God is Merciful

“David said to Gad, ‘I am in deep distress.  Let us fall into the hands of the Lord,

for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men.’”

2 Samuel 24:14

Mercy is another attribute of God.  Mercy is God not giving us what we deserve.  It is God forgiving our debt because we embrace the sacrifice of His Son on our behalf.  It is God throwing our sin into the sea of forgetfulness and posting a “No Fishing!” sign.  But how can this be?  “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.”  Micah 7:18. 

Now we know God is just and requires the perfection of the law to be met and we know that none of us is perfect.   What are we to do?  Then God comes up with this brilliant solution only He could architect.  He sends His Son to die on our behalf so the righteous requirements of the law can be met, but we can still live to tell about it.  We who were worthy only of death due to our sins, now the righteousness of God.  For “he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Mercy is God’s response to the believer’s sin debt.  We can say with the Psalmist, “Answer me, O Lord, out of the goodness of your love; in your great mercy turn to me”  (Psalms 69:16).  And He can because the requirements of the law have been met – our deficiency has been filled by the blood of Christ.  How great was our debt – we owed our very lives!   Yet God sacrificed His Son so we could live and know the depths of His mercy.  Therefore, “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).  Mercy is pardon of what we deserve – punishment for our sins.  Grace is a gift we have not, and can never, earn.  Mercy is the debtor being set free from debtors’ prison.   But mercy only serves to bring us back to ground zero in our ledger.  Grace puts us in the black, way in the black.  It is the beggar inheriting the entire kingdom. 

Mercy is the wrath of God avoided.  It is the ultimate goodness of God not destroying the wretchedness of man because God has made a way for His goodness to fill our gap.  It is the foreclosing mortgage paid.  Just when we were about to lose it all, God steps in with His mercy and erases the debt and in its place writes, “Paid in Full!” on the bill.  Here we are relieved of the debt, whew, but yet unable to buy the next meal so to speak.  Grace makes us billionaires in the kingdom.  “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,  made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved”  Eph 2:4-5.  “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship”  Romans 12:1.  Consequently, here is the reason why we owe God everything, He paid the bill.  Our part is to play the indentured servant.  To sacrifice ourselves back to Him for sacrificing Himself for us.  He asks of us nothing He has not already done Himself.  “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). 

Our gratitude is displayed in our response back to him and to others.  “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).  God expects the mercy He displayed to us to overflow into our showing mercy to others, “because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.  Mercy triumphs over judgment!” (James 2:13). 

Almighty, powerful, awesome God, we humble ourselves before your great judgment seat.  You have seen the error of our ways and provided our way of escape from your heavy hand of judgment.  We are exceedingly grateful to you!  Help us to display our gratitude to you by showing your mercy to others.  Let us remember it is the goodness of God which leads to repentance.  Thank you for erasing our colossal debt.  Help us to remember the place you have made for us now and also the place from which you delivered us, that we might avail ourselves of all the fullness you died to bring us and remember the wretched state we were in without Your mercy.  Oh great God be praised!  We marvel in your mercy and thank you with sincere hearts, souls and minds!

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

God is Just

“Clouds and thick darkness surround him;

righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne”

Ps 97:3

Justice.  The word summons unique images to different people.  For me I see a great building with a columned exterior and grand courtroom inside where the judge is going to hand down a verdict.  I imagine this is a common image for many people.  Another commonality may be that the judge must be a hard soul, an impartial evaluator, a cold, hard person who acts only on the facts.  You can almost hear him interrupting your defense of your actions with his thunderous gavel – boom, boom, boom – “Just the facts, please, just the facts!”  You are trying to tell him why you did what you did, but your emotions and faulty reasoning are not facts.  You did wrong. Period. That is the fact.  Here is another: all people who do wrong are sentenced.  Yet another: the sentence for doing wrong is an all-expenses-paid, one-way trip to Hell, for eternity. 

Seems a bit harsh, don’t you think?  What about the extenuating circumstances?  What about the peer-pressure? What about the need for pleasure?  Well, here’s the rub.  We are standing before the judge, who must, by definition, be impartial, and who must uphold the law.  We mentioned last month that all things are good in so far as they agree with the attributes of God, and bad in as far as they disagree with the attributes of God.  Now remember an attribute is something which is true of its object.  God cannot separate Himself from Himself or He would cease to be God.  So how can God, who is perfect, judge the imperfect and come up with anything other than a guilty verdict in comparison to Himself?  Simple.  He cannot. 

Seems a bit harsh, don’t you think?  Well, here’s the rub again.  The law, which the judge must uphold, is not partial.  It expects perfection, absolute obedience, and flawless precision in conformity to itself.  Now there is nothing outside of God which influences Him or changes Him in any way.  So perfection is what God expects, it is all He can expect.  To expect other than perfection would be to make Him unjust.  Since God is perfect, it follows He must be perfectly just.  One who is perfectly just cannot turn a blind eye to injustice (lack of conformity to perfection).   Okay, so where does that leave us?  Unfortunately, it leaves us in Hell. 

Seems a bit harsh, don’t you think?  Well maybe to us, but to the perfect one, the high judge of all, it can be no other way.  But God, being who He is, is also perfectly merciful.  So how does He reconcile the imperfect with the perfect?  There can be only one way.  The perfect must be sacrificed for the imperfect.  The only one who could claim perfection must die for the imperfect and take away all their imperfection.  Infinite perfection and absolute justice dies at the hand of the ridiculously corrupt, the epitome of impurity.  So the righteous (just) requirements of the law are met on behalf of the imperfect if they claim the sacrifice as their own.   And just how do they do that? They must ask Christ to forgive their sin and be their Lord (master).  This is the ONLY way.

Seems a bit harsh, don’t you think?  I don’t!  His sacrifice is the most self-less act ever committed.  It is the most beautiful display of love and mercy.  It is complex yet utterly simple.  But on this there is no bending of the rules: we must confess our guilt (our lack of perfection), for we have parted ways with His infinite goodness.  We have sinned.  But “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9).  “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe…He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:22, 26).  So God has satisfied the righteous requirements of the law in that He died as a sacrifice for sin (see Romans 8:3-4).  So God is just when He condemns the sin and merciful when He pardons it.  He is the perfect judge who has over-whelming compassion on all those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.

God does not act outside of accordance with His nature.  But to look at it as God being forced to act a certain way because of His attributes is wrong.  His attributes are names we give His consistent behavior.  We say God is just because He acts that way.  But it goes deeper than that.  God IS just, He does not merely act that way.  He IS the truth, He does not merely have it.  He IS merciful, He does not merely operate that way.  He IS love, He does not merely posses it.  So when He judges He IS both just and merciful in perfect balance.  “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.” Psalm 103:6

Oh great Judge, help us to understand our hearts are deceitfully wicked and we have no hope of righteousness except by faith in Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  We accept your correction as loving guidance and see your wrath upon the wicked as just.  There but for the grace of God we are.  Open our hearts a fresh to receive your cleansing mercy.  You are perfectly just and perfectly merciful!  Only in you could such perfection bring harmony between justice and mercy.  We thank you Oh, Lord for your wisdom.  Your greatness no one can fathom!

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible New International Version The Old Testament and The New Testament Thompson's original and complete system of Bible study A complete numerical system of chain references, analyses of books, outline studies of characters and unique charts, with pictorial maps and archaeological discoveries. Ed. Frank Charles Thompson, et al. Grand Rapids: Zondervan      Bible Publishers, 1983. Print.

God is Good

“The Lord is good to all; He has compassion on all He has made”

Ps 145:9

Another moral attribute of God, which we can possess as well, is goodness.  Goodness defines right from wrong.  Without goodness, right could be wrong and wrong could be right.  Goodness makes moral judgments about the application truth.  To define Goodness is like trying to see the wind.  You cannot.  At best you see only the affects of the wind and not the wind itself.  Merriam-Webster defines goodness as: decent, ethical, honest, honorable, just, moral, right, righteous, right-minded, straight, upright, and virtuous.  They define the opposite of Good as:  bad, black, dishonest, dishonorable, evil, evil-minded, immoral, indecent, sinful, unethical, unrighteous, wicked, and wrong.¹

To describe someone as good is usually a judgment on their behavior.  Their behavior is seen as honest, moral, right, and virtuous.   We cannot fully know someone else and therefore the best judgments we can make about the person’s character are those we make because of their actions.  The same is true of God.  By His actions we can proclaim Him good, but with God it goes deeper than that.  His very nature is good.  And since it is part of His nature we know a few things about His goodness.  It is infinite, perfect, unchanging (never growing more or less good), dependable, and eternal.  Here is great comfort.  The goodness of God never changes, it is dependable and infinite. 

God is good to us because it is part of His nature, not because of some merit on our part or some compensation we deserve.  Salvation is a free gift because the good nature of God caused Him to provide it to all men at a tremendous personal cost to Himself.  It is available to all because He is good to all.  He blesses and causes blessing upon people because He is good.  He can only create good things.  He can only give good things.  “Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17.  He does not have bad things to give and He does not create bad things.  Last month we learned of the faithfulness of God as Psalm 145:13 says, “The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made.”  So the point is not only is He faithful, but He is faithfully good.  We can take great comfort in the fact that He is always good.  We can expect Him to always act good towards us.  “He is the same yesterday, today and forever” Heb 13:8. 

Since He is the truth, all things can be judged good or bad in their relationship to Him.  All things that are against the nature of God are bad or evil.  All things that agree with the nature of God are good.  Without goodness being an immovable, unshakeable attribute of God, we would have no basis to judge right from wrong.  Notions of right and wrong, good and evil, immoral and moral, just and unjust, ethical and unethical, indeed, every moral judgment has its roots in the goodness of God.  Without goodness being an immovable, unshakeable attribute of God, we would have no basis to expect good things from Him.  He has given us Himself and all He has as our inheritance (see John 16:13-15, 2 Pet 1:3-8; Eph 1:3; Rom 8:17, 32).  He has made all good things available to us.

Now remember that His goodness is in perfect harmony with His judgments and wrath.  When He pours out His wrath, He is still acting out of His goodness.  His compassion and grace flow out of His goodness and His judgments are mandated out of His goodness.  He cannot be good if He is not just.  Justice and goodness walk hand in hand.  When He spares the evil, it is because of His goodness and mercy and when He disciplines the evil it is because of His holiness, justice, and righteousness.  So whatever He does, it is always good.

“For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.” Ps 100:5

“Give thanks to the Lord, for his is good; His love endures forever.”  1 Ch 16:34

“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” Ps 34:8

“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble.  He cares for them who trust in Him.” Nah 1:7

Footnotes

¹ "Goodness-Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dicitionary." Merriam-Webster. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2008. <www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goodness >.

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible New International Version The Old Testament and The New Testament Thompson's original and complete system of Bible study A complete numerical system of chain references, analyses of books, outline studies of characters and unique charts, with pictorial maps and archaeological discoveries. Ed. Frank Charles Thompson, et al. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1983. Print.

God is Faithful

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.”

Heb10:23

Here we come to the first of the moral attributes (things true of something) of God, attributes which we can possess as well.  The first one we will look at together is faithfulness.  The other attributes of God point out logically that this one must be true as well.  The immutability of God (He does not change) points to the supposition that He is faithful.  He cannot be otherwise.  He cannot lie (Num 23:19).  He is the truth (John 14:6).    Even if we are not faithful; God must be faithful.  His immutability, His omnipotence, His omniscience, His wisdom all point to His faithfulness.  A.W. Tozer points out in Knowledge of the Holy that we cannot think of the attributes of God in a vacuum.  Each one shows part of the truth of God.  But it is only looking at how the attributes flow together and influence each other that the true picture of God immerges.¹  Love and justice are at peace in Him.  Judgment and mercy are perfected in Him.  Love is present in His judgments.  Mercy is present in His justice.  So let’s look again to His attributes.  If He cannot change, is the truth, has all the power, knows all there is, and has perfect wisdom to apply His knowledge, how could He be anything but faithful?

Yet we don’t need to logically figure this out, the Scriptures are full of the testimonies of God’s faithfulness.  Colossians 1:16-17 remind us God created all things and in Him all things hold together.  God proclaimed Himself faithful to Moses, not only through the miraculous leading of the Israelites, but by passing in front of Moses saying, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,…” (Ex 34:6).  Moses took hold of the lesson because he later reminded the Israelites, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.” (Deut 7:9).  Jeremiah reminds us of the faithfulness of God’s love and compassions, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lam 3:23).

Herein the Christian should find great comfort; He who promised is faithful (Heb 10:23)!  We do not have a God who wakes up one day and decides to change all the rules, or eradicate earth for no reason, or suspend the law of gravity, etc.  He is dependable, constant, and faithful.  He is there holding the universe together.  He is there watching over His word to fulfill it (Jer 1:12, Isa 55:11).  The Psalmist reminds us, “For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.” (Ps 33:4).  And again, “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made.” (Ps 145:13).  Utter joy and sheer delight!  God is telling us we can depend on Him.  We can “take to the bank” all the promises He gives us in Scripture.  Salvation, redemption, sanctification, righteous, peace, and joy all there for the taking, freely offered and backed up by the word of the faithful God, who does not change.  Healing, forgiveness, miracles, spiritual gifts to further the Kingdom, meaning and purpose, incredible worth, adoption into His family, the secret things of God, the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead living in us, the right to hear His voice, His power for daily living, co-inheritance with Christ, seating in heavenly places with Christ, every spiritual blessing – they are ours, friends, because He who promised is faithful.  Let us be found faithful in our response to His faithfulness.  Let us be found appropriating His promises for ourselves.  Let us be found making good with the incredible inheritance which He has paid for with an inconceivable price.  Let us be found co-laboring with Christ for the Kingdom of God to come in our day.  Let us hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!” (Mt 25:21).  It is the Lord’s good pleasure that we should take Him at His Word and through faith in His faithfulness appropriate His great and precious promises!

O Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, help us to take confident assurance and peaceful rest and active participation in your faithfulness!  Let us so faithfully dwell on your Word, your promises to us, that we find it defining reality more than our senses.  Let our experience not be counted true until it lines up with Your Word, for You are the truth.   Let us sing, believe and take to heart the great hymn of old:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Amen!

Footnotes

¹ Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 78-79. Print.

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

God is Omnipresent

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make by bed in the depths, you are there.”

Ps139:7, 8

“God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works…The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life.”

A W Tozer – The Pursuit of God

The omnipresence of God is the momentous truth that God is everywhere present and nowhere absent.  He fills all time and space equally.  He is nowhere closer or farther away than anywhere else.  This seems hard to grasp, yet mere reason concerning the things we know to be true of God demands that this must be true as well.  How can God be infinite and not be everywhere?  (See Ps 139:7,8 above.)  How can God sustain everything if He is not everywhere?  Colossians 1:17 states “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  How can He be sovereign without ruling over everything? (See Isa 66:1,2.)

I think the distinction must be made as it has been by John Bevere, Bill Johnson, and A. W. Tozer that although God is present everywhere, that are times when we feel His presence more than other times.  We call this the manifest presence of God.  This difference is not one on God’s side of the equation, but one on our side of it.  God is equally presence everywhere.  It is our awareness that changes.  I think too many Christians feel His Presence is only for special occasions and places like church and worship time.   We lose sight of the fact that God’s presence is always here.  Can God really make Himself less or more potent than He already is?  I think not.  He says “I am that I am” and He says “For I am the LORD, I change not.”  It is our understanding that needs to change.  It is our experience that needs to be different.  It is a matter of our faith and our desire for Him that must change.  “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.” 

Yet we don’t feel His Presence all the time, so many times we must confess as Jacob did in Gen 28:16, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.”  We must get away from the idea that we must pray for God to come close as if He were somewhere (heaven) far away and needed to travel to us in order to be next to us.  We must get away from the idea that the Holy Spirit must be invited to come into our meetings.  He is already there. We must ask Him to make us aware that He is there.  We must get away from the idea that God is somehow more present in church than He is in our living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens.  We must get away from thinking of God in spatial terms.  God fills all time and space but He transcends time and space.  Think of a glass representing all time and space there is, ever has been, and ever will be.  Now picture God as the ocean.  Drop the glass in the ocean and you have a picture of how God fills all time and space yet He is bigger (much bigger) than just that. 

We need to understand that it is our openness to Him which makes Him feel closer.  It is our response to His eternal, equilateral presence that determines how close to Him we feel.  It is the Christian disciplines which prepare us to feel more of Him or experience more of Him.  We need to acknowledge with David in Ps139:7, 8 “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make by bed in the depths, you are there.”  And we need to understand with Jeremiah in Jer 23:23, 24 “‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away?  Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord.  ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”  Doctor Luke shows us clearly in Acts 17:27 “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”  Indeed God is always not far from each one of us.  If you have asked Jesus to be your Savior, then the Holy Spirit lives IN YOU.  So our experiencing the manifest Presence of God is not so much a matter of God traveling from somewhere to be with us as it is Him quickening our Spirit-Man or Inner-Man to understand better the truth that He is here and to allow our physical senses to ‘feel’ His Presence with us.  Now surely God can, in His Sovereignty, impress His Spirit upon us so heavily that we have no choice but to feel it.  But this is not the norm, hence our experience of not feeling His Presence more often. 

If, however, this is our desire, to feel His Presence more often, there are things we can do to make ourselves more receptive to experiencing His Presence.  “Draw close to God and He will draw near to you.” James tells us.  Again here are the Christian disciplines leading the way.  Reading the Bible inspires our faith (Rom 10:17), and faith allows us to believe God is and is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him (Heb 11:1,6).  Here we see that there is a principle of the Kingdom of God which tells us not to trust in our experience until that experience lines up with the Word of God.  Indeed, we have in these two verses a mandate to have faith in what we do not see (experience) and hope for what the Word of God tells us is true.  This is how the Kingdom works.  Faith, prayer, praying in tongues, standing on the Word, fasting, memorizing the Word, proclaiming the Word over and over until our minds are renewed and the spiritual things become more real to us than the things we experience with our senses – these are some of the things the Scriptures tells us will activate our faith.  Then suddenly in a moment or several moments we become aware and being to experience what was there all along – His Presence.  Then we can with our senses experience the supernatural, the Presence of God.

Oh God, give us the passion for your Presence again.  May You become more important than anything else.  Take Your place of prominence and preeminence which you so rightly deserve.  Let us not by the senses you gave us, fall into the trap of thinking you are far off.  Help us to draw near to You and experience You drawing near to us.  Help us to live in the continual awareness of Your Presence.   Help us be disciplined and earnestly seek You.  For you declare, “‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord…” Jeremiah 29:12-14.  God help us to seek for you with all our hearts and let us be found byYou.

Resources:

Bevere, John. Drawing near. Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson, 2006.

Johnson, Bill. Strengthen Yourself in the Lord. Shippensburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 2007. The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible New International Version The Old Testament and The New Testament Thompson's original and complete system of Bible study A complete numerical system of chain references, analyses of books, outline studies of characters and unique charts, with pictorial maps and archaeological discoveries. Ed. Frank Charles Thompson, et al. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1983. Print.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 103-107. Print.

Tozer, A. W.  The Pursuit of God.

God is Omnipotent

“Our God is in heaven: he does whatever pleases him”

Psalm 115:3, 135:6

“For nothing is impossible with God."

Luke 1:37

God is omnipotent; all powerful, almighty, source of all power.  In A. W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer points out that God is infinite and therefore His power is limitless.  He further points out that God is the self-sufficient Creator and therefore is the source of all power.¹  Since the source must be at least equal to the power emanating from it, God is equal to all the power there is.

God is Sovereign.  That is to say He does whatever pleases Him.  He cannot be Sovereign without having all power and He cannot have all power unless He is Sovereign.  Tozer writes further that “God possesses what no other creature can: an incomprehensible plenitude of power, a potency that is absolute.”²

Here we must pause for a moment and consider just what it means to be omnipotent.  God is not just the source of power but He controls all power.  For Him there is nothing harder or requiring more effort than anything else.  He can do one thing as easily as anything else.  He sustains the universe which He created and set in motion.  Tozer (in Knowledge of the Holy) and C. S. Lewis (in Mere Christianity) both point out that science’s job is to observe the faithfulness of how God routes His power through creation.  To understand that God created gravity, aerodynamics, the law of lift, the laws physics, these are to understand how God has designed His power to work in creation.  To understand the periodic table of the elements is simply to understand some of the attributes God designed into what He created.  Science observes the faithfulness of God’s power in creation and then calls it the law of gravity, the law of lift, the law of centrifugal force, etc.  These things are all God’s power displayed faithfully in the world. 

Tozer states, “God has delegated power to His creatures, but being self-sufficient, He cannot relinquish anything of His perfections and power being one of them, He has never surrendered the lease iota of his power.  He gives but does not give away.”³  God in His sovereignty has decided to allow us a limited amount of power which He has granted to us.  Note that He has determined the start of this power, the duration of this power, the end of this power and the amount of this power.  To give someone a piece of that which is infinite is not to diminish the infinite at all as it is by definition never ending and incomprehensible.  So the math works like this: infinite subtract 1 is still infinite.  Infinite subtract and comprehensible number is still infinite.  In the same fashion, God has delegated to us a measure of power, yet compared to His own, it is unintelligibly tiny. 

We tend to over-exaggerate our place and power in the universe.  Compared to the known universe we are less than the smallest sub-atomic particle is to us.  God, on the other hand, is bigger than the universe, actually created the universe, and continues to uphold it to this day.  We are the single grain of sand in oceans of desert.  Yet God has seen fit to acknowledge us and, even more astounding, to sacrifice Himself for us. He left behind, or more properly, set aside His perfect power (Phil 2) and allowed Himself to become human and submit to death on our behalf.  One grain of sand in the oceans of desert found worthy of utter sacrifice by the maker of the sand.  He has given what only He could give, Himself, to redeem us.  Now He makes available to us the same power which He exerted in Christ to raise Him from the dead (Eph 1:19-20, Rom 8:11). Now if that was not enough, He also promises to take the mistakes we make and turn them around for good as well (Rom 8:28).  Only an infinitely powerful God could cause all things to work together for good for those who love Him.

John Paul Jackson pointed out an essential difference between God and Satan.  God has limitless power.  Satan has limited power.  We are when placing God and Satan on opposite ends of the scale comparing the infinite with the finite.  This is to say, God is infinitely more powerful than Satan.  Yes, Satan has limited supernatural power and we should not trifle with him, but we must also understand who our Daddy is.  He is the one whom no one can defeat.  He is the victorious warrior.  He is the one who rules Sovereign over the universe, indeed over all that is.  His power is unfathomable.  His deeds are incredible.  Rest secure, my friend, Father is in control.  This reality will end in a moment when He peals back the sky like a scroll and sends His Son for us.  We know we have a God whose hand is not too short to reach us, to redeem us, to restore us.  There is no foe who can stand in His way.  There is no one and nothing more powerful than He.

"Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” - Jeremiah 32:17.  I would like to challenge you to read Job chapters 38-40 and Isaiah chapter 40 at this point.  Go ahead.  Yup set this right down and pick up your Bible.  The rest of this can wait.  Have you finished?  Okay.  Doesn’t that give you new perspective?  Then we can join the heavenly multitude shouting “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns” (Rev 19:6) and also with Job in 42:2 saying, "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.”

Footnotes

¹ Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 65. Print.

² Tozer. 65.

³ Tozer. 66.

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Audio.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

God is Omniscient

“Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”

Psalm 147:5

Here again is another attribute of God which only He can posses – perfect knowledge.  He knows all there is to know.  There is not a fact, statistic, law, principle, detail, which He does not fully know and understand.  God cannot learn or discover anything.  Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy points out, “Because God knows all things perfectly, He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well.  He never discovers anything.  He is never surprised, never amazed.  He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does He seek information or ask questions.” ¹  Nothing is hidden or unknown to Him.  He knows thoughts as well as actions.  He must in order to be a fair judge.  Hebrews 4:13 states, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to we must give account.”

Tozer writes further, “God perfectly knows Himself and, being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known.” ²  There are no mysteries to God.  He knows perfectly all cause and effect, all laws that govern an object and make it be what it is.  He can account for everything that has ever happened, is happening and is yet to happen.  He cannot forget anything and does not have to call things into recollection.  He simply exists there.  He simply has all the knowledge.   “From him and to him and through him are all things.  To him be the glory forever!  Amen.” – Hebrews 11:36

God knows the “Why?” –  something science can never tell us.  C S Lewis reminds us in Mere Christianity that science tells us only what happened in a specific setting when something was tested.  Science shows us the pattern of behavior objects, animals, or plants obey – but never really why they obey.  If science knew all there was to know in the universe, it could still not answer the question “why.”  Science mostly answers the question “What happens when…,” but God knows why those things happen because He is the source and author of all things.  Interestingly, this implies that the Bible (God’s written word) is a better source of explanation about why we exist or why the universe was created than science will ever be able to offer.  Science also struggles to answer the question of “How” when applied to the origin of things.  How did the universe come into being?  How did all the plant species and animal species come into being?  How did humans come into being?  Science is held up in time always trying to answer the question after the fact of something happening.  God lives outside of time and as C S Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, He has the ability to see all points in time at the same time.  He can and does interact with all points of time simultaneously. 

Herein lays the problem with discussing the doctrine of predestination, for God no such thing can exist as pre or post a given point in time.  He lives in the eternal now and already knows perfectly what is going to happen for us in time because He is already there.  So for God there is no foreknowledge there is only knowledge – perfect knowledge of all things.  Now if we look at it from man’s point of view, then God foreknows everything about everything, but here we have lapsed back into treating God as if He were captured in time, which He is not.  He knows all things before they happen, so from our point of view, we say he foreknows.  See Romans 8:28-30 I Peter 1:1-2, and Ephesians 1:3-5.

Tozer points out the great fear or wonderful anticipation of mankind with the fact that God knows all the thoughts of a man before the man has them.   “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.” - Psalm 139:1-4   For the evil, unregenerate man this is a terrifying thought.  For the regenerated man this is an extremely comforting thought for God knows all my wrong doings and His judgments are suspended in Christ.  For the unregenerate man, the terrifying thought of his impending judgment becomes too much to bear.  “This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” - 1 John 3:19-20

God knows us better than we know ourselves.  He knows the number of hairs on our heads, the thoughts inside our heads before we think them, our actions before we carry them out.  He alone knows all the mysteries of the universe and the unsearchable riches of Christ – and He wants to share them with you.  He wants to make known the deep mysteries of God.  “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15

Oh Great and Mighty God, Source and Truth are found in only in You.  Help us to embrace you whole-heartedly.  Help us by Your Spirit to understand the deep things of God (1 Cor 2:9-16) and to marvel again at whom You are.  Oh that One so highly exalted would willingly, lovingly choose to sacrifice for us and call us Your children and share with us Your secrets.  Help us to understand the treasure we have in You – the very source of life, truth, knowledge and all that is good. Amen!

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” - Romans 11:33

Footnotes

¹ Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 56. Print.

² Tozer. 56.

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Audio.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

God is Immutable

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” 

Hebrews 13:8

“All that God is He has always been, and all that He has been and is He will ever be.”

An Early Church Father

Here is yet another attribute (thing true of) God which only pertains to Him – immutability.   To say He is immutable is to say He is unchanging, that is to say He cannot change.  Change is defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary as “to differ, alter, substitute for, cause to become different, undergo alteration or replacement, undergo variation, to convert.” ¹

Malachi 3:6a says, “I the Lord do not change.”  Psalm 102:27 declares, “But you remain the same, and your years will never end.”  Hebrews 13:8 states, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”  This is a difficult thing for us to picture in our mind’s eye.  Here, on one the one hand, the practical man knows that all living things change.  Is this not part of the definition of what it means to be alive?  Growth implies change.  Hence no growth equals death.  In this world we find this to be true more often than not.  On the other hand, we know God is eternally alive yet without change, alteration, growth or variance.  Only perfection could accomplish this state of life without change. 

A. W. Tozer, in his book The Knowledge of the Holy points out the following:

For a moral being to change it would be necessary that the change be in one of three directions. He must go from better to worse or from worse to better; or, granted that the moral quality remain stable, he must change within himself, as from miniature to mature or from one order of being to another.  It should be clear that God can move in none of these directions. His perfections forever rule out any such possibility…We have seen how God differs from His creatures in being self-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal.  By virtue of these attributes God is God and not be some other being.  One who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not God.  Only a being composed of parts may change, for change is basically a shift in the relation of the parts of a whole or the admission of some foreign element into the original composition. Since God is self-existent, He is not composed. There are in Him no parts to be altered. And since He is self-sufficient, nothing can enter His being from without. ²

This concept of immutability leads us down other avenues of thought as well.  We can infer by this that God has perfect knowledge and power and presence.  If He were to learn, this would be a change, hence this would not be God.  God does not think they way we do because He already knows everything.  He does not reason things out or solve things.  There is no mystery unknown to Him.  He does not merely know about all things but is actually the cause of all things.  C. S. Lewis states that all created things have some attribute of Him in them.  If He did not have all power and perfect authority, He could gain or lose some power and thus change.  If He was not all present everywhere at once, He could change position.  God never grows, changes, gets old or worn out.  He is, always has been, and always will be, perfect in Himself.  He requires no change.  He never becomes weak or tired or irritated.  

Tozer points out that God cannot change and man cannot help but change.  That is God never changes and man is in a constant state of flux.  Tozer writes:

The law of mutation belongs to a fallen world, but God is immutable, and in Him men of faith find at last eternal permanence. In the meanwhile change works for the children of the kingdom, not against them. The changes that occur in them are wrought by the hand of the in-living Spirit… yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change.  To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance. ³

Scripture points out why this attribute of the immutability of God is so important.  “God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.  Does he speak and then not act?  Does he promise and not fulfill?” – Numbers 23:19. 

James 1:17 puts it this way, “Every good and perfect light is from above coming down from the Father or the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”  Here in is the compounded joy that God is immutable:  we can depend on His promises and offers of help to be true and carried out.   We do not have to wonder if He will still want to help us, to save and redeem and sanctify us, tomorrow or next week or next year.  We can depend whole heartedly upon His faithfulness for He will not change.  We can trust and rely upon His love, grace and mercy (all His attributes) to be ever extended to us.  C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “God made us, invented us, and He designed us to run on Himself for fuel.  God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself because it is not there.  There is no such thing.”  We are a human machine and God is the fuel that makes us run the best.  Other things can be used for fuel but “the machine conks.  It seems to start up alright and run a few yards but then it breaks down.  They are trying to run it on the wrong juice.” ⁴  He in Himself is the fulfillment of all He has promised.

Oh, Immutable One, how great you are!  Your perfection is unmatched! Thank you for showing us Your unchangeable nature.  Help us to depend on, rely upon, and trust in You; for You change not.  Help us, Lord, to grow in our knowledge of You, in our awareness of Your Presence dwelling in and among us.  Help us appropriate Your great and precious promises.  Help us allow Your Spirit, living with us, to make us more like You.  May our engines run ever longer and cleaner on Your Presence.  Help us understand, embrace, and trust in You as, in a very real sense, You are the answer to all our problems.  Help us to fellowship with and relate to You, Oh Great Unchanging One!  Amen!

Footnotes

¹ Neufeldt, Victoria, and David Bernard Guralnik. "Change." Webster's New World Dictionary of American English. Thrird College Edition ed. New York: Webster's New World, 1989. 234. Print.

² Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 49-50. Print.

³ Tozer. 52.

⁴ Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Audio.

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Audio.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

God is Infinite

“All our thoughts about Him will be less than He, and our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison with Him.”¹  Novatian

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out!”  Romans 11:33

God’s infinitude is yet another one of the absolute attributes only God can possess.  Here is why only God can posses such an attribute; the rest of us have limits.  We only live so long, can only do so much, only are so big (or rather small), can only be in one place, can only live in one time (now). God has never ceased to exist, can do anything, is boundless in size, is everywhere at once and in every time and without time all at once.  A. W. Tozer puts it well in Knowledge of the Holy to say, “Infinitude, of course, means limitlessness, and it is obviously impossible for a limited mind to grasp the Unlimited.”²  And further, “Even to try to conceive of it would appear to be self-contradictory, for such conceptualization requires us to undertake something which we know at the outset we can never accomplish.”³ 

The way we try to understand something is to understand its limits.  We say a house has so many square feet of space in size, is a certain style (which is defined by a classification of limitations) and is a specific shape.  These things are what define the house and make it what it is. We cannot conceive of a house that is every size, every style, and every shape.  Try to describe this house to someone and you find yourself trying to describe everything known to man about housing.  It simply cannot be every size, every style, and every shape.  It must be a definite size, certain style, and distinct shape.  The limitations of the house make it unique and define what it is and how we interact with it. 

So here is our dilemma.  When we say God is infinite, knows no bounds, is without limit, and is measureless; how then do we define Him?  We must make reference to the known to describe the unknown and in so doing we continually fall short of understanding who He is.  Tozer puts it like this, “All that He is He is without growth or addition or development.  Nothing in God is less or more, or large or small.  He is what he is in Himself, without qualifying thought or word.  He is simply God.”⁴ 

Novatian writes, “At the contemplation and utterance of His majesty all eloquence is rightly dumb, all mental effort is feeble.  For God is greater than mind itself.  His greatness cannot be conceived.  Nay, could we conceive of His greatness He would be less that the human mind which could form the conception.”⁵

“Because God’s nature is infinite, everything that flows out of it is infinite also” Tozer observes.⁶   And a wonderful observation it is.  What does He offer?  Life eternal, limitless mercy (not getting what we deserve), infinite grace (getting we do not deserve), boundless love, peace which passes understanding, joy unthinkable!  He is the boundless, measureless, limitless one!  He offers us limitless life!  He gives away unbridled grace! 

He has infinite knowledge, infinite presence, infinite power, infinite sovereignty, and infinite existence.  His moral attributes are infinite also: infinite holiness, infinite righteousness, infinite love, infinite faithfulness, infinite mercy, infinite grace and infinite justice.  So this tells us we are not beyond reaching and repairing.  He has infinite resources to put at your disposal as you appropriate His promises as set forth in His Word.

“Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”  Psalm 147:5

Oh Great God, Limitless One, we bow before you and humbly ask you would continue to expand our knowledge of You.  We ask, Infinite One, that You would show us ever-increasing measures of Your boundless character, Your measureless power, Your infinite faithfulness, and the fullness of all Your attributes.  Help our limited minds, hearts, souls and spirits to comprehend You to the greatest measure possible and then to stand back in utter awe, absolute wonder and awesome amazement at who You are eternally and all You do as you live in the eternal now outside of time and space!  We are grateful have a God so magnificently majestic as You!  We are privileged to be Your Children and humbled to call You, Father.  As we strive to understand and experience You, make us, Dear LORD, more like You.  In Jesus’ Mighty Name, Amen!

Footnotes

¹ Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 45. Print.

² Tozer. 44.

³ Tozer. 44.

⁴ Tozer. 45-46.

⁵ Tozer. 44.

⁶ Tozer. 46.

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.

God is Eternal

God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God  A.W. Tozer

The eternity of God is another one of the absolute attributes only God can possess.  First we must understand what eternity is and is not.  Eternity is NOT the sum of now and every past moment as well as every future moment.  Eternity is NOT the sum of all time. 

You see time is a human construct.  We can live in our mortal bodies only in the now.  We can remember the past and assume that tomorrow will be like today, but NOW is the only moment we can actually live in and change what happens there.  Surely we can do things now which may affect the future but we can not actual dwell in the now and the future and perform change in them at the same time.  Nor can we change the past; it is irrevocably set in the record.  All we can do is affect the now.  Which makes our now decisions of utmost importance. 

Time for us revolves around the known.  We make one trip around the sun and that is a year.  We divide the year into months and weeks.  By the way why is the week seven days?  Because God created the world in seven days.  We divide the time into days by one revolution of the earth in which we see the sun and then the darkness.  Hence is the problem with time it is created just as the sun is created.  There will come a time when the sun and all creation will cease to exist and time will be irrelevant at that point.  A. W. Tozer aptly observes, “Time marks the beginning of created existence, and because God never began to exist it can have no application to Him.”

The eternity of God is defined and implied by numbers of scriptures in the Bible.  Here are but a few.  1 Timothy 1:17 reads “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.  Amen”  God revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14 as, “I AM that I AM.”  This reveals Him as above time.  In Psalm 90:2b Moses declares “..even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”  He made Himself known to the Apostle John stating “‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending’, says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” in Revelation 1:8.  This makes sense how could God be the giver of eternal life unless He is Himself eternal?  Tozer writes in Knowledge of the Holy:

The truth is that if the Bible did not teach that God possessed endless being in the ultimate meaning of that term, we would be compelled to infer it from His other attributes, and if the Holy Scriptures had no word for absolute everlastingness, it would be necessary for us to coin one to express the concept, for it is assumed, implied, and generally taken for granted everywhere throughout the inspired Scriptures.¹

God’s self-sufficiency, self-existence, infinity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience demand His eternalness.  How could He know everything and be everywhere and be all powerful and self-sufficient and self existent and still not be eternal?  He can’t.

Eternity contains time but is not limited by it.  C. S. Lewis suggests that we think of a sheet of paper infinitely extended.  This would represent eternity.  Then on that paper draw a short line to represent time.  As the line begins and ends on that infinite expanse, so time began in God and will end in Him.

God is present at all points of time at the same time, that is, simultaneously.  He is with me now as I am writing, and with me now while I am being born (while this is in the past for me) and with me now while I am dying (while this is in the future for me), and with me now in eternity after I am dead (when I will live in eternity with God).  Tozer observes, “For Him everything that will happen has already happened.”² This thought goes against all we know and experience.  Tozer reasons “He sees the end and the beginning in one view.”³  Yet God alone can say as in Isaiah 46:9c-10a, “…I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me.  I make known the end form the beginning,…”

Oh great King eternal, we accept your offer of eternal life in Jesus Christ.  We join with David and declare “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting, Amen.” Ps 41:13

Footnotes

¹ Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 38-39. Print.

² Tozer. 40.

³ Tozer. 40.

References

All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Audio.

Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.