Introduction to the Attributes of God

As we understand the attributes of God, it colors and affects how we see everything around us. There is no more important knowledge for you to have than a right view of God. If we're to be right anywhere, it must be in the knowledge of God. If we're wrong about who God is, we will be wrong everyplace else.

R.C. Sproul was once asked, what do people outside of the church need to know? His answer, who God is. He was then asked, well, what about those in the church?

What do they need to know? And his answer, it was the same, who God is. And it's this reality that informs everything we do here on Renewing Your Mind. Desiring to help you better know who God is in His fullness is one of the reasons we invited Stephen Lawson to record this series on the attributes of God that you'll be hearing this week and also to write the companion hardcover book.

Both of these resources can be yours for a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. If you grew up outside of the church like I did, when you first become a Christian, you can bring a lot of wrong ideas about who God is. And sadly, to the detriment of God's people, many of those ideas permeate the church and are even in pulpits. So let's begin this study on God's attributes. Here's Dr. Lawson.

It was A.W. Tozier who said years ago, What comes into our minds when we think of God is the most important thing about us. I want to say to you who you believe God to be, what He is like, is the single most important factor in your life. High views of God lead to high and holy living. High views of God lead to exalted, transcendent worship of God.

But low views of God lead to low and base living. Really, our knowledge of God is the continental divide in the Christian life. One drop of water on one side of that continental divide goes down rivers and empties into an ocean of man-centered thinking. On the other side of that continental divide falls raindrops of God-centered thinking that flows down tributaries and into rivers and ultimately ends up in an ocean of God-centered worship and God-centered living and God-centered ministry, God-centered evangelism.

It is the continental divide for how we carry out our Christian lives. The most important thing about you is what comes into your mind when you think of God. In this series, what we want to do is bring sharply into focus our picture of God, our understanding of God. It is our knowledge of God that determines what we think and how we think and how we act and what we believe, how we worship, how we live, how we invest our entire lives. The most important thing about you is what comes into your mind when you think of God. In the course of this series, we want to look specifically at the attributes of God.

It becomes the ultimate template, the ultimate paradigm through which we see everything. It's the knowledge of God that really most defines how we understand ourselves. We can never truly understand how God has made us in His image until we first understand who God is. But more than that, our entire worldview is governed by how we understand who God is. As we understand the attributes of God, it colors and affects how we see everything around us. So, I want to say again, there is no more important knowledge for you to have than a right view of God. If we're to be right anywhere, it must be in the knowledge of God.

If we're wrong about who God is, we will be wrong every place else. It will affect how we conduct ourselves in the marketplace, how we raise our children, our families, how we understand recreation and everything else. This is the single most determinative factor in our lives. Can you think of anything more important than God in your life? Can you think of any thought that's more important than your thoughts of God? I cannot think of anyone or anything that is more important than God.

So here's what I want us to do in this first session. I want us to think first about what is an attribute of God. When we say the attributes of God, what are we saying? The word attribute refers to the qualities that belong to a person.

It's a characteristic of that person. It's a feature that uniquely defines them. An attribute is what you attribute to another person. In the case of God, the attributes of God refer to His character, His nature, His personage. It refers to the perfections of God, the essence of God, the being of God, the qualities of God.

Whenever you get to know a person, you want to know what they are like. And for us to know God, we must know what God is like. The depth of our knowledge of God can never exceed our right understanding of who God is. It was Moses who exclaimed, who is like you among the gods, O Lord? There is no one like God. There are no other gods. There is only one true living God, but God is so unique, God is so distinguishable that the attributes of God define for us who God is. The psalmist says much the same, O God, who is like you? That's a rhetorical question, the answer of which is no one is like God in the uniqueness of the perfections that comprise His character.

The prophets also exclaimed, who is a God like you? So the attributes of God are those character qualities that uniquely define who God is. And so we want to spend in this series our time outlining and profiling those unique attributes of God.

What are those attributes? Well, we will look at some fifteen attributes of God. And let us say at the beginning, to get our arms around God, that's like trying to get our arms around the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, we just cannot do it. It's plumbing at depths of which we can never reach the bottom.

It's trying to scale a height that is beyond us. But what has been revealed about God in His Word is true, and we want to embrace and understand and experience in our own hearts these essential attributes of God. So let me just read through this list. This is where we're going. This is the menu.

This is the agenda. And as I read these attributes of God, there is a sense in which I think for all of us that our heart just leaps out of our chest as we think about the greatness of our God, the glory of our God. But here they are. We're going to talk about the self-existence of God, that God alone has life in Himself, and that we are entirely dependent upon Him, but that He is not dependent upon anyone or anything. We're going to talk about the spirituality of God. By that, I mean that God is a spirit being. He does not have a physical body like you and I have. He is invisible. He's right here in this room.

We just can't see Him with our physical eyes. And because He is a spirit being, He is infinite. All of His attributes are limitless. We're going to talk about the sovereignty of God, that God rules and reigns in the heavens. And as R.C.

Sproul says, there are no maverick molecules in the entire universe. We're going to talk about the holiness of God, that He is transcendent and high and lifted up, and that He is morally pure and blameless. He is flawless in all of His being. And then the three omnis, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, that God is all-present, He is all-knowing, and He is all-powerful.

Our hearts are going to be greatly edified as we consider those three attributes. God is immutable. He never changes. He never increases. He never decreases from everlasting to everlasting.

You are God. He is the God who was and who is and who shall be forever, the truthfulness of God. God tells it like it is. Anything that comes from the mouth of God to us is an accurate and precise account of exactly the way things are. Sin is exactly what God says sin is. Salvation is exactly what God says it is.

Heaven and hell are exactly what God says it is because He is the God of all truth. We're going to consider God's wisdom, the genius of God, that not only does He know everything, but He uses this knowledge in such a way that it is with perfect wisdom that God chooses the highest ends and the best means to achieve those highest ends. All of His ways are perfect. We're going to consider the goodness of God, that God is a good God, and He bestows good things even upon unbelievers. He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. God is good even to the animal kingdom. He feeds them.

He brings the rain and gives them water to drink. He's good even to the physical earth and causes the flowers to blossom. How much more so is He good to you and me, His own children? He gives good gifts to us. We're going to consider His grace. He is a God of all grace, that God has chosen to work towards you and me, His children, not on the basis of our merit or what we deserve, but He freely bestows salvation in Christ to us who cannot earn it and who cannot work for it.

The grace of God is amazing grace. We want to consider His love. God so loved the world. See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us. What is this love of God?

What does it mean that God is love? And then we will look at the foreknowledge of God. We will see that it does not mean that God looks down the tunnel of time to see what sinners will do with Christ. Instead, the word foreknowledge means those whom He foreloved, those whom He chose to love with a redeeming love.

When we see what the word foreknowledge actually means, we will see that it means those whom He chose with great love, those whom He foreordained with His amazing grace. And then finally, we're going to look at His righteousness and His wrath. And His wrath is a necessary part of His character and His being for God to love purity.

He must also hate impurity, and He must be a God of vengeance and wrath towards all that which is unclean and impure. This is an overview of the attributes of God. Some of these attributes are what we call incommunicable attributes, meaning they belong to God and God alone. For example, omniscience.

None of us is omniscient. We don't know all things, but God does. Those are attributes that belong exclusively to God. Other attributes are what are called communicable attributes, which means they are in God and in a small, faint way are in His creatures who are made in His image.

For example, love. We love because God has placed His love within our hearts. We have some wisdom. He is perfect wisdom.

We have some wisdom because we know His Word. So some of these attributes are perfect in God and faintly represented in us. Now, what are the relationships of these divine attributes? I want to tell you three things, and we're still just laying a foundation for our study on the attributes of God.

I want to tell you three things specifically. What can we say about these attributes? Number one, all of these attributes are present in the entire Godhead. They are found in all three persons of the Trinity.

For example, the holiness of God. Generally is God the Father absolutely, perfectly holy, but so also is His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy One of Israel. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. He was the sinless Savior, but so also is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. He too is transcendent and without sin. So each of the attributes of God that we shall consider, they represent the entirety of the Godhead, all three persons. The differences lie in their roles, their functions, their ministries.

Three different ministries that they assume, but they all have one and the same essence. The second thing that I would tell you is that all of these attributes are eternally permanent in God. God is without beginning and God is without end. Each of these attributes has always belonged to God and shall always belong to God. He does not pick up attributes along the way. He does not discard other attributes within time or eternity. He is forever the same. And this is a sense of His immutability. This is important for us to know, because sometimes people make an unwarranted distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, as if these are two different gods or somehow they have changed hats or assumed a different personage. No, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament, is the God of eternity past, the God of eternity future.

He never changes. And all of His attributes are eternally permanent within God. That is a very important distinction for us to understand. The third thing that I would tell you at this point is that all of these attributes are inseparably interconnected. In other words, no one divine attribute can be separated from any other attribute. Each attribute is a part of the whole that comprises the being and the essence of God.

For example, the holiness of God, that defines every other attribute. God's love is holy love. God's judgments are holy judgments. God's truth is holy truth. God's wisdom is holy wisdom. Each attribute is inseparably connected with all of the other attributes. As we think about the attributes of God, it's not as though each attribute is a part of God, like a slice of a pie, and this is a part of God. Well, here's another part of God, and sometimes we end up playing one part of God against another part of God. No, that's not the way that these work. They're woven together like a perfect tapestry.

Each attribute works in perfect unity with every other attribute. They are never conflicting with each other, but they are all pulling in the same direction. Our mentor and teacher, R.C. Sproul, describes it this way. This is one way to affirm what is called the simplicity of God. God is a simple being rather than a complex being who can be divided into parts.

A human being is a complex being with a head, ears, eyes, nose, arms, feet, various organs. When we seek to understand God, we tend to project our human complexity onto His being. We list His attributes, immutability, eternality, omniscience, omnipresence, holiness. We sometimes tend to think of God, Dr. Sproul writes, is made up of one part holiness and one part immutability and one part omnipotence, but all of God is all of His attributes in their entirety. God's holiness is immutable. God's holiness is omnipotent.

God's holiness is eternal. In like manner, His immutability, omniscience, and eternality are defined also by His holiness. He then concludes, every attribute we ascribe to God applies to the whole of God. His attributes all exist mutually in a kind of reciprocality of attributes.

That's very important for us to understand. So, as we begin this study on the attributes of God, let me conclude by asking you this question, why are these so important? Well, if we are to truly know God, if we are to grow in the knowledge of God, if we are to deepen in the knowledge of God, then we must have an accurate and clear understanding of who God is. We cannot grow to know God if we have misrepresentations of who God is in our mind.

The more accurate our understanding of what the Bible says regarding who God is, it will be only to that extent can we truly grow in an experiential knowledge of God within our hearts. In other words, our thinking must be correct in our heads in order for our hearts to enjoy and to worship the one true living God. As I've already said, an accurate knowledge of God, it will define our worship of God. High views of God will lead to high and exalted worship of God.

It is our theology that determines our doxology. It is our understanding of the greatness of God that causes our hearts to rise up in great worship of God. And it is also our knowledge of God that defines how we live our Christian lives. If we are to live godly lives, then we must know what God is like. Say, do you think understanding the holiness of God has any effect on your practical Christian living? It does because the Bible says, you shall be holy as I am holy. And I think ultimately it even defines our evangelism that we don't have to resort to gimmicks and techniques and all the things that so many churches and Christians get into.

No, we say to the nations, our God reigns and we say to the world, behold your God. As we set forth the truth about who God is, our evangelism becomes powerful and effective. So this is our beginning in our study of the attributes of God and I trust that God will greatly bless us as we plunge deeper into this all important subject of God. That is the God we worship and the God we proclaim to a lost and dying world. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind as we embark on a study of the attributes of God. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham.

As I'm sure you could hear today, Stephen Lawson shares the passion that R.C. Sproul had to help people, whether inside or outside the church, know who God is and you can go deeper in this study with Dr. Lawson when you request access to the entire 16-part series simply titled The Attributes of God. And when you give your gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800-435-4343, we'll also send you the companion hardcover book, Show Me Your Glory. This would make for a wonderful book study and a way to help you reflect more deeply on the otherness and magnificence of our God. Request both resources with your year-end gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

Thank you for your generosity. You and I are dependent creatures. Without God, we can't do anything. We couldn't even take our next breath, but that's not true with God. Join us tomorrow as Stephen Lawson considers the self-existence of God here on Renewing Your Mind.