God is Just

“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deut 32:4).

The only thing finite about God is his patience. His holiness, wisdom, and power are without bounds. His love never ends. But the day comes when he says to the sinner, "That's quite enough." And then it's time for justice. God is just.

Tony Evans says, “Justice is the equitable and impartial application of God’s moral law in society.” It’s applying the same rules fairly to everyone.

When speaking about God, this means that God will do what is right, that he wants to see right done by others, and he will make it right when they don’t.

What is “right?” Whatever conforms to God’s character. God will always act consistent with his character, and he expects us to do the same. He wants us to treat people the way they ought to be treated. And when we do not, we can expect consequences.

After idolatry, the thing ancient Israel was chiefly punished for was mistreating the weak. They were supposed to protect the poor and the alien, the widow and the orphan. Instead they made the poor poorer and defrauded the widow. Instead of treating everyone as equal before the law, they showed favoritism to the rich (eg, Amos 2:6-8). And God brought the punishment for this down on the entire nation. That was justice.

It is good that God is just. God promises that he will make everything right for us. That means for every time someone has wronged you, justice will be done. Have you been robbed? Have you been maligned? Have you been hurt? Justice will be done.

But that also means every time we have wronged someone else, justice will be done.

That’s kind of a scary notion, but we wouldn’t want God to be any other way. Would we want God to wink at sin? If what you do to someone else isn’t that big a deal, then what if God doesn’t think what someone did to you is that big a deal? If God weren’t just, he wouldn’t be holy, and he wouldn’t be loving. His purity requires a hatred of sin. His love requires wanting his people to be holy and wanting them all to be treated rightly.

When God’s holiness is stirred into action against sin, we call it “wrath.” The justice of God is inseparable from his wrath because injustice requires recompense. And that’s what we want. We want to know that people who mistreat children are punished. We want a world in which people who steal from the poor are repaid for their heartlessness. And God promises, whether in this life or the next, he will make it right.

God’s justice would be terrifying if it weren’t for his holiness and love. And we shouldn’t think of these as different aspects of God’s character that war against each other, things he must keep in balance. Theologians refer to the “simplicity” or “unity” of God. This means neither God nor his character is made of parts. There is one divine nature. When we see it from this angle, we call it love; from that angle, we call it justice. But God is always simply God. So we don’t have to worry that one day God’s justice will outweigh his love or vice versa. God will always act with a holy love and a loving justice.

But what about mercy? God is full of mercy. For the believer, justice has been served. Christ has received the justice our sins deserve. Though we may be chastened in this life to make us more like Christ, we don’t have to fear God’s eternal justice.

To the unbeliever, God is patient “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2Pet 3:9-10). God gives people chance after chance, but, as CS Lewis put it,¹ the day will come when in his knowledge he says there’s simply no point in continuing.

So how do we respond to God’s justice?

First, rejoice in it. God will make every wrong done to you right — whether it’s through the justice of the cross or through justice to the offender.

Second, rejoice in the cross, that we do not have to fear God’s justice. As Jen Wilkin says, “God is not only faithful to forgive our sins, but also just. Because Christ was punished in our place, God would be unjust to punish us for a sin that has already received its recompense. How precious, then, does the spilled blood and broken body of Christ become in our estimation?”²

Third, live like people who serve a just God. “Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear” (1Pet 1:17). So “act justly and ... love mercy and ... walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Next, leave room for God’s justice. “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom 12:19). Vengeance is God’s job, not yours. Your job is to imitate the grace shown to you in Christ Jesus.

Finally, warn people. “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others” (2Cor 5:11). People need to know that God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).


For more on this topic, see “The Wrath of God” in Theology You Can Count On by Tony Evans

1 The Problem of Pain
2 In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character

Image credit: Gavel sculpture, Friscocali

God is love

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1John 4:8).

With God's holiness in mind, we now look at God's love. God loves people. God especially loves his people. That means God especially loves you.

How does God love everyone? He shows common grace by giving good things to all human beings. He “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt 5:45).

Beyond that, he went to great lengths to save rebellious human beings from the consequences of their sin. “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:7-8, emphasis added). Stop and think about that for a while. God became human so he could die for his rebellious creatures. That’s a special love, more that we can really understand.

But how does he love you? About his redeemed people, God says he wants to “rejoice over you with singing” (Zeph 3:17). Jesus says, “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matt 10:30). Not counted; numbered. He knows which hair is number 4,317. His knowledge of you is that of someone who loves you deeply. Psalm 23 is universally loved because it’s a picture of God’s care for his people. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” God's desire is to give good things to his people.

We’ll go deeper into this later, but God did not just save us from our sins for the sake of saving us from hell. He saved us so that he could adopt us, making us his very own dearly loved children (cf, Eph 3:3-10). His love for you is more intense, more powerful than anything human beings are capable of.

But if we treat God as if love is all he is, we err. Jen Wilkin says, “[I]t is possible for us to love the love of God too much. We do this when we emphasize the love of God at the expense of his other attributes. Sin can cause us to love a version of God that is not accurate. This is the basic definition of idolatry.”

We cannot think of God’s love as separate from his holiness. In his self-description, God calls himself “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished...” (Ex 34:6-7).

This is why God cannot, in his love, simply overlook everyone’s sins: God is holy holy holy. His “eyes are too pure to look on evil; [he] cannot tolerate wrongdoing” (Hab 1:13). Our treason stands between us and God.

God’s holy love requires justice, and that’s why Christ went to the cross. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).

We have to understand, Christ died on the cross, not to just forgive us, but to fix us. This is because, while he loves us as we are, he is not content for us to remain that way. I can’t say it better than CS Lewis did in The Problem of Pain:

“When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some ‘disinterested’ … concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect’, is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. ...

“Man does not exist for his own sake. ‘Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created’ [Rev 4:11]. We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased’. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable… What we would here and now call our ‘happiness’ is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy.”

God loves us, but it is a love that wants to make us holy. And he is willing to go to such great lengths to make us into what he always intended us to be.

So how should we respond to this?

Obviously the first thing God’s love should make us do is to love him back. But just like in a marriage, what God wants is not a love that is merely words. He wants a love that is expressed in action. “If you love me, you will keep my commands” (John 14:15). Obedience is God’s love language, so love him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

The second thing God’s love should make us do is imitate it. “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). God wants us to love our enemy, love our neighbor, and, most of all, love our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). God’s will is that love should be the mark of his people.

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Eph 3:17-19).

For more on this topic, I recommend “God Most Loving” in Jen Wilkin’s In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character

God is holy

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3).

When God comes to visit, people don’t break out the good china; they hide behind the sofa.

When God came to speak with Israel at Mount Sinai, this is what happened:

On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. (Ex 19:16-18)

How did the people respond?

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” (Ex 20:18-19)

That’s basically how everyone reacts to God’s presence. Ezekiel fell facedown. Isaiah cried out in fear. John fainted.

Why is the presence of God so fearsome? Shouldn’t it be wonderful? Shouldn’t we feel as if we’ve been embraced in a warm hug? Shouldn’t we be overcome with love?

If we think that way, it’s because we’ve misunderstood something important about God. If you asked people what the defining characteristic of God is, most would say love. I believe God would say holiness is his defining trait.

“Holy” is a difficult word to explain. Its primary meaning apparently is to be set apart. An object would be “holy” if it were set apart for special use, such as in temple worship. But when referring to people and to God, there is an aspect that speaks to moral purity.

When applied to God, all of this is turned up to the Nth degree. God is so apart as to be transcendent. He is the pre-existent, self-existent one. His nature and perspective, not to mention his intelligence and power, are incalculable orders of magnitude beyond ours. As Sproul says, “He is above and beyond anything in the universe.” He would be incomprehensibly alien to us except that he has deigned to give us manageable glimpses of himself.

Likewise his moral purity is absolute. Sin is ultimately deviation from God’s character, so sin cannot taint him. It’s a metaphysical impossibility.

If I had to boil it down, I would say that holiness is the Godness of God.

Why is this his “defining characteristic” though? To answer that, we have to look at a feature of the Hebrew language. Repetition is the way the Bible writers emphasize things. Where we would use an adjective or italics, they use repetition. A deep pit is called a pit pit. What we call the “most holy” place in the temple was literally called the holy holy place.

God is holy holy holy (Is 6:3, Rev 4:8).

Why is that significant? In The Holiness of God, RC Sproul explains:

“Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. ... The Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy; or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice. It does say that He is holy, holy, holy, that the whole earth is full of His glory.”

When God’s holiness shines forth, he shines like a million suns. The holy angels cover their eyes. When humans get a glimpse of it, they react like Isaiah: “Doom! It’s Doomsday! I’m as good as dead!” (Is 6:5 MSG). His perfect holiness makes us see how imperfect we are.

Jen Wilkins says, “The gods of Egypt and Canaan, of Greece and Rome, among their other limitations, made no claims of possessing utter purity of character. The chronicles of their exploits read more like a reality TV show than a sacred text, compelling the devout to gaze voyeuristically on their lurid antics. But the God of Israel possesses a holiness so blinding that no one can look on him and live.”

So God’s holiness is the foundation for understanding and relating to him. We cannot give that place to any other of his attributes. “God deserves our worship for both his love and his justice. But his love and his justice are imbued with and defined by his holiness—he does not merely love; he loves out of utter purity of character. He does not merely act justly; he acts justly out of utter purity of character. ... When we apprehend his holiness, we are changed by the revelation. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of self always go hand in hand.”¹

When confronted by the holiness of God, we cannot help but see our sin and how far short of God’s glory we fall. This is important because we will never respond appropriately to God until we see just how far we are from him. Only when we see that can we be amazed by his grace.

So how should we respond to the holiness of God? First, humility — before God and toward other people. Recognizing how far God's holiness is beyond you is the first step to having a right relationship with him. And realize that being prideful about your perceived holiness is as silly as a mountain being prideful because it's closest to the moon.

Second, love him for it. Even though the holiness of God can be a little terrifying, it's also wonderful. God's moral purity means that he will always do what is right. Unlike those fictitious Greek and Roman gods, we don't have to worry about a God who's petty, dishonest, or covetous — human foibles aren't just beneath God; they're totally alien to him. We can trust his character because his character alone is utterly unimpeachable.

Third, God tells us to respond to his holiness by imitating it: “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16).

Followers of Christ will never be holy in this life; we will struggle with our sin nature as long as we live. Even in the next life, though we will be morally pure, we will never achieve God’s level of holiness, so what does he want from us?

He wants us to be “sanctified” or “set apart” for purity. We are to live in this world as citizens of his Kingdom. We are to “hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (Rom 12:9). “For this is the will of God, your sanctification. ... For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (1 Thess. 4:3, 7).

As believers, we’re not trying to avoid his wrath but to please him. “The Christian’s primary motive for holy living is ... the impulse to show his love and gratitude to his adopting God by identifying himself with the Father’s will for him.”²

Jen Wilkins says, “Growing in holiness means growing in our hatred of sin. But reflecting the character of God involves more than just casting off the garment of our old ways. It entails putting on the garment of our new inheritance.”¹ And that last is the key. The message of the New Testament is, in Christ, you are holy, so act like it.

Or to put it simply: Be who you are in Christ.

Our response to our holy holy holy God should be to worship him in awe and wonder that someone like him has shown such mercy to us and to strive to live lives that honor the grace we have received.


So many authors have written wonderful material on the holiness of God, but the one “must read” is RC Sproul’s The Holiness of God.

1 Jen Wilkin, In His Image: 10 Way God Calls Us to Reflect His Character
2 JI Packer, Knowing God

Image credits: Volcanic storm, Mike Tungate
Full moon, NASA

God is

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14).

God did not begin. God is.

This is expressed in the name God gave Moses, “I AM.” From it, comes the name YHWH (probably pronounced Yahweh). God uses or is given many names in Scripture, but this is the name God most seems to call “my name.” It is usually rendered in English Bibles as “the LORD” (as opposed to “Lord” which simply means sovereign or king) for historical reasons, but whenever you see it, remember that this is God’s self-designation and a statement of his nature.

It tells us that God is eternal. We already saw that something has to be eternal, uncaused, and that it has to be personal, powerful, and intelligent — so, God. Physics tells us that not just space but also time began, so God predates time. Before there was time, God simply is. So he created time, but it does not affect him. He is, however, aware of it. Millard Erickson tells us,

“The fact that God is not bound by time does not mean he is not conscious of the succession of points of time. He is aware that events occur in a particular order. Yet he is equally aware of all points of that order simultaneously. This transcendence over time has been likened to a person who sits on a tall building while he watches a parade. He sees all parts of the parade at the different points on the route rather than only what is going past him at the moment.”¹

Because God is timeless, he is unchanging. This is good news for us. God does not have moods. His character will not change. God does not reconsider his plans; his promises will not change. We can be confident that the promises he made 2000 years ago are still valid today and will be forever. God does not break his word because he does not change. We can trust him completely.

If God cannot change, he cannot learn. And if he sees all time at once, then he cannot be surprised by anything. God is all-knowing. One of my favorite passages in Scripture is during Moses’ call by God. He does not want to be God’s spokesman; he doesn’t think he can. God wants him and is angry with his doubt and fear. But he allows Moses to speak through his brother Aaron who is “already on his way to meet you” (Ex 4:14). God is not pleased by our sin, but he is never surprised by it. We can take comfort in the fact that our failures will never derail his plans.

Finally, God’s eternality, his self-existence, means that he is totally self-sufficient. This means he cannot be manipulated, nor can he be tempted. He does not lack anything, so there is nothing to tempt or persuade him.

This also means God does not need us. He did not create humans (or angels) because he was lonely. The Trinity was totally complete in their perfect love and companionship. God created us because he wanted us, but he certainly did not need us. He does not need our love, our faith, or our worship. God is complete in himself. As Jen Wilkin put it, “God has never and will never declare his need for us. It is for us to say, ‘I need thee every hour.’ It is for him to say, ‘I AM.’”

We should be glad we have a God who is not so weak as to need us. That makes his desire for us so much grander. Because he wants us, he will take care of us. I love the Tenth Avenue North song “Control.” Part of the chorus says,

God You don't need me
But somehow You want me
Oh how You love me
Somehow that frees me
To open my hands up
And give You control²

We should be willing to give up control to the God who steers galaxies and loves us deeply.

How do we respond to the God who is? I’ll let Jen Wilkin answer:

“Only God is self-sufficient. Only God has no needs. You have them, and so does your neighbor. Be quick to praise God for how unlike you he is in this. Be quick to confess to him your tendency to trust your own resources rather than acknowledge him as your provider. Be quick to confess your needs to him and ask him to meet them. Not only that, but be quick to ask for help from others, and to receive it graciously when it is given. Be quick to offer to meet the needs of others before they have a chance to ask, including those outside the family of God.”


For more on this topic, I recommend Jen Wilkins’ None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different from Us (and Why That's a Good Thing)

1) “The Greatness of God” in Introducing Christian Doctrine
2) “Control” written by Jason Ingram and Matthew Bronleewe

God is spirit

“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

God can be known

“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

The Existence of God 3/3: The Moral Argument

“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:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. 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.