“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
Though we could talk about God’s nature and character for thousands of pages, I’m going to limit myself to a few topics that our culture tends to get really wrong.
First off: God is a spirit. God predates both matter and energy, so God cannot be either of those things. What is spirit? Honestly, we don’t really know. I’m sure theologians and philosophers have ideas, but really we don’t know anything for sure except that it is neither matter nor energy.
I would say spirit is what God is made of except we are part spirit. But we’re also part matter. However, if the spirit is separated from the matter we continue as spirit, so whatever spirit is, it’s fundamental to identity.
What does it mean that God is spirit? First, it means God is immaterial. He has no body (despite what Mormons say). Some think this makes God less real than physical things, but, as Wayne Grudem points out, since God’s spirit predates and made the physical world, that spirit is more real than matter.
His being immaterial is part of the reason it is unlawful to create an “image” of God — he cannot be properly represented by any image, so any attempt would produce something beneath him.
“But the Bible talks about God having eyes and hands and speaking and smelling.” Yes. It also talks about him having wings. It describes him as a fire and as a wind. Many figures of speech are used to help us understand God, including anthropomorphisms like having hands.
One of those anthropomorphisms is the use of gender. God is not male or female, but God has chosen male pronouns as well as terms like Father and Son to communicate with us. Many people today want to misgender God, but had God wanted to use female pronouns, he would have done so. We need to seek to understand what he is saying about himself by the terms he uses to describe himself.
God’s being spirit means he is invisible. We cannot see spirit. Except when God wants us to. We call those events theophanies. There have been times when God has appeared visibly, though some of these may have been merely visions. On occasion God has even used some kind of physical form to communicate with people. If God can make a universe, creating a physical representation shouldn’t be that hard, but that’s not his normal mode of existence. God told Moses that no one can see him and live (Ex 33:20), so those times when people have “seen” God have been either visions or just the tiniest glimpses of the whole.
Because God is spirit, he can be everywhere (ie, “omnipresent”). Paul said God “is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27-28).
“How can God be all around us and we not know it?” But we know other things are like that. We live awash in the earth’s magnetic field, cosmic rays, and radio signals. And we’re blissfully unaware of all of it — until an aurora reminds us of the magnetic field. God’s presence is just one more thing that surrounds us that we can’t sense. Unless he wants us to.
God pervades the universe. As Solomon said, “The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain [God]” (1Kings 8:27), but he chooses to be especially “near” some places and some people (more figures of speech). He makes himself perhaps more tangible at times, in certain places, and to some people. But he’s always there.
Believers should find God’s omnipresence both alarming and comforting. We cannot hide from God. He will always see our sin. As Jonah found out, we cannot run so far that God cannot find us. But far more importantly to most of us, we cannot wander so far God cannot find us, nor can we find ourselves in any danger where we are alone. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire, we do not suffer alone, whether the one in the fire with us is visible or not. As David said,
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 my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast (Psalm 139:7-10).
God has promised, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Heb 13:5). We should live our lives like we believe that.
For more on this, I recommend “The Character of God: ‘Communicable’ Attributes (Part 1)” in Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem.
Image credit: Aurora by Richard Droker
“This is what the LORD says:
‘Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength
or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this:
that they understand and know me...’” (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
Can we know God? If we can, what can we know? Isn’t God too big for us to comprehend?
There’s an old tale of a group of blind men who encounter an elephant. Each touches a different part of it and thinks the elephant is like a rope (the tail) or a fan (the ear) or a snake (the trunk). This is supposed to teach that we all get little glimpses of God and shouldn’t think we have the whole picture, the whole truth.
The problem with this illustration is that, in reality, the elephant can talk. We are not stumbling and feeling our way, trying to figure out God. He has told us what he wants us to know.
It is true that we cannot know God fully. He is infinite, and we are finite. We have less of a chance of fully understanding God than ants do of understanding quantum mechanics. But we can understand what he has chosen to reveal. This is true because God made us to know him. Jesus said, “This is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). God’s plan is that there should be a day when “no longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Heb 8:11).
God reveals himself to us through general revelation (the world around us) and special revelation (specific messages he has given, now recorded in the Bible). He has revealed what he wants us to know, what he knows we can understand.
As Spurgeon said, “There must be knowledge of God before there can be love to God.” So he has revealed things about himself, his ways, and his plans. The passage above from Jeremiah continues: “[L]et the one who boasts boast about this: that they understand and know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.”
He wants us to know his character, that he is kind and just and righteous. He wants us to appreciate these things about him, and he wants us to act like him. So we will be exploring God’s nature and character in the days ahead.
Now how do we get to know God?
In a sense, we get to know God the same way we get to know anyone — by spending time with him. We talk to him through prayer, and he talks to us through his Word. This includes knowing certain facts about him. But it is more than that. If you know a person but don’t know that this person is funny or kind or creative, do you really know that person? No. But merely knowing those facts is not sufficient to know that person, either. You have to experience that on a personal level.
So how does that apply to God? Let’s turn to the reigning expert on the matter, JI Packer, in his classic Knowing God:
“How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into a matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
“Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God.
“Its purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let his truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart.”
It also requires living in light of what he has revealed to us. “Knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.”
Does that sound like a lot of work? It’s not a task for the lazy. God wants us to put some effort into it, to show that we’re serious. But the effort is rewarded handsomely.
The go-to work on this topic, and one that every Christian should read, is Knowing God by JI Packer.
Picture credit: Blind Men Appraising an Elephant by Ohara Donshu
“You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).
Can we be good without God? The last argument for the existence of God I want to look at is the moral argument. It’s one that is frequently misunderstood by people on both sides, so we must tread carefully.
In On Guard, William Lane Craig describes the moral argument in this syllogism:
- If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
- Objective moral values and duties do exist.
- Therefore, God exists.
This is a modus tollens form, and it is a valid argument — meaning, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true as well. But are the premises true?
If God does not exist, objective morals do not exist? Why not? The real question is, how could they? What’s wrong with a lion killing a gazelle? What’s wrong with a bear killing a rival’s cubs? This is just the circle of life. This is survival of the fittest. So what’s wrong with a man killing a child? What’s the difference? If naturalism is true, we’re all just meat. Humans are merely slightly smarter animals. What makes them too special to kill? Though most atheists will not admit that the answer is “nothing,” some will. Darwin saw human morality as nothing but a product of evolution and not really binding. Sadly, those few who acknowledge this tend to take it to its logical conclusion, for example Peter Singer, who believes infanticide is less of an offense than killing a cow. If there is no God, then murder can be illegal, impolite, or inefficient, but it cannot be immoral.
Do objective moral values exist? Of course they do, and anyone who tells you otherwise will betray that notion the first time someone wrongs them. We don’t think murder or rape are merely impolite. They’re immoral. When someone is robbed, they are quite certain they’ve been wronged. And, deep down, everyone knows this. There is a moral code that runs through humanity. As C.S. Lewis put it,
“Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of doublecrossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to -- whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired.”
If morals are just cultural or just a matter of opinion, Lewis says, there’d be “no sense in preferring ... Christian morality to Nazi morality.” But we believe the Nazis were really, truly wrong. Why? How do we know that they are wrong? “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” We get that idea of a straight line, of the way things ought to be, from our creator.
Two objections must be dealt with. The first is the all too common misunderstanding of this argument as “atheists cannot be moral.” That is not what the argument says. We do not deny that atheists can behave morally. We do not deny that atheists can know what is and is not moral. We say that atheists cannot explain what “good” means. “Can we be good without God?” is the wrong question. The right question is “can there be good without God?” The answer is “no.”
The second objection says that some people are amoral, therefore everyone does not know what is moral, so the argument doesn’t work. But that’s not right. There are people who do not see anything wrong with killing or lying. There are also people who cannot see the color red. Defective people do not disprove the existence of the thing they are defective about. We know they are defective because of the experience of the vast majority of humanity.
So we’re left with the conclusion of our syllogism: God exists. There must be an external source for this moral information. If it only comes from inside us, it’s not real. If it’s as real as we all know it is, there’s only one explanation for how we all know it.
So what do we know about this God? From the first argument, he is eternal, immaterial, powerful, and personal. From the second, he is incredibly wise and desired human beings. From the third, we see that he is moral. We know there is right and wrong, and we know that we do wrong. How do we know that this God is the Christian God? The evidence that the Bible is divinely inspired shows us which god is God.
Is this all that we can know about this God? Not at all. He has chosen to reveal himself to us. And that is where we turn next.
For more on the moral argument, see Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.