I know whom I have believed
In last week’s post, I wrote that knowing who God is and what He is like is just as important as knowing what He says about us as His followers, or even more so. Today I want to say, yes, even more so: I do believe that knowing and understanding God’s identity is the most important thing, because that changes everything in our mind and attitude. There cannot be time better spent than time spent in researching and understanding who God truly is.
Especially as it seems that misrepresenting His character is a chief preoccupation of our culture. (Not very surprising, since it was the serpent’s tactic from the beginning to plant into people’s minds the idea that God doesn’t have their best interests at heart.) There is a fixed pair of ideas about God in our culture, for us to stumble over in whichever direction we look: first, that He doesn’t exist, and second, that He is a bad guy. Yep, it’s an obviously absurd combination – isn’t it extremely amazing though how so many people can hold firmly to both at the same time, and feel mighty superior because of it? This conviction, although not so old as a cultural staple, is very loud and strident nowadays.
There is another approach to the idea of God, which is more of a deep rumble, softer but not less widespread than the first, and with a much longer history: the conflation between God and everything else. This is often taken further, to mean that, if God is everything and everything is God, then people are gods, if only they would see it. (Where have we heard that before?) Again, the idea that ‘everything is one’ is noticeably unsound, but hey, why let logic stand in the way of self-realization?
Of course, false ideas about God are many, and the sad reality is that there are also many people who make a firm choice to never even entertain any ideas about God if they can help it.
But for us, who have chosen to put our trust in Him, it matters so, so much, that we continue to think and reflect on who He really is, and what His character is really like.
As the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, knowing who it is that we have believed, and entrusted our life to, brings us peace and inspiration even in the most difficult of circumstances (2 Timothy 1:12).
Becoming closely acquainted with His identity, as revealed in the Bible, is even more important than spending time reflecting on our own identity. He is the most important, and inasmuch as we acknowledge it we can find peace, satisfaction, and our own selves.
In this new year, I hope that you too will choose as a priority to find out as much as you can about the Lord! In 2020, because of the sudden absence of obligations outside the home, I had the opportunity to listen a lot more to His word being faithfully taught and explained, and it made me more curious, enthusiastic and interested in God than ever before! I’m very keen to continue.
There are two aspects of God’s identity that I really want to understand better and better. He has, on one hand, some characteristics that show He is completely Other, utterly unlike us; on the other, some traits which He imparted to us, and in which He wants us to grow and become more like Him, and more united with Him. (Because He does have our best interests at heart.) Understanding these two aspects of who God is is a great antidote to the false ideas I mentioned above.
All these are closely related to our identity, to who we are. The things which set Him apart from His creation make His creation, and thus us and who we are, possible. The characteristics that He imparts to us make us who we are.
God is the only one who is self-existent, self-sufficient, infinite, omnipresent, without a beginning, and unchanging in His essence. He is the only one who is three persons in one being: the source of both personhood and community. He is the only one of His kind, qualified to be our Author; our Redeemer; our Righteous Judge. There is none besides Him, because there is none like Him in the attributes listed above.
He is also Truth. He is omniscient and omnisapient – He knows everything and is all-wise. In His mercy, He reveals Himself and His ways to us in the Bible: He imparts truth to us, and in the person of Jesus gives Himself, the Truth, to us. He gives us knowledge and wisdom and calls us to have wisdom and knowledge not as a means of ‘self-realization’, but as the foundation of repentance, and of living rightly with Him. Knowledge pursued apart from Him leads us further and further away from Him: and separation from Him is death. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. I want to know Him more and more, so that by understanding who He is I might have the appropriate attitude towards Him, and thus begin to live wisely and help others have wisdom too.
God is good. The ones who reject Him shrilly shout otherwise, but creation and revelation proclaim it. Love, grace and mercy are His attributes. His generosity and patience are astounding. He made humans able to love, to be gracious, merciful, generous and patient, and planted in them a deep desire both to receive love, grace and mercy, and offer them to others in their turn, even when no mere natural reason exists for us to love, give and forgive. As fallen beings, we fall sorely short of loving as we ought and want to, but through the redemption and regeneration He provides, we can be more and more like Him in these things.
God is holy. He is righteous and just. His holiness, righteousness and justice set Him completely above and apart from us, but His desire and work is that we might become more and more like Him in all three.
God is free. God is all-powerful. In my post about responsibility, I explored a bit the interdependent relationship between freedom and power. In God, both of them are perfect. “Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!” He is Sovereign. He has the last word. He does what He wants, and what He wants is done. And it is a reason for joy and exultation! Not only because the accomplishment of His good and just plans is guaranteed, but also because He imparts power and freedom to us, His representatives. He has made us like Him, with true ability to choose and act. And our freedom and power is not diminished, but on the contrary, increases as we submit ourselves to Him and join ourselves to His will, to His plans and desires. Because His desire is for our freedom, and for us to reign together with Christ.
He wants to gather us to Him. He made us like Him and wants us to be together forever. God is our Father and we are His children; Jesus is the Vine and we are the branches; Jesus is the Head and we are His body.
These are the things I want to think about a lot this year, and I hope you will, too.
