Category: Divine Attributes

God Omnipotent

God’s power is infinite; He is omnipotent – all powerful. (Re 19:6) There’s nothing He wishes to do which He’s unable to do, and since God is good, He will do what is good, everything which is appropriate for Him to do.

This does not mean every imaginable task which can be formulated is doable: no, God can’t make a rock so big He can’t lift it, because the task is inconsistent with the nature of omnipotence. Rather than being distracted by nonsense, we ought to focus on the revealed nature of God.

Clearly, in creating the universe, time and space, God tells us a bit about Himself. He spoke the entire universe into existence; Earth and Heaven, the sun and moon, creating trillions of galaxies, expressed almost as an afterthought. (Ge 1:14) What might tax His strength, strain Him, even in theory? It is inconceivable.

God is outside of space and time, defining and establishing all possible dimensions, and well beyond them. He fills all things. (Ep 4:10) Every aspect of His creation obeys Him perfectly (Ps 119:91), following the purpose He assigned and aligning with His decrees; He’s holding all of it together. (Col 1:17)

We rightly extrapolate from God’s limitless power in the physical universe to the metaphysical: God is unlimited in His ability to work in and through the human will (Pr 16:9): He is utterly sovereign. (Da 4:35) Nothing happens outside God’s control (Ep 1:11); it’s all by His permission, for a glorious, ultimate purpose. (Ro 8:28)

Our free will operates within this sovereignty as God restrains us according to His purpose. (Pr 16:1) Even the most brutal, torturous death of the one, perfectly innocent Person, the worst crime ever committed by mortal man … God Himself was the willing victim, and He ordained it for His glory. (Ac 4:27-28)

A key purpose of this doctrine, in addition to moving us to eternal worship, is to establish our hearts in trusting God, that we not be anxious, frustrated or fearful. Worry and fear is acting out the lie that God’s unable, or that He’s not good. If we’re able to pray for something, and it’s good for God to do it, God is able to perform it, and He will (1Jn 5:15) — no matter what it is. (Ep 1:19)

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Faith Toward God

Faith toward God is foundational in spiritual life, along with it’s twin and counterpart: repentance from dead works. (He 6:1) Faith is belief and trust, what we rely upon; it reflects our basic understanding of the universe, what’s trustworthy and what isn’t, and orients our thoughts and actions on every level.

As a child, we start out trusting; it’s instinctive because we must at first – utterly dependent. As we grow up observing our environment, our expanding experience begins to show us what we can truly count on, what’s stable, consistent, reliable and trustworthy.

As life unfolds and our trust is consistently violated, we become skeptical — what seems reliable on the surface generally isn’t in the long run. People are selfish, fickle and weak, sometimes even malicious and evil. Personal strength and intelligence fail us, our stuff breaks and our wealth bleeds away.

Finding what’s ultimately and perfectly reliable, if anything at all, becomes a journey in itself, one few undertake. Yet we remain vulnerable and dependent, controlling so very little, so we become cynical, anxious and depressed, acting out a belief that nothing and no one is ultimately trustworthy — violating our basic design — our instinct to trust.

To find rest, we must look beyond the physical, beyond personal relationships, beyond health, wealth and power. (Ps 62:10) God Himself is our only possible option here: if He isn’t both utterly sovereign, and also completely trustworthy, reliable, faithful and good, then there’s nowhere else to turn. (11) Our journey ends here, either way. (De 4:39)

The first step is coming to understand God’s utter sovereignty: all things work out according to His own perfect timing and will (Ep 1:11), everything in both Heaven and Earth. (Da 4:35) Yet the fact that His will permits evil and suffering moves us to question His goodness, and we fall short of faith toward God.

We may place our trust in powerful people (Ps 20:7), or turn to our wealth (1Ti 6:17), but it’s empty in a world where God’s ultimately in charge. (Ps 62:9)

Faith toward God is turning to face Him honestly as He is, and as we are; it’s taking that final step: submitting to Him, getting off the throne of the universe, humbling ourselves and admitting we don’t have either the right or the ability to ever doubt the goodness of God. (Ps 62:8) He permits evil and suffering according to a glorious, eternal purpose (Ro 8:28), which we may well not understand for a very long time. (De 29:29)

It’s OK, to not understand; but we can still trust Him, obey Him, love Him, and we should — we must. To come to God, to find peace and rest in Him, we must believe and act out the fact that He’s both sovereign, and also perfectly good: a rewarder of all who diligently seek Him. (He 11:6) This faith itself is the gift of God (Ep 2:8), enabling us to quench the fiery lies of the evil one. (Ep 6:16)

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I Am JEHOVAH

When God reveals Himself to Moses at the burning bush, He introduces Himself as JEHOVAH (Yeh-ho-vaw, or Yah-weh). (Ex 6:4) Yet most of the time translators come to God’s name, in the Hebrew – YHWH, they refuse to translate it, rendering it the LORD. Why?

The choice is likely rooted in long-standing Jewish tradition to not pronounce the name of God, or to even write it, in order to avoid misusing it or taking God’s name in vain. (Ex 20:7) Yet this has resulted in obscuring God’s name altogether, such that there’s serious debate about how to even pronounce it, which doesn’t seem very good either; now, we’ll need to wait until He returns just to know for sure what His precious name sounds like.

This fact been bothering me for a while, that the KJV in particular has this problem most of the time, such that when I’m quoting scripture which contains the tetragrammaton I’ve been saying Jehovah; it seems to me the most respectful way to navigate this one. Personally, I’d be displeased if no one was willing to pronounce my name when talking about me or addressing me; I’d see it as a subtle way to dishonor me. So, in loving God fully I mustn’t do that which might dishonor Him.

However, recently, I noticed that when Paul quotes Ps 117:1 in Ro 15:11 he does the same thing, replacing YHWH with the Greek kurios: Lord. If Paul himself does this under inspiration, it appears reasonable for translators to do so as well. This is sufficiently conclusive to settle the matter for me; it just isn’t an issue.

Yet some argue that Paul wrote Romans in Hebrew, not Greek, claiming he didn’t actually translate God’s name; they’d claim the Greek kurios came to us later through a scribe, and it’s not inspired. But this doesn’t pass the sniff test: in Romans, Paul addresses Gentiles (Ro 11:13) as well as Jews (Ro 2:17), and Gentiles in that day weren’t expected to be fluent in Hebrew. Paul wouldn’t write a letter to a mixed Jew-Gentile congregation in a language many in his intended audience didn’t understand.

If the Pauline answer isn’t enough, the Gospel of John also follows this pattern (Jn 12:38), and was clearly not written in Hebrew – within the text itself John translates common Hebrew terms for his reader, such as rabbi (Jn 1:38) and messiah (41), and explains basic biblical feasts (Jn 6:4); this wouldn’t be the case if John wrote in Hebrew to a Jewish audience.

We should certainly be careful to respect God’s name, and it’s clear that God originally reveals His name in Hebrew. So, it certainly isn’t wrong to use His Hebrew name as well as we can, especially when quoting the Hebrew scriptures, and many of us prefer using God’s Hebrew names. But insisting that others do so, or that God’s name must be transliterated, or not replaced with the LORD, is inconsistent with God’s own manner of inspiring His Word.

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Thou Art Fairer

Beauty is a mysterious, instinctive, metaphysical thing; impossible to explain or quantify, and quite outside our will. The very fact we perceive beauty is evidence of purpose in our design: we’re made to enjoy something outside ourselves.

Satan may have been, at least for a season, the most beautiful being in the universe, so beautiful that his magnificence became his downfall — as others observed and responded to him he exalted himself as a god. (Ez 28:17) Evidently, the heavenly hosts esteemed Satan even more beautiful than God, which may have been partly the cause of their fall; they’re certainly attracted to beauty. (Ge 6:4) What a powerful thing! to draw even the angels from their place. (Jud 1:6)

Yet how can the creature possibly be more beautiful, more glorious, more majestic than the Creator? How can the Creator of beauty itself be outdone by His own creation?

Of course, this would be so if God wills; He certainly might create a creature exceeding Himself in beauty, or choose to appear in a diminished form for a season, and let the creature exceed His personal appearance for a purpose. (Is 53:2) But why?

Consider how we’re influenced by spectacularly beautiful people, drawn to them, favoring them, catering to them (Ps 45:12), even coveting them. Beautiful women certainly do have an advantage; it’s often an honor and pleasure just to be around them. (Job 42:15)

But like a rich man hiding his wealth to reveal his true and faithful friends, identifying those who love him for himself and aren’t after his money, God arranges to hide His glory and majesty to reveal and expose His enemies. We should choose God because it’s right, not because He’s handsome. This, the wicked will not do.

Yet a day will come when the most beautiful Being in the universe will be Jesus Christ, more gorgeous than any woman ever born (Ps 45:2), shining forth in perfect beauty. (Ps 50:2) Once we see Him as He is, we’ll desire nothing else (Ps 73:25); to simply behold His beauty will be more than enough. (Ps 27:4)

What will it be like to be in intimate fellowship with the most beautiful Person in existence? (So 1:4) To have Him say, “Come on in and enjoy Me! (Mt 25:23) To enjoy His favor and feel His pleasure in us (Ps 45:11), it will be joy unspeakable. (1Pe 1:8)

In that day, no one who’s forsaken any pleasure for Christ will regret it, for they will enjoy deeper intimacy with Him. (Php 3:8) As it will be then, even so it is now; there’s no reason to wait, every joy in Christ is ours. (Ps 37:4) Every lust (Pr 6:25), every wrongful passion, every wonton discontent … it is answered here, in the perfection of beauty: Jesus Christ.

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The Godhead

The Trinity is a mysterious concept: one God in three persons. Trying to explain the Trinity in detail, or to devise a model which perfectly illustrates it, inevitably fails. One isn’t three and three isn’t one; mathematics is solid on this point. Is this a problem?

Only if we presume an infinite God may be fully explained in finite terms. Yet the Being Who inhabits eternity, Who created the ten dimensions in which we exist, must be far above, beyond and outside of them. Is it any wonder that we’re unable to create a finite model which perfectly and completely represents Him?

Perhaps this gets at the heart of the 2nd Commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Ex 20:4a) Trying to create a physical representation of God, or even a  theoretical image, is attempting to create a likeness of Him. Perhaps He’s telling us not to do this because it can’t be done; any attempt to fully define Him will ultimately fail.

Creating an accurate image of God is not only impossible, it’s evidently harmful, for in reducing the Godhead to any likeness of any thing in the universe is to perceive Him as less than He truly is, to diminish Him; this corrupts our worship and tarnishes our perception of Him.

Perhaps this is one reason God hates idolatry so much: it replaces God with something paltry, something small and finite. Our tendency to try to contain God in a physical – even a theological – box leads us into error. Perhaps it’s our way of trying to control Him.

We may content ourselves in accepting the fact that God reveals Himself as a unity (De 6:4) as well as a plurality.  (Ge 1:26a) There can be no true logic implying God can’t be this way. God has revealed Himself as a triune Being, each Person of the Godhead uniquely and purposefully, yet ascribes to each Person all the attributes of the entire Godhead. We must not separate these Persons: they are one; yet we must allow for distinctness within them, for that is how Jehovah has revealed Himself.

Our perception of God is foundational in our spiritual lives and impacts our way more than we can possibly imagine. No possible description of Him can be too glorious, too majestic; it is impossible to have too high a view of God. We must not place any artificial limits on our conception of God, but let our spirits soar continuously higher in seeking Him.

Staying faithful to the scriptures here, and living within it’s prescription for us, is freedom of a most profound kind.

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Free Will

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How do we reconcile Man’s Free Will with God’s Sovereignty? our responsibility to make good choices with God’s ultimate control of our behavior?

We all sense that we make choices of our own free will, and that our choices are not always good, yet we pray as if God governs other people’s choices and can control them as He wills; we even accuse God of letting people make horrible choices – we instinctively know He can prevent them.

It’s very difficult to understand how God can be in control of our behavior while holding us responsible – it’s like an open contradiction. This mystery is so profound, so difficult to grasp, many rebel against God because of it, or deny His existence altogether.

Yet denying God’s existence is equivalent to denying the existence of evil itself, so the reality of evil can’t be evidence of God’s non-existence: our very cry for justice proves otherwise.

And rebelling against God for being in control while holding us responsible accuses God Himself of being unjust and evil, yet we can’t rightly define justice or evil apart from God … in fact, in redefining good and evil we’re exalting ourselves as gods. (Ge 3:22)

To resolve this dilemma, note that paradoxes are often rooted in incomplete perspective; in stepping back and challenging our underlying assumptions, we often find our answer.

If we assume Man is truly acting completely freely, apart from divine restraint, then God isn’t in control of Man by definition: thus, it must be that Man’s freedom of choice is limited by God’s restraint. (Ps 76:10)

And if we assume Man’s evil choices are actually caused by God, then holding Man responsible for evil violates God’s own standard of justice (De 25:1); so Man’s own will must be the ultimate cause of evil. (Jn 3:19)

And if we assume God has no good purpose in allowing evil, then God’s acting in a way that’s ultimately harmful and not good; thus, it must be that God knows what He’s doing, and also that He will be pleased in the final outcome, and therefore that Him allowing evil ultimately is good. (Ps 27:13)

So, we resolve the paradox of God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will by attributing evil entirely to Man’s depravity, and attributing any form of goodness to God’s intervening restraint, or to the new creature He creates in believers: when unregenerate Man chooses freely, apart from divine intervention, he always chooses evil, in varying degrees, and he does this of his own free will. (Ro 3:12) Believers appear to be able to choose good freely, in varying degrees. (Ga 6:4)

Yet God is constantly and mercifully intervening and controlling unregenerate Man’s behavior by perfectly and imperceptibly restraining evil according to His perfect will and plan (Pr 16:9), and He is constantly working in believers, willing in and through us to do as He pleases (Php 2:13).

Whenever God does permit evil it’s ultimately for a good purpose (Ro 8:28), through which He intends to reveal and glorify Himself. (Ro 9:22-23) For this we ought to be genuinely thankful. (Ep 5:20)

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Put Out Their Name

Our name is how we’re known and recognized, our brand, how we’re differentiated from each other. It represents the unique integrity of our character, the faithfulness of our word, the wisdom of our experience. They that know God’s name put their trust in Him; knowing He’s perfectly reliable – He never forsakes those who seek Him. (Ps 9:10)

Our good name derives its goodness from our behavior, from our actions and how we’re perceived and known by others through them: a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches (Pr 22:1a), for this reflects our personal, practical righteousness in community, and reveals the nature of our souls. How we teat a person’s name reveals how we feel about them; God won’t excuse those who disrespect His name. (Ex 20:7)

When God judges the wicked He puts out their name, extinguishing it eternally. (Ps 9:5) After revealing their wickedness to the universe (Mk 4:22), God blots out the remembrance of evildoers from under Heaven (De 29:29); He deliberately obscures their uniqueness and identity (Ps 34:16), such that we can no longer recount or explain their way (Ps 1:6), how they were each unique in their behavior.

So, in addition to suffering the vengeance of eternal fire (Jud 7), in having their names put out the wicked essentially become indistinguishable from one another; they lose their individual identity. Collectively, they will be held in everlasting contempt (Da 12:2), their carcasses embodying a nameless insanity, an irrational, abhorrent, filthy depravity (Is 66:24), utterly consumed with terrors. (Ps 73:19)

God is perfectly just and upright in putting out the name of the wicked (Ps 9:8), for there’s no benefit in trying to differentiate between them as they exalt themselves against the Holy One. All sin is essentially the creature setting itself apart from the Creator, to seek identity apart from and outside Him. Though there are certainly varying degrees of depravity (Jn 19:11), after it is exposed in judgement, God need not continue to individualize all the terrible nuances and shades of such rebellion as expressed through His enemies – in the end, it’s all one and the same. (Jn 8:44)

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Wait Only on God

Jehovah promises that if I wait on Him, my strength will be renewed. (Is 40:31) This isn’t merely a call to silence and inactivity, if it is that at all; wait relates more to having an expectation that God will be faithful to His Word, to His name, to His character — that He will keep His promises. (Nu 23:19)

When I expect God to be as He has revealed Himself to be, and to do as He has promised, I honor Him and please Him. When I take God at His Word, and live as if He is as He truly is, I’m aligning myself with reality, and this is the place of strength; this is when I’m at my best, living according to my design, as strong as I can be.

But when I alienate myself from the life of God through my ignorance of His Way (Ep 4:18), when I cling to false ways in my unwillingness to fully trust Him, I emulate the world (17), living in anxiety, frustration and fear, which steals my joy – which is my strength. (Ne 8:10)

My motive for distrusting God appears to be a fear of being let down should God fail me, as if it’s better to anticipate being disappointed and brace for a fall than to fall flat on my face. But in living like this I’m calling God a liar (1Jn 5:10), and I’ll eventually be ashamed of every moment I’ve lived apart from Him like this. (1Jn 2:28)

If God isn’t faithful, if He isn’t good, if He can’t be trusted, then nothing else matters anyway; then life has no meaning, I have no purpose, no hope. And how’s that working out for me? I’m saved by hope. (Ro 8:24) There’s nothing else worth having, so what do I have to lose by trusting Him? Nothing: I’ve everything to gain.

I should trust Him, and I should trust Him implicitly. But I must also study Him and seek His face (Ps 28:7) so that I may know Him as He is, so I don’t trust in a false image of Him that I’ve created for myself. My trust in Him is only as helpful as the accuracy of the perception I have of Him; I must seek to know Him as He truly is (Php 3:10), and not merely as I wish for Him to be.

And I should only trust in God (Ps 62:5), not man. (Je 17:5) I should not ultimately expect anyone else to be perfectly faithful on their own, apart from God: only God is good, and He works in all of us according to His pleasure (Php 2:13), so I can safely trust Him to work all things for my good (Ro 8:28), and thank Him for all things (Ep 5:20), regardless of appearances.

God’s after one thing – making me like His Son, along with all others who’ll have Him (Ep 5:26-27), that we should be to the praise of His glory. (Ep 1:11-12) So, this is what I should expect Him to do; this is God’s agenda, and I should joyfully pursue Him in it.

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Be Kind

Since God is kind, and since He commands us to be kind (Ep 4:32), we ought to understand what kindness is.

Kind is not nice, avoiding conflict, difficulty or discomfort; at times we’re called to speak the truth (Ep 4:15) even when it wounds. (Pr 27:6) Nice is generally selfish and fearful; seeking approval and acceptance; this isn’t the servant of Christ. (Ga 1:10)

Kindness isn’t passive, weak, insecure or timid; God commands us to be strong (1Co 16:13); Kindness can be bold (Pr 28:1), standing firm (Ep 6:13), confronting evil and defending ourselves as needed. (Lk 22:36)

The root words from which we get our English word kind also give us our word kin; as if God’s calling us to treat one another like family: we are all related, members one of another. (Ep 4:25) The Greek is chrestos or useful, suggesting moral helpfulness and benevolence, also translated easy (Mt 11:30), good (Ro 2:4), and gracious. (1Pe 2:3) It’s how we treat our loved ones.

Kindness is love in action (Tit 3:4), loving my neighbor as myself, seeking their ultimate welfare. Love persists in kindness (1Co 13:4), for love perfects and completes kindness. (2Pe 1:7)

The opposite of kindness is evidently malice (Ep 4:31): having ill will, animosity, wanting less than the best for another. This is often rooted in vengeance, thinking others deserve less than the best, rendering our own sense of justice rather than letting God do so. This is, at it’s root, unbelief in the goodness of God (Ro 2:2), refusing to walk in love and let God be God.

If God is ever inviting us to what is best, both for ourselves and others, if He is never malicious, then we should be like Him. (Lk 6:35) This is our design, when we’re at our best and bring Him glory, being like Him, full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:17)

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A Consuming Fire

What’s God like? In being selective with scripture it’s easy to miss Him and fashion an idol after our own lusts. (1Jn 5:21) We should look at the whole of God’s revelation.

God is love, it’s true (1Jn 4:8), but that doesn’t mean He’s like a doting, harmless old grandfather.

God is also light (1Jn 1:5), the very medium by which we perceive spiritual reality. God is truth itself (Jn 14:6), undiluted, uncompromised, pure and holy. If we think we can fellowship with Him and not be seeking truth more than gold and silver, if we’re content to walk in darkness of any kind, to any degree, we don’t know Him. (1Jn 1:7)

God is also holy (1Pe 1:16), separate from sinners, higher than the heavens. (He 7:26) He calls us to holiness (2Co 7:1) because He won’t fellowship with anyone who walks in willful sin as a manner of life (1Jn 2:4); He’s angry with the wicked every day (Ps 7:11), and will trample them underfoot. (Ps 119:118) His response to any kind of rebellion is fiery indignation. (He 10:26-27)

We might get a clearer picture of God if we see Him as a consuming fire. (He 12:29) Like a raging wildfire, He’ll destroy anything and everything that’s opposed to Himself in any way (Ps 21:9) just by being Himself, by letting His very brightness shine forth undiluted, unfiltered, untamed. (2Th 2:8)

Yet God’s consuming nature will not annihilate the wicked; it will overwhelm, terrify, incapacitate and disable them with everlasting punishment. (Mt 25:46) God’s enemies will no longer be able to act like enemies when God reveals Himself. That’s a good thing, for God and for everyone – totally consistent with love: God shouldn’t have to suffer forever, and His arms will always be open to anyone who’ll come to Him. (Re 22:17)

God’s love is what fuels His justice and wrath, even His hatred. He’s benevolent, so He hates (or detests) sin and those who persist in it. (Ps 5:5) Sin harms ourselves, others and God, so He won’t overlook sin and let it go; there’s a price to pay. (Ro 3:23) We must pay that price ourselves, a debt we can never ever pay in full, or trust God to pay it for us in His Son; Christ is willing to become our sin, and die in our place so we might be made God’s righteousness in Christ. (2Co 5:21)

God is good, but He isn’t nice: God’s not safe; serve Him with reverential fear and rejoice with trembling. (Ps 2:11) Both His goodness and severity are awesome and beautiful (Ro 11:22), simply awe inspiring (He 12:21); we should rejoice in all His ways. (Re 15:4)

It’s a fearful thing to fall into God’s hands (He 10:31), but there are no other options; it isn’t a matter of if, but when. For those who love Him, who are seeking God’s face, there’s no better place to be. (Php 1:23)

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