malachi 3:6). God is all-knowing (1 John 3:20) and all-present (Psalm 139:7-13). He is holy and glorious (Isaiah 6:3). He is just (Deuteronomy 32:4) and will justly judge all sin and unrighteousness (Jude 1:15).

The judgment of God highlights another truth about what He is like: He is a moral being. C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, makes the case that, just as there exists observable laws of nature (gravity, entropy, etc.), there are also observable laws of morality. He writes, “First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.” Despite varied ideas about what constitutes right and wrong, there is a universal belief that right and wrong exist, and this is a reflection of the God who made us (Genesis 1:26; Ecclesiastes 3:11).

When Jesus entered our world, He showed us the Father (John 14:7-9). Through Jesus, we understand that God seeks to save the lost (Luke 19:10). He is compassionate (Matthew 14:14), He is merciful (Luke 6:36), and He is forgiving (Matthew 9:1-8). At the same time, Jesus shows us that God will judge unrepentant sin (Luke 13:5) and that God is angry with those who live falsely and refuse to acknowledge the truth (Matthew 23).

Most of all, Jesus showed us that God is love (1 John 4:8). It was in love that God sent His Son into the world (John 3:16). It was in love that Jesus died on the cross for sinners (Romans 5:8). It is in love that He still calls sinners to repentance to experience the grace of God and to be called the children of God (1 John 3:1).