Introduction
To get us started, we’ll look at Psalm 145 where David identifies a few of the many characteristics of God’s nature: v7 -abundant goodness and righteousness; v8 -gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and great in lovingkindness; v9 -good to all, and merciful over all His works; v11 -He is glorious and powerful; v12 -performs mighty acts, and His kingdom is endowed with glory and majesty; and, v17 -He is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds!
Describing God in a few pages is impossible. Plus, I know that I will not even come close to scratching the surface when it comes to explaining God. However, we can get a glimpse of His nature by looking at how He manifests Himself to us.
Some theologians refer to the attributes of God using the term ‘perfections’ because all the qualities or attributes of God are perfect. Therefore I may use the terms perfections, attributes, or qualities throughout this paper when describing the characteristics of God.
Beyond Comprehension
What we know about God is revealed in His creation and in other ways throughout the Bible. But even then, as I write this, I realize how inadequate I am to describe our Creator – who is incomprehensible. To get an idea of this, here are some of the passages that declare His unfathomable nature:
- “Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalm 145:3)
- “Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endures throughout all generations.” (Psalm 145:13)
- “Great is our Lord, and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.” (Psalm 147:5)
- “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.” (Isaiah 40:28)
- “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” (Nahum 1:3)
- “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!” (Romans 11:33)
- “and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.” (Ephesians 3:19)
- “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)
Undivided
We divide the attributes of God into categories or qualities in an attempt to understand His nature. However, we should keep in mind that He is not divided. He is not made up of parts or pieces or separate qualities. All of the qualities are who He is in His essence and describe His total being.
“Love, for example, is not part of God’s nature; God in His total being is love. Although God may display one quality or another at a given time, no quality is independent of or preeminent over any of the others. Whenever God displays His wrath, He is still love. When He shows His love, He does not abandon His holiness.
“God is more than the sum total of His perfections. When we have listed all the perfections we can glean from revelation, we have not fully described God.”1
God in Creation
Paul explains in Romans 1:20 that we can get a glimpse of who God is by looking at what He has made. Paul says,
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”
Here are a few things I thought of when contemplating His creation. We can learn about God’s: creativity, knowledge of science (sounds funny to say it that way), sense of humor, appreciation of beauty, logic, order, variety, proportion, use of color, sound, perception, intelligence, chemical processes, the water cycle, and so on.
On top of that, it is interesting that He gives us the ability to comprehend these things. He created our senses so that we experience the world He created. Some of these are: vision; hearing; touch; taste; smell; emotions; texture; and, desire.
God in the Bible
Next, we will look at a few of God’s attributes revealed to us in the Bible.
Mercy
“The most striking demonstration of divine mercy is God’s great act of salvation in saving sinners from the just consequences of their sins and giving them forgiveness and eternal life. Even in the rituals of the Old Testament, the sinners were dependent entirely on God’s mercy for their acceptance with God. It was God’s mercy, not their religious acts, that saved them. For this reason God’s throne was called the mercy seat. It was the place where God symbolically sat and where he mercifully accepted repentant sinners into his presence.”2
“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:4, 5)
“Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)
Justice
Justice, “Is that perfection whereby He is infinitely righteous and just, both in Himself and in all His proceedings with His creatures.”3 Easton’s Bible dictionary explains, “Justice is not an optional product of his will, but an unchangeable principle of his very nature.”4 When we see God’s justice exercised, we see it expressed perfectly because of who He is.
The dispensing of justice by God can be seen in His rewards and punishments. Paul describes one reward which is a crown of righteousness. In 2 Timothy 4:8, Paul says,
“in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”
In 2 Thessalonians 1:6, we see an example of God’s punitive justice,
“For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you.”
Omnipotence
God’s power is demonstrated in His acts such as the creation and raising Jesus from the dead.
The word “Almighty”, meaning ‘most powerful’, is used only of God in the Bible. The word occurs 58 times5 and is the basis for the concept of omnipotence. When God appeared to Jacob in Genesis 35:11, renaming him Israel, God referred to Himself as ‘God Almighty’ saying:
“I am God Almighty;
Be fruitful and multiply;
A nation and a company of nations shall come from you,
And kings shall come forth from you.”
God’s omnipotence is limited in two areas -natural limitations and self-imposed limitations, described next.
Natural Limitations
“The natural limitations include the things God cannot do because they are contrary to His nature. He cannot lie (Titus 1:2), He cannot be tempted to sin (James 1:13), He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13).”6
Self-imposed Limitations
“Self-imposed limitations include those things He has not chosen to include in His plan that He might have included as long as they were not contrary to His nature.”7 There are others, but I will list three: He did not choose to spare His Son; He did not choose to save all people; and, He did not choose to save James. (Herod had James the brother of John put to death with a sword, Acts 12:2.)
Communicable & Incommunicable
One way that men attempt to classify God’s perfections, is to determine which belong only to God, and which ones He shares with us. Those attributes that are only His are referred to as incommunicable. The qualities He gives to us are called communicable. I will give a couple of examples of these below.
Incommunicable
Here are two examples of attributes belonging only to God.
Eternality
He is above time and therefore not subject to its limitations. For Him there is only an eternal present, and no past or future. One way the Bible communicates this idea, is when it says that God is ‘from everlasting to everlasting.’ Psalm 106:48
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting even to everlasting. And let all the people say, ‘Amen.’ Praise the Lord!”
Simplicity
By ascribing simplicity to God we mean that He is not composed of various parts, such as the body and soul in man, and for that very reason is not subject to division. In contrast to man, the Bible describes God as spirit. We can also say that God and His perfections are one, and that He is life, light, love, righteousness, truth, and so on.
In John 4:24, Jesus is conversing with the Samaritan woman and describes those who worship God. In His explanation, Jesus reveals part of God’s nature. Jesus says,
“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Communicable
These are the qualities we find to some degree in people because we are made in the image of God. Below are two examples.
Holiness
Holiness is that which is separate from all that is common or unclean, positively pure and thus distinct from all others. Ryrie explains, “In God, His holiness is a purity of being and nature as well as of will and act.”8
We can use light as an analogy to help us understand the concept of holiness. It is not just the absence of darkness, but also an illuminating light. Holiness then is the absence of evil and the presence of truth that is illuminating. The apostle John uses the analogy of light in 1 John 1:5. John tells us,
“And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
One way that God shares His holiness with us is through His discipline in our lives. In Hebrews 12:10, the writer compares the discipline of our earthly fathers with that from God. He writes,
“For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.”
Goodness
The divine goodness is that perfection which prompts Him to deal kindly and bountifully with all His creatures. God has demonstrated this to all mankind as Paul explains in Acts 14:16 & 17 saying,
“And in the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways; and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
When we put our faith in Jesus for forgiveness of sins, God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit.9 By faith, we walk in the Spirit, and see the fruit of a godly lifestyle which includes goodness. Galatians 5:22 affirms,
“the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.”
Conclusion
We have looked briefly at the attributes of God in order to understand Him better. I expect that this will be an eternal pursuit, because He is eternal.
I talk more about the two attributes Eternality and Omnipotence in the paper, The Case for Christ. See the post Who is Jesus?, where I give examples of the Omniscience and Omnipresence of Jesus.
Appendix
It is necessary to point out that each of these divine attributes belong to each member of the Trinity. Ryrie defines the Trinity as, “In the one living and true God there are three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in existence.”10
For example, we read in Hebrews 1:3 concerning Jesus and God the Father,
“And He [Jesus] is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
This verse declares that Jesus is the exact representation of God the Father. Jesus is distinct in existence, but has the same nature as the Father.
I discuss some thoughts on how Jesus possessed the divine attributes during His incarnation in my post, The Deity and Humanity of Jesus.
1 Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology, (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1986), 39
2 Bridgeway Bible Dictionary -entry for Mercy
3 Entry for ‘Justice of God’. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature.
4 Entry for ‘Justice of God’. Easton’s Bible Dictionary
5 New American Standard Bible used for the search.
6 Ryrie, 45
7 Ryrie, 45
8 Ryrie, 42
9 Ephesians 1:13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation–having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.
10 Ryrie, 632