what is God like?

For thus says the Lord,
who created the heavens (he is God!),
who formed the earth and made it…

There is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is none besides me.

Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
From Isaiah 45

What is God like?

Only a fool would pretend to know the answer to this question. But the Scripture teaches that only a fool would not try to figure it out (Psalm 14:1).

The question is often answered by listing his attributes, and I’ll get to that, but I’d rather start by considering some ways by which we come to respond to him.

God as father
As our father, for example. It’s an imperfect metaphor, of course, since it is colored by our own experience with our own dads. My image of God is somewhat more generous and gracious than my wife’s was when we first got married, since her dad was perhaps more angry and impatient than mine. And it is a dangerous metaphor as well, since we may want to think of him as father even when we are not his child (Matthew 7:23).

But God was never what we imagined him to be, or what we wanted him to be. He is what he is, and we only project our limited understanding on his unlimited majesty. He is not our dad. But the very best dad we can imagine is a very dim shadow of what God is like, and so little by little we come to understand more about his nature and character.

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Jesus says (Matthew 7:11).

Which begins to complicate the picture a bit, since God is not only a caring father, but also an obedient son. And a pervasive spirit. Now I’m not going to provide an exhaustive explanation of the Trinity. I only want to be ordained, after all. But the Scripture clearly affirms it.

Three persons, one God. The father, the son, the spirit. Or, as Dorthy Sayers explained it, the idea, the expression and the energy. Simply put, each of the persons are called God, and we are told over and over there is only one God who made everything.

Jesus wasn’t “made,” since John 1 tells us he (Jesus) was in the beginning with the Father and he (Jesus) made everything that was made. The Spirit was also there in the beginning (Genesis 1).

So when God said in Genesis 1 “Let us make man in our own image,” he was talking to all three of them (us) but there is only one of them, since there is only one God.

(Yes, there are false gods, invented gods, even powerful spiritual forces who might be mistaken for gods or honored as gods, but there is only one God who made everything.)

God as creator
God as creator is a powerful truth, one repeated more in Scripture actually than the more comforting one of God as father. It’s only one of many ways the deity of Christ is established. He not only made all things, but he sustains them “by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3).”

And it’s one of the most powerful ways of understanding our own place in the created order. Created. That’s our place, despite our unfailing efforts to remake God in our image (Romans 1:22-23).

God as creator is in fact where our understanding of God begins. The heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 50:6), and in the same instance our insignificance. Nature itself tells us enough about him to make us want to invent theories about it that exclude him. This witness is so powerful Paul tells us we are without excuse (Romans 1:20).

And it humbles us, or should, while suggesting we should respect what he has made, caring for it and learning from it. And perhaps taking our own creativity more seriously, since we are made in his image, and not the other way around.

Fortunately, he not only chooses to reveal himself through what he has made but also through what he has said. Why he would choose to do that is a greater mystery than the Trinity, as far as I’m concerned.

But he speaks to us, and it is through this revelation that we begin to list his many attributes. Scripture tells us of his works and his wonders. And the bigger he gets the smaller we become.

Making God smaller, however, is a human obsession, and accounts for all manner of religious, political, philosophical and theological mischief. All false theology, “continuing revelation,” and human reasoning occupies itself with limiting the power, mercy, grace, love, or justice of the God revealed in the Bible. All of it tries to make man more important and God less so.

The Bible judges these lies and reveals the truth. It is necessary and sufficient for understanding the story of who God is and what he is doing, drawing to himself a fallen and rebellious people, reclaiming them, redeeming them, and transforming them as a people of his own, all by his grace and all for his glory (Titus 2:14).

Speaking to and through the prophets, the apostles, and, finally, through Jesus himself (Hebrews 1:1-2), we learn more and more about our need and his grace. This is how God speaks to us through Scripture, a work of grace in itself as he inspired it and preserved it without error for our edification, instruction and warning (2 Timothy 3:16).

God as holy
All other religious texts make more of man’s effort and less of God’s glory, a glory revealed in Scripture in a God who is infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his mercy, justice, love, truth, goodness, power, knowledge, righteousness and grace.

Of all his attributes, however, the most remarked in Scripture but perhaps the least understood or desired is his holiness.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come (Revelation 4:8).

The angles proclaim it. The seraphim repeat it, circling endlessly around the throne of God (Isaiah 6:1-4). We sing about it but don’t understand it. He is holy.

The word comes from a root that means cut off, or separated from. Distinct. Not a part of. Separate. Holy. This is the attribute of God that frames all the others.

His mercy, for example, is over and beyond, distinct and separate from ours. So is his justice, love, truth, goodness, power, knowledge, righteousness and grace, all to a degree beyond our comprehension. He is holy. His mercy is holy. His justice is holy. His love is holy. You get the idea.

Our feeble attempts to emulate him come no closer than that of a worm and no further than that of an angel. Any other reading of Scripture is a human conceit. In his presence saints and sinners, prophets and kings, masters and slaves, angles and devils, all ultimately melt in the presence of a holy God, blinded by his glory and awed by his majesty (Isaiah 45:23).

We call this worship, and we are required to do it even though we are incapable of it.

Resolving this dilemma is what the Bible is about.