Systematic Theology: Lessons 8-9 - The Being of God

THE BEING OF GOD
Theology Proper - Lessons 8-9

 Since theology is the study of the being and works of God as He is revealed in the Bible, we must take some time to focus on God’s being. As this course is a broad overview of systematic theology, we must resist the temptation to spend too much time here.[1] It is my hope that this section makes you thirst all the more after knowledge of the Holy One.

 We saw in the last lesson that God exists, and that He has revealed Himself by His names: Almighty God, Most High, Eternal, and Alive, who was, is, and will always be the sovereign provider, healer, banner, sanctifier, peacemaker, shepherd, justifier, and present comfort of His people—all wrapped up in the name Yahweh.

 The Bible fills in the picture of God with numerous references to His ESSENCE or NATURE. While we should hesitate to separate these two, Essence is often used to refer to what God is in Himself (for instance, God is Spirit [John 4:24] and Trinity [Isa 48:16]). If we were to talk about the substance of God (which is not made up of anything creaturely), this is what we might call His essence. God’s essence is completely other and unknowable. The creature cannot comprehend the Creator. “God’s essence is indescribable. It is so infinite, so supreme, so glorious, that its majesty, its beauty, and its perfection transcend our feeble human words.”[2]

 Nature is often used to refer to God’s character (for instance, God is Holy [Isa 6:3] and Gracious [Exod 34:6]). God reveals His nature to us through His interactions with the world. That God created the world reveals His power, wisdom, knowledge, patience, goodness, love, etc. The Exodus reveals His sovereignty, power, love, mercy, patience, wrath, jealousy, wisdom, knowledge, presence, etc. We can know about and understand God through His interactions with His creation.

 I must rush to clarify that His essence and nature are not two different things. God’s essence is His nature and vice-versa. In reality, God’s essence and nature are indistinguishable, though they are helpful terms to indicate emphasis. For our purposes, I am going to refer to both as simply God’s BEING. Let’s magnify the glory of God’s being.

 What I want us to see first about His being is that He is glorious.[3] God’s glory is first that infinite worth and precious nature of His being.[4] “God’s glory is not any one of His perfections but the beauty of all of them, and the perfectly harmonious way they relate to each other, and the way they are expressed in creation and history.”[5] Like showing the wonder of a diamond by holding it under the light and turning it around and around so that its infinite wonder is seen by all.

 

1.   We should understand that God has a right desire to display the glory of His being, since He is the only being in heaven or on earth who is worthy of infinite and unceasing glory.

2.   We should understand that God desires to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy [His people], which He prepared beforehand for [HIS!] glory” (Rom 9:23).

3.   This should cause us to search out “what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph 1:18).

4.   This will lead us, in the words of the Westminster Catechism, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

5.   Ergo, studying the being and works of God (Christian Theology) will lead us to glorify God more and more by enjoying His revelation of His glory.

 

 

When we enjoy God’s glory, we are fulfilling His purpose for us!

 

 

 

The Scripture teaches 7 inter-related and inter-dependent truths about God so that we will glorify Him forever.

 

 

1.   GOD IS PERFECT – God is the being than whom there can be none greater.[6] Starting here leads us immediately to awe and glory. He is not some being that we can reason up to. Our minds are limited, but by faith we behold one that is absolute perfection, so far beyond what our minds can comprehend. For this reason, we often talk about the perfections, or attributes, of God.[7]

God’s being is perfect in…

a.   HOLINESS – “God’s holiness is his inherent and absolute greatness, in which he is perfectly distinct above everything outside himself and is absolutely morally separate from sin.”[8]
Exod 15:11; Lev 11:44; 19:2; 20:26; 22:32; Josh 24:19; 1 Sam 2:2; 2 Chron 30:27; Psa 5:7; 22:3; 48:1; 71:22; 89:18; 97:12; 98:; 99:3, 5, 9; 103:1; 105:3; 145:21; Prov 30:3; Isa 5:16; 6:3; 10:20; 29:23; 43:14-15; 49:7; 54:5; 57:15; Jer 51:5; Hos 11:9; Hab 1:12; Mark 1:24; Luke 1:49; 4:34; John 17:11; 1 Pet 1:15-16; Rev 4:8; 6:10; 15:4

b.   SPIRIT
Gen 2:7; Exod 33:20; Deut 4:12, 15; Job 33:4; Psa 33:5-6; 104:30; 139:7; John 1:18; 4:24; 5:37; 6:46; Rom 1:20; Phil 2:6; Col 1:15-16; 1 Tim 1:17; 6:16; Heb 11:27; 1 John 4:12, 20
 

c.   OMNISCIENCE
1 Kings 8:39; 2 Chron 16:9; Psa 7:9; 139:2; Prov 15:11; Isa 40:13; Jer 11:20; 17:9-10; 20:12; Matt 6:8, 32; 10:30; 11:27; Luke 16:15; John 1:18; 10:15; Rom 8:27; 11:34; 1 Cor 2:10; 1 Thess 2:4; Heb 4:13; 1 John 3:20; esp. His foreknowledge – Acts 2:23-24; Rom 8:29; 11:2; 1 Pet 1:2, 18-20

d.   OMNIPOTENCE[9]
Gen 18:14; Job 42:2; Psa 115:3; Isa 14:24, 27; 46:10; 55:11; Jer 32:27; Zech 8:6; Matt 3:9; 19:26; 26:53; Luke 1:37; 18:27; Eph 3:20; Rev 4:11; 5:12; 7:12; 19:1; note what He cannot do – Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29; Mal 3:6; 2 Tim 2:13; Heb 6:18; Jas 1:13, 17

e.   OMNIPRESENCE
Psa 139:7-10; Jer 23:23-24; Acts 17:27-28

f.    WISDOM
Deut 4:6-8; Job 9:4; 37-38; Psa 19:1-7; 104:1-34; Prov 2:6; 8:22-31; 9:10; Isa 40:28; Jer 10:12; Rom 11:25-33; 16:25-27; 1 Cor 2:6-133; Eph 3:10-11; Jas 1:5; Rev 5:12

g.   TRUTH
Exod 34:6; Num 23:19; Deut 32:1; 1 Sam 15:29; Psa 96:5; 97:7; 115:4-8; Isa 44:9-10; John 14:6; 17:3; 1 John 5:20

h.   FAITHFULNESS
Psa 36:5; 1 Cor 1:9; 10:13; 2 Cor 1:18-20; 1 Thess 5:24; 2 Thess 3:3; Heb 10:23; 11:11; 1 John 1:9

i.    GOODNESS
1 Chron 16:34; 2 Chron 5:13; Psa 106:1; 107:1; 118:1; 136:1; Jer 33:11; Matt 5:48; Mak 10:18; Luke 18:19

j.    LOVE

Deut 4:37; 7:8, 13; 10:15; 23:5; 2 Chron 2:11; Isa 43:4; 48:14; 63:9; Jer 31:3; Hos 11:1, 4; 14:4; Zech 3:17; Mal 1:2; John 3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 14:31; 15:9; 17:24, 26; Rom 5:7-8; 8:37; Gal 2:20; 1 John 4:8, 9-10, 16

k.   GRACE
Gen 6:8; Exod 15:13, 16; 33:12, 17; 34:9; Deut 4:37; 7:7-8; 8:14, 17-18; 9:5, 27; 33:3 ; Prov 3:34; Isa 35:10; 43:1; 54:5; 63:9; Jer 3:4, 19; 31:9, 20; Ezek 16:60-63; Hos 8:14; 11:1; Zech 12:10; John 1:14, 17; Rom 3:24; 5:15; 6:23; Eph 1:6-7; 2:5, 7-8; 2 Thes 2:16; Tit 3:7; 1 Pet 5:10

l.    MERCY
Exod 20:6; 34:6; Deut 4:31; 5:10; 2 Sam 24:14; 2 Chron 30:9; Psa 51:1-2; 57:10; 86:15; 103:8; 111:4; 112:4; 145:8; Lam 3:22; Dan 9:9, 18; Matt 9:36; 14:14; 20:34; Luke 1:50-54; Rom 9:23; 11:30; 1 Cor 7:25; 2 Cor 1:3; 4:1; Eph 2:4; Phil 2:27; 1 Tim 1:2, 13, 16; 2 Tim 1:2, 16, 18; Heb 2:17; 4:16; 1 Pet 1:3; 2:10; 2 John; Jude 2, 21

m. PATIENCE
Exod 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Psa 86:15; 103:8-9; 145:8; Jer 15 :15 ; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Nah 1:3; Rom 2:4; 3:25 9:22-23; 1 Pet 3:2; 2 Pet 3:9, 15; Rev 6:9-11

n.   RIGHTEOUSNESS
Lev 11:44; Deut 4:8; 2 Sam 23:3; Psa 9:4; 29:2; 99:4; 119:7, 62, 75, 106; Isa 33:22; Luke 12:6; Rom 1:32; 2:26; 3:21-22, 24, 26, 30; 4:6, 25; 5:1, 9; 7:12; 8:4; 9:31; 1 Cor 6:11; Gal 2:16-17; 3:24; 2 Tim 4:8; Jas 4:12; 1 Pet 1:15-17

o.   JEALOUSY
Exod 20:5; 34:14; Deut 4:24; 5:9; 6:15; 29:18-20; 32:16; 1 Kings 14:22; Psa 78:58-59; 79:1-7; Isa 9:6-7; 42:13; 59:16-20; Ezek 5:13; 36:5; 38:19; Nah 1:2; Zeph 3:8; Zech 1:14; 1 Cor 10:22; Jas 4:5

p.   BLESSEDNESS
1 Tim 1:11; 6:15

 

 

2.   GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE – God’s being cannot be fully known or understood by human minds. He is indescribable (Isa 40:28; Rom 11:33).[10]

This perfect incomprehensibility is most obvious in His…

a.   TRANSCENDENCE/IMMINENCE – He is unknowable, undetectable, enthroned on high. Yet He is also near and involved in every aspect of life. We cannot know God in His being, but He has come down to our level so that we may know Him. Thus, all of our descriptions of God are analogical. Some Scriptures talk about His eyes, but He does not have eyes. God is, as Calvin said, speaking baby-talk to us.[11] He had to condescend to us. Of course, the greatest act of God “coming-down-to-our-level” is the Incarnation of Jesus.
1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chron 2:6; Job 9:11-12; Psa 103:11; 139:6, 7-18; 145:3; Isa 40:28; 66:1; Jer 23:23-24; Acts 7:48-49; 17:27-28

b.   SOVEREIGNTY – He rules over every detail of the universe.
1 Sam 2:6-10; Job 1:20-21; 2:9-20; Psa 2; 103:19; 33; 6-9; 50:10-12; Psa 93:1-2; Eccl 3:14; Isa 14:24; Matt 6:25-34; 10:29; Eph 3:11

 

 

3.   GOD IS INFINITE – His being is without limit. Every perfection of God is infinite.

His perfectly limitless nature is most obvious in His…

a.   ETERNALITY – God is without beginning or end.
Gen 1:1; Exod 3:14; Deut 32:40; Job 36:26; Psa 90:2-4; 93:2; Isa 40:28; 57:15; 41:4; John 1:1; 17:5, 24; 2 Pet 3:8; Rev 10:6; 15:7; Rom 1:23; Eph 3:11; 1 Tim 1:17; 6:16; 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2; Rev 1:4

b.   TIMELESSNESS – “God’s existence is outside the bounds of time. Indeed, since God began ‘the beginning’ by his creating action, God created time and upholds its totality and each of its moments by his power. God is fully present with every moment of time, and he knows its entirety and its succession of moments. But God is never subject to time. Rather, he uses it as his servant to reveal his perfections.”[12]
Isa 41:4; 44:6; 2 Tim 19:9; Tit1:2; Rev 21:6; 22:13

 

 

 

 

4.   GOD IS INDEPENDENT – His perfect being has no need of anyone or anything. “He is perfectly self-sufficient, not depending on anything outside himself for anything and is therefore the eternal, foundational being, the source of life and sustenance for all other beings.”[13]

a.   UNCREATED
Exod 3:14; Psa 90:2; John 5:26; Rom 11:36; 1 Cor 8:6; Rev 4:11

b.   UNEDUCATED
Romans 11:34-36

c.   UNTRAINED

d.   SELF-RELIANT
Job 22:2-3; Acts 17:25; Rom 11:36

e.   FREE
Psa 115:3; Isa 46:10-11; 64:8; Jer 18:6; Dan 4:35; Rom 9:19-21; Eph 1:5; Rev 4:11

f.    SOVEREIGN
Deut 10:17; Josh 3:13; Psa 33:10-11; Prov 19:21; Isa 46:10; Matt 11:25-26; Acts 2:23; 4:27-28; Eph 1:5, 9, 11

5.   GOD IS SIMPLE – His perfect being is not made up of parts. “His attributes sing in harmony.”[14] Each perfection of God illuminates the others.

a.   God is fully each of His perfections. He is NOT partly love, partly holy, and partly all of the other perfections. He is fully love (1 John 4:8, 16). He is fully holy (Isa 6:3; 1 John 1:5). Etc.
Jer 10:10; 23:6; John 1:4-5, 9; 4:24; 14:6; 1 Cor 1:30; 1 John 1:5; 4:8, 16

b.   God’s perfections qualify each other. If God is fully each perfection, then each perfection complements and qualifies the others. He is holy love. He is righteous wrath. He is merciful jealousy. Etc.

 

 

6.   GOD IS IMMUTIBLE – His perfect being cannot change. If God is simple, and all His perfections are the key to describing the others, then we see that He is ETERNAL love, ETERNAL mercy, ETERNAL holiness, ETERNAL truth, etc.[15]
Exod 3:14; Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29; Psa 102:25-27; 138:8; Isa 41:4; 43:10; 44:6; 48:12; Lam 3:22-23; Mal 3:6; Rom 1:23; 8:29-30; 11:1, 29; Phil 1:6; 1 Tim 1:17; 6:15-16; Heb 1:11-12; Jas 1:17

 

 

7.   GOD IS TRIUNE – His perfect being is one, yet He perfectly exists as three persons. God’s simplicity does NOT contradict the doctrine of His trinitarian nature. Rather, it protects us from error: the Persons are not parts of His being. Each Person is the essence in its fullness. Also, each Person is fully each perfection. We will flesh this out more in the next lesson.
Deut 4:35; 6:4; 32:39; Psa 2; 18:31; 96:5; Isa 40:18; 43:10-11; 41:29; 44:6; 45:5; 48:16; Matt 28:18-20; Mark 12:29; John 17:3; Acts 17:24; 1 Cor 8:4-6; Eph 4:5-6; 1 Tim 2:5; 1 Pet 1:2-3

We must resist becoming comfortable in our thinking about God. “Focusing on a preselected subset of things we like to remember about God (his mercy, intimacy, concern for us, attention to us, love for us), we let our thoughts about God orbit around that familiar center. We grow comfortable with a certain set of reassuring, familiar, and cozy divine attributes. There are no sheer cliffs, dizzying heights, or fathomless abysses in the doctrine of God we let ourselves settle into. It’s as if we have a doctrine of God that gets everything right except that it accidentally leaves out the sheer ‘godness’ of God. But that means it gets everything wrong.”[16]

 

May we never hear God’s indictment of idolatrous Israel: “YOU THOUGHT THAT I WAS JUST LIKE YOU!” (Psalm 50:21). May we continue to let the Bible shape our thoughts about God. May we resist the temptation to think we have God “figured out.” May we rediscover the fear of God, the one completely other, transcendent and unknowable, who has come down to our level in order that we might know Him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It is palpably absurd of you to be placing human characteristics in God rather than divine ones in man, and clothing God in the likeness of man, instead of man in the image of God.”[17]

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[1] I am splitting this study into two lessons, but to help us stay out of the weeds, I am giving you the entire outline for the entire study of God’s being.

 

[2] Barrett, None Greater, 23.

 

[3] Most systematic theologies save this for last, but I put it first, because the Bible often refers to God’s revelation of His attributes as Him displaying His glory. Also, our enjoyment of God’s attributes is the purpose for which God created us. We behold His glory and respond by glorifying Him with our thoughts, words, deeds, and prayers.

 

[4] “The glory of God is that within the person of God in which He can find delight, that in which He can take justifiable pride. We must distinguish between false pride and justifiable pride. False pride is sin, but where pride is justified, no sin is involved. It is only a recognition of a fact. God recognizes what He is and reveals what He is to men. Glory is displayed excellence. Consider a fine craftsman who has completed an object he has fashioned with his hands, tools or brushes. He stands back and looks at the completed work and says, ‘I am satisfied. It is what I wanted it to be.’ He will set it out on display and take pride in his work. He is glorifying in that which he has created. While God does glory in creation, the work of His hands, we find from Scripture that He glories not just in what He has done but in what He is. He glories in the perfection of His person.” Pentecost, The Glory of God, 8-9.

 

[5] Piper, Providence, 44.

 

[6] This definition of God was articulated in many forms, most notably by Anselm. “Theology is hard because once you realize how much greater God is—that than which nothing greater can be conceived, in the Anselmian ways of saying it—you realize how much harder God is to talk about.” Fred Sanders in the foreword to Matthew Barrett, None Greater, xii.

 

[7] “The attributes of God are his characteristics, the various aspects of his essence or nature. The term perfections, derived from the Greek term aretas (‘excellencies’) in 1 Peter 2:9, works better than attributes because perfections specifies that the characteristics of God are each perfect and inherently characterize the God who is perfect.” MacArthur and Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine, 161.

 

[8] MacArthur and Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine, 183.

[9] Peter Sammons has a good reply to those who like to scoff at God’s omnipotence and say things like, “Can God make a round square? Or can He create a mountain that He cannot lift?” Sammons writes, “In fact, the term ‘inability’—to say God is unable to do something—is not necessarily negative at all. True, we typically think that to be ‘unable’ or ‘incapable’ of doing something implies a defect or imperfection. That is our experience as creatures—especially as fallen ones. But with God, being ‘unable’ to do certain things is the very opposite. His ‘inability’ to do certain things is actually the mark of perfection. Thus, hypothetical propositions—like creating a stone too big to lift, or calling into being a circular triangle, or telling a lie, or growing old and changing—would require God to deny his own perfection. This would be no ‘ability’ at all. This can be likened to the batter who hits 1.000 in baseball, or the hockey goaltender with a save percentage of 1.000. To say that the batter is defective because he is ‘incapable of striking out,’ or that goaltender is defective because he is ‘incapable of allowing a goal,’ would be ludicrous!” Sammons, Reprobation and God’s Sovereignty, 25.

 

[10] The puritan Stephen Charnock states that when we think about God, we should say, “This is not God; God is more than this: if I could conceive him, he were not God; for God is incomprehensibly above whatsoever I can say, whatsoever I can think and conceive of him.” Charnock, Existence and Attributes of God, 1:201.

 

[11] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.1. “The doctrine of Scripture concerning the immensity and the spirituality of the essence of God, should have the effect not only of dissipating the wild dreams of the vulgar, but also of refuting the subtleties of a profane philosophy. One of the ancients thought he spake shrewdly when he said that everything we see and everything we do not see is God (Senec. Praef. lib. 1 Quaest. Nat.). In this way he fancied that the Divinity was transfused into every separate portion of the world. But although God, in order to keep us within the bounds of soberness, treats sparingly of his essence, still, by the two attributes which I have mentioned, he at once suppresses all gross imaginations, and checks the audacity of the human mind. His immensity surely ought to deter us from measuring him by our sense, while his spiritual nature forbids us to indulge in carnal or earthly speculation concerning him. With the same view he frequently represents heaven as his dwelling-place. It is true, indeed, that as he is incomprehensible, he fills the earth also, but knowing that our minds are heavy and grovel on the earth, he raises us above the worlds that he may shake off our sluggishness and inactivity. And here we have a refutation of the error of the Manichees, who, by adopting two first principles, made the devil almost the equal of God. This, assuredly, was both to destroy his unity and restrict his immensity. Their attempt to pervert certain passages of Scripture proved their shameful ignorance, as the very nature of the error did their monstrous infatuation. The Anthropomorphites also, who dreamed of a corporeal God, because mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet, are often ascribed to him in Scripture, are easily refuted. For who is so devoid of intellect as not to understand that God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children? Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness. In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his proper height.

 

[12] MacArthur and Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine, 171. “God is omniscient, or all-knowing, so his knowledge embraces all events as equally real. Therefore, since his perfections are his essence, in his experience of his essence in itself, there is no past, present, or future. Although God experiences the succession of time (both because he created that succession and because God the Son experiences it especially through the incarnation), and although his thought has logical structure (including premises and conclusions), yet his experience of succession does not control, confine, or condition his existence and life so that he exists only in the moments of time. Everything is perceived and experienced as an ‘eternal now’” (pg. 172).

 

[13] MacArthur and Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine, 168. This is sometimes called God’s aseity.

 

[14] Barrett, None Greater, 7.

 

[15] Sometimes in Scripture, God reveals Himself from our perspective as repenting or changing His mind or relenting from calamity He has promised (cf. Gen 6:6; Exod 32:12; 1 Sam 15:11, 35; Jer 18:10; Amos 7:3, 6; Jon 3:9-10; 4:2; Gen 18:23-32; Exod 32:10-14; Jon 3:10; Exod 4:14; Num 11:1, 10; Psa 106:40; Zech 10:3; Exod 32:14; Deut 13:17; 2 Chron 12:12; 30:8; Jer 18:8, 10; 26:3; Prov 11:20; 12:22; Psa 18:25-26; Gal 4:4; 1 Cor 3:16-17; Eph 2:19-22;Col 1:27; Rom 11:15; Acts 11:18; Rom11:11-15; Exod 34:7; Num 14:18; Psa 78; Jer 23:23). God never actually changes His mind or repents. For example, He declared the Ninevah would be destroyed because of their sins. But He willed Jonah’s preaching to bring about the repentance of Ninevah, so that He could demonstrate His perfect patience and lovingkindness toward those who repent.

 

[16] Fred Sander in the forward to Matthew Barrett, None Greater, xii.

 

[17] Tertullian, quoted in Barrett, None Greater, 40.