The Doe of the Dawn: A Christian World View. . .

WHAT IS GOD LIKE?

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. --- Is. 6:3

God is Love. --- 1 Jn. 4:8

It is daring if not presumptuous for mortal man to say what God is like. Man would not only be lost for words but lost in every way if God had not disclosed himself. In that disclosure, which we call the Bible, we learn what God is like. To a degree, that is, for it is a matter of paper and ink revealing the mind of God, and this obviously has its limitations. How can the infinite God ever reveal himself to finite man? It is both a magnificent impossibility and a gloriously accomplished fact.

We are especially blessed that God has revealed himself in a book, or in words that were eventually written down and became a book, the Book which we call Scripture. Had it been any other way it would have been confusing and uncertain. A book can not only be read again and again, but it can be studied, searchingly studied. What a marvel, come to think of it, that one can learn about God by opening a book!

It becomes a matter of faith that there is more to the Book than paper and ink. God himself is teaching us in those pages through his Spirit. It is therefore a matter of heart as well as mind. When man turns to the Bible with an open mind and a prayerful heart something very important is happening. But this may be rare, even in an age when thousands of millions of Bibles (The Bible societies alone distributed 501 million copies in 1979!) are published each year.

Various summaries of what God is like have been drawn, which theologians call attributes. The lists of God’s attributes seem overwhelming, if not irrelevant and boring. A lecturer runs the risk of putting his audience to sleep if he belabors the attributes of God. Alexander Campbell in his Christian System does as well as anyone in systematizing them. We include them here so as to present a larger picture of what God is like.

Creator (Creation) reveals: Wisdom

Power

Goodness

Lawgiver (Providence) reveals:

Justice

Truth

Holiness

Redeemer (Redemption) reveals:

Mercy

Condescension

Love

In all these God is:

Infinite

Immutable

Eternal
 

Everything that the Bible says about God or even implies could presumably be placed under one of these headings. But no list seems adequate. This one omits the wrath of God, though Campbell would probably include this with justice. But the wrath of God is so vital in understanding what God is like that it should be emphasized.

So much for lists of attributes. One learns more of what God is like by observing what he says and does, especially as these are set forth in the great dramas of scripture, such as the call of Isaiah, which is recorded in Isaiah 6. The prophet-to-be sees the Lord, “high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.” He hears an angel cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

God’s holiness is the very essence of his being, and this attribute, once realized, causes man to see his own sinfulness as nothing else will. “I am God and not man,” Hosea (11:9) hears God say, “the Holy One in your midst.” What drama that is, the Holy One among the unholy! The prophet could thus see man’s sinfulness in bold relief: “There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and committing adultery.” The prophet is talking about our world as well, and if we do not see sin in that dimension it is because we do not see the holiness of God. We can ask as has Dr. Menninger in his book Whatever Became of Sin?

So it was with Isaiah. There is a Woe, Lo, and Go to his call, and each little word speaks volumes on what God is like. When he saw the Holy One, he moaned “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Man sees what God is like and cries Woe is me! But God’s holiness also causes him to see the fallenness of all mankind: I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Isaiah was made a prophet only when he could woefully cry I am lost! It wasn’t a scorching sermon that did it, but it was seeing the holiness of God.

The Woe was followed by Lo, which marked the prophet’s cleansing of his sin: “Lo, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” He was now ready for the Go, so when the Lord asked who would go for him, he responded “Here I am! Send me.” Go, the Lord said to him, and say to this people. . .”

Here is good news. The Holy One calls sinful man. He forgives sinful man. He reveals himself to sinful man. He uses sinful man to reach out in mercy to other sinful men. If the struggle before the Holy One begins with Woe, it is sealed by Lo, and it continues in Go.

God’s holiness has many properties or expressions. There is the glory of God so often referred to in Scripture, which is what men have sometimes seen rather than God himself. Moses asked to see God’s own face, but he was allowed to see God’s back only “while my glory passes by” (Ex. 33:22). The glory of God is thus the presence (in a special way) of God.

Then there is the eternity of God, which is the persistence of his holiness. “From everlasting to everlasting thou art God,” Psa. 90 declares, while Paul refers to “the God of steadfastness and encouragement” in Rom. 15:5. God keeps on keeping on because he is God and not man, the Holy One. We also see God’s holiness in his power, for all his mighty acts in history are expressions of his holiness, “glorious in power,” as Ex. 15:6 has Moses singing.

“The Holy One shows himself holy in righteousness” Isa. 5:16 assures us, which is still another property of God’s holiness. His immutability is still another expression of his holiness. When one prophet (Mal. 3:6) describes God as one that does not change, he explains why God remains longsuffering in the face of man’s continual rebellion. If God were like man, it would have ended long ago!

There is the wrath of God, an essential attribute of his holiness. It is noteworthy that in the very place God’s love is so dramatically set forth there is the warning “he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him” (Jn. 3:36). God’s holiness makes sin abhorent and intolerable. It is as if God turns away his face in disgust. This is what Isaiah saw in his own soul, the stench of sin. Only God’s mercy allows a place for sinful man, for a time. Eventually all sin must be expelled from the presence of God, for he is the Holy One. The modern church, especially its more liberal persuasion, seems embarrassed by the doctrine of God’s wrath. But to Paul the gospel has no meaning except in reference to God’s wrath: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). Since God is the Holy One his wrath necessarily looms over our sinful world, just as holiness and sin are logically antipodals. Man’s only hope lies in the mercy of the holy God. And this is the point of the gospel.

The apostolic principle, God is love, also points up the unique character of God. He does indeed love, verbal action, but the essence of God reaches beyond that, for God is love, just as he is holy. Once we see both the holiness of God and the love of God we see what God is like.

After writing the greatest sentence of any language, God is love (1 Jn. 4:8), the apostle goes on to tell how this love was demonstrated: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” We’ve heard about manifest destiny, but how about manifest love? In manifesting love the Holy One manifested himself. What a revelation, the Christ in the very image of God serving as manifest love! When John says God sent his Son into “the world,” he is not referring to towns, cities, and nations, but to the organized system of evil that stands in defiance of his holiness.

The Holy One, the one who is love itself, sent his Son to the world to be murdered. Somehow the wrath of God demanded it, for sin had to be atoned for, “so that we might live,” as John puts it. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” the golden text of the Bible assures us, and this tells us all we need to know about why God is love. He so loved that he gave, and he gave ultimately and transcendently. He is love and he gave himself. It is a mystery too vast for our understanding. We only need to believe it.

This is the way John puts it when he again pens that majestic line God is love. “So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him,” he says in 1 Jn. 4:16. We “know” God’s love in the sense of being fully assured, not in the sense of comprehending. Had you thought in terms of believing the love of God, as the apostle does here? This is the heart of faith, believing God’s love. It is the antidote to legalism.

Like holiness, love has its properties, such as grace and mercy. What is mercy but God’s love and what is grace but manifest love? Let us no longer define grace as unmerited favor, for it is much more than this. It is God giving himself in Jesus Christ.

But even before Christ the Holy One favored his people with grace and mercy, and one more myth that we must overcome is the idea that the God of the Old Testament was a God of wrath while the God of the New Testament is a God of grace and mercy. The truth is that both God’s grace and wrath are evident in both Testaments. Whether under the Old or the New, no one has ever been saved except by God’s grace. No one under any dispensation has ever been saved by law! One of the great texts on what God is like is in Ex. 34:6, where he is depicted as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. This repeated again and again in the Old Testament, such as in Ps. 103:8: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

Our world view therefore is to be centered in the creator God, whose essence is holiness and love. --- the Editor