In the prayer commonly called The High Priestly prayer, our Lord Jesus Christ prays to God, His Father, for His disciples “...that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). There are people who believe in the existence of God, but suggest that God is unknowable. But Jesus states that God is knowable, and he desires His followers to know Him,
And yet, as Dr. J. I. Packer laments in the Foreword of his book Knowing God,
“Ignorance of God - both of his ways and of the practice of communion – lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today. Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the spirit...that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God. The modern way with God is to set him at a distance, if not to deny Him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world, have themselves allowed God to become remote... Christian minds have been confused by the modern skepticism ... that denies that God’s control of his world was either direct or complete.. As a result, the Bible has come under heavy fire, and many landmarks in historical Christianity with it. The foundation-facts of faith are called into question. Did God meet Israel at Sinai? Was Jesus more than a very spiritual man? Did the gospel miracles really happen? Is not the Jesus of the gospels largely an imaginary figure? “
Why Does Jesus Want Us To Know God?
The whole object of knowing God is that we may learn how to worship God, and how to be truly God’s people. If we do not know God personally, we cannot worship Him properly because we will not know how He desires to be worshipped.
God’s Revelation of Himself
The vantage point where we can start discussion about knowing God – His being and his attributes, is to look at God’s own revelation of Himself. This is by both the display of His mighty works of His creation, and by what He has spoken: His name, and the other things that He has told about Himself. The Bible assumes throughout that God must first disclose Himself before man can know Him. Man, left to himself could never have had any knowledge of God. Therefore, a revelatory initiative by God is needed because God is transcendent; that is to say that He exists apart from, and not subject to the limitations of the material universe. He is so far from man in His mode of being that man cannot see Him, nor find Him out by searching (Job.11:7; 23:3-9) nor read His thoughts by shrewd guesswork (Isaiah 55:8).
As Christians, we believe that God has revealed Himself to man in two different but complementary ways; namely, by general revelation and by special revelation.
(1) General Revelation is prior to special revelation in point of time. It is the display of God’s works of creation and providence - the physical things, the earth and all that is therein, and the heavens the sun, moon and the stars, the forces and the laws of nature in operation, and in the facts of experience in history. They display the infinite majesty, power and glory, and wisdom of God. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” (Psalm 19:1 – 2). But general revelation, although essential, is not sufficient.
For example, it does not tell us anything about God’s mind, what He requires, His moral
law, His wrath against sin, His demand for worship and obedience, His kindness to men,
and His forgiveness of sin.
(2) Special Revelation is not a substitute for general revelation but a most essential complement to it. It comes to man in the form of personal verbal communication. God, in order to tell us about Himself, has spoken a language that we can understand so that we may know Him. In special revelation God actively discloses His name, His nature and character, His will and His ways, His plans, and His intentions. Moreover, and most of all, God is revealed as the Redeemer and Restorer of the fallen man, the One who shows mercy to sinners.
The Bible - God’s Book of Special Revelation
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ statement on God’s special revelation - in his book ‘God The Father, God The Son’ (p.15), most appropriately writes,
“The special revelation which we find in the Bible has a very distinct and definite object, which is to reveal to us the character of God, the nature of God, and especially the character and nature of God as they are revealed in His saving grace. That is the thing about which we are concerned: how to know God and to be blessed by Him. Now the Bible makes a unique claim at this point; ...that it and it alone gives us this special knowledge of God. The Bible claims for itself that it is the record of God’s special revelation of Himself and of all His gracious and saving purposes with respect to men and women”.
And Louis Berkhof, in his A Summary of Christian Doctrine (p.12) weighs in,
“The Bible is pre-eminently the book of God’s special revelation, a revelation in which facts and words go hand in hand, the words interpreting the facts and the facts giving substance to the words”.
A good starting point about God’s special revelation is the scene at the burning bush where God spoke to Moses saying, “I am God, the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Then He gave Moses the name by which He desired to be known: “I AM WHOM I AM” (Exodus 3:14). It is a descriptive name, pointing to all that God is in Himself. That revelation came on the verge of the deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt.
After the exodus, God gave another revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai, this time as the only true God of the delivered nation of Israel. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments”. (Exodus 20:2-6)
These verses make three important points: (i) We are to worship only the one true God (ii) We are to reject the worship of any other gods, false gods (iii) We are to reject the worship of the true God by any means that are unworthy of Him, such as the use of images or pictures. Why? An image or picture cannot at all communicate God’s great attributes: His sovereignty, righteousness, mercy, love, justice. Rather it obscures them. Images and pictures can only mislead those who would worship Him. Therefore, any physical representation of God is wrong and dishonouring to Him.
(2) Special Revelation is not a substitute for general revelation but a most essential complement to it. It comes to man in the form of personal verbal communication. God, in order to tell us about Himself, has spoken a language that we can understand so that we may know Him. In special revelation God actively discloses His name, His nature and character, His will and His ways, His plans, and His intentions. Moreover, and most of all, God is revealed as the Redeemer and Restorer of the fallen man, the One who shows mercy to sinners.
The Bible - God’s Book of Special Revelation
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ statement on God’s special revelation - in his book ‘God The Father, God The Son’ (p.15), most appropriately writes,
“The special revelation which we find in the Bible has a very distinct and definite object, which is to reveal to us the character of God, the nature of God, and especially the character and nature of God as they are revealed in His saving grace. That is the thing about which we are concerned: how to know God and to be blessed by Him. Now the Bible makes a unique claim at this point; ...that it and it alone gives us this special knowledge of God. The Bible claims for itself that it is the record of God’s special revelation of Himself and of all His gracious and saving purposes with respect to men and women”.
And Louis Berkhof, in his A Summary of Christian Doctrine (p.12) weighs in,
“The Bible is pre-eminently the book of God’s special revelation, a revelation in which facts and words go hand in hand, the words interpreting the facts and the facts giving substance to the words”.
A good starting point about God’s special revelation is the scene at the burning bush where God spoke to Moses saying, “I am God, the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Then He gave Moses the name by which He desired to be known: “I AM WHOM I AM” (Exodus 3:14). It is a descriptive name, pointing to all that God is in Himself. That revelation came on the verge of the deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt.
After the exodus, God gave another revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai, this time as the only true God of the delivered nation of Israel. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments”. (Exodus 20:2-6)
These verses make three important points: (i) We are to worship only the one true God (ii) We are to reject the worship of any other gods, false gods (iii) We are to reject the worship of the true God by any means that are unworthy of Him, such as the use of images or pictures. Why? An image or picture cannot at all communicate God’s great attributes: His sovereignty, righteousness, mercy, love, justice. Rather it obscures them. Images and pictures can only mislead those who would worship Him. Therefore, any physical representation of God is wrong and dishonouring to Him.
The Being of God
God is a Person: The presence of God is always described in the Bible in a personal way. Although God is invisible to human eye He is, nevertheless, a person. If I hear a voice say “I am”, I intuitively conclude at once that that utterance is of a person, even though I cannot see the body or form of that person. It is only a person who can say “I am”, and God speaks of Himself in that manner. God used the name “I AM” to declare that He is a person with a mind, intelligence, will, reason, individuality, self-consciousness and self- determination, and not simply a pool of unconscious force or power.
God is Spirit: It is clear from the Bible that God is a personal Spirit. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). God is infinite spirit.
His Attributes
For the sake of convenience only, God’s attributes are classified in two ways; namely (i) incommunicable attributes, and (ii) communicable or moral attributes.
Incommunicable attributes are exclusively God’s perfections, which belong to God, who is the only infinite and eternal person. They cannot be communicated or shared with finite creatures. And they have no analogy in human persons. God’s infinity is the anchor of all His other attributes.
By God’s infinity is meant that He is an absolute being, not derived from something else nor conditioned by anything else; He is self-existent and self-sufficient. Unlike His creatures, He does not depend for His existence on anyone outside Himself. God has no origins and consequently is answerable to no one. He is without bounds or limits to His being, every aspect and element of His nature, and His attributes.
His infinitude in relation to time is spoken of as eternity. He is the Lord of time and, therefore, not subject to, or limited by it: “From everlasting to everlasting, You are God”, declares Moses, the man of God (Psalm 90:2).
In relation to space, He is omnipresent, which is to say that God is everywhere. Someone has put it that God “is Himself the Everywhere”; and in relation to the universe it implies both transcendence, that is, His detachment from His creatures as an independent, self- existing being. He is not shut in by nature, but infinitely exalted above it. Isaiah 40:12-17 lays emphasis on His exaltation as a being external to the world; and as its sovereign Creator and Judge. However, His exaltation does not mean that He stands apart from the world, as a mere spectator of the works of His hands from a distance. Isaiah 57:15 expresses the transcendence of God as “One who high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy”. The same verse also expresses His immanence, that is to say, His all- pervading presence and power within His creation, the One who “also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Arising from His self-existence and His eternity, God is immutable. He is not subject to time, so there is no change in His being by reason of passage of time and age, nor does He change His mind or His purposes. God is changeless. He is absolutely unchangeable in His being, His character, His counsels, His will, His purposes, and His promises. He does what He has determined beforehand to do and His will never varies. He is “the same “yesterday, and today, and forever”. (Hebrews 13:8).
It is important to emphasize this attribute because we ourselves are very changeable; we are one thing one day and something else another day, though we are still the same
God is a Person: The presence of God is always described in the Bible in a personal way. Although God is invisible to human eye He is, nevertheless, a person. If I hear a voice say “I am”, I intuitively conclude at once that that utterance is of a person, even though I cannot see the body or form of that person. It is only a person who can say “I am”, and God speaks of Himself in that manner. God used the name “I AM” to declare that He is a person with a mind, intelligence, will, reason, individuality, self-consciousness and self- determination, and not simply a pool of unconscious force or power.
God is Spirit: It is clear from the Bible that God is a personal Spirit. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). God is infinite spirit.
His Attributes
For the sake of convenience only, God’s attributes are classified in two ways; namely (i) incommunicable attributes, and (ii) communicable or moral attributes.
Incommunicable attributes are exclusively God’s perfections, which belong to God, who is the only infinite and eternal person. They cannot be communicated or shared with finite creatures. And they have no analogy in human persons. God’s infinity is the anchor of all His other attributes.
By God’s infinity is meant that He is an absolute being, not derived from something else nor conditioned by anything else; He is self-existent and self-sufficient. Unlike His creatures, He does not depend for His existence on anyone outside Himself. God has no origins and consequently is answerable to no one. He is without bounds or limits to His being, every aspect and element of His nature, and His attributes.
His infinitude in relation to time is spoken of as eternity. He is the Lord of time and, therefore, not subject to, or limited by it: “From everlasting to everlasting, You are God”, declares Moses, the man of God (Psalm 90:2).
In relation to space, He is omnipresent, which is to say that God is everywhere. Someone has put it that God “is Himself the Everywhere”; and in relation to the universe it implies both transcendence, that is, His detachment from His creatures as an independent, self- existing being. He is not shut in by nature, but infinitely exalted above it. Isaiah 40:12-17 lays emphasis on His exaltation as a being external to the world; and as its sovereign Creator and Judge. However, His exaltation does not mean that He stands apart from the world, as a mere spectator of the works of His hands from a distance. Isaiah 57:15 expresses the transcendence of God as “One who high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy”. The same verse also expresses His immanence, that is to say, His all- pervading presence and power within His creation, the One who “also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Arising from His self-existence and His eternity, God is immutable. He is not subject to time, so there is no change in His being by reason of passage of time and age, nor does He change His mind or His purposes. God is changeless. He is absolutely unchangeable in His being, His character, His counsels, His will, His purposes, and His promises. He does what He has determined beforehand to do and His will never varies. He is “the same “yesterday, and today, and forever”. (Hebrews 13:8).
It is important to emphasize this attribute because we ourselves are very changeable; we are one thing one day and something else another day, though we are still the same
person. God is unchangeable in all His attributes. So we need not fear, for example, that
the God who once loved us in Christ will somehow change His mind and cease to love us
in the future. “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his
mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”.
(Numbers 23:19).
Such a statements should be a source of great comfort to God’s people. If God were like us, He could not be relied on. He would change, and as a result of this, His will and His promises would change. We could not depend on Him. Similarly, we must not think that perhaps He will change His attitude towards sin (as the modernists tend to think) so that he will begin to classify as “permissible” something that was formerly prohibited. Sin will always be sin because it is defined as any transgression of or lack of conformity to the law of God. Suggestions of change [of mind] attributed to God in the Bible, for example, “The LORD was sorry that He had made man (Genesis 6:6) only mean that, in His dealings with changeable human beings, God varies or adjusts His fixed procedures according to whether they repent or not. It is in God’s character to react, to show severe displeasure with human sin. Dr. Lloyd-Jones cautions that when we use the term “immutability” we must be very careful that we do not deny the idea of the personality of God. The immutability of God is not the immutability such as that of a lifeless stone or a machine. God’s is not the immutability of lifelessness but of absolute perfections because God is personal in His dealings with men and women.
Communicable or Moral Attributes: These are some of God’s attributes or qualities which we, His creatures, possess but only in a measure. They include righteousness, wisdom, power, justice, faithfulness, mercy, love, and goodness. God is all-wise; but we also possess a measure of wisdom; He is all-powerful; but we also exercise some limited power; He is all-righteous; but we also can be righteous [c.f. Romans 1:17; 4:22] and so on. These are some of the attributes the Apostle Peter urges Christians to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
God is fully expressed in each one of His attributes individually and in all of them together. For example, we cannot say that God is partly love and partly justice and partly wisdom; He is all love and all justice and all wisdom. Man remains man even if he does not possess certain human attributes, but God is not God without all His attributes.
Full knowledge of God
It must be admitted that, even when we have known all that we can possibly know of God and His attributes, we will never have a comprehensive knowledge of Him in this imperfect world. Nevertheless, the much He has been pleased to make known to us in the Bible is sufficient to aid our proper worship and service to Him whilst on our earthly pilgrimage. It is upon us to obey and endeavour to do them; for “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
But still, the Christian’s greatest hope remains firm and sure, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Such a statements should be a source of great comfort to God’s people. If God were like us, He could not be relied on. He would change, and as a result of this, His will and His promises would change. We could not depend on Him. Similarly, we must not think that perhaps He will change His attitude towards sin (as the modernists tend to think) so that he will begin to classify as “permissible” something that was formerly prohibited. Sin will always be sin because it is defined as any transgression of or lack of conformity to the law of God. Suggestions of change [of mind] attributed to God in the Bible, for example, “The LORD was sorry that He had made man (Genesis 6:6) only mean that, in His dealings with changeable human beings, God varies or adjusts His fixed procedures according to whether they repent or not. It is in God’s character to react, to show severe displeasure with human sin. Dr. Lloyd-Jones cautions that when we use the term “immutability” we must be very careful that we do not deny the idea of the personality of God. The immutability of God is not the immutability such as that of a lifeless stone or a machine. God’s is not the immutability of lifelessness but of absolute perfections because God is personal in His dealings with men and women.
Communicable or Moral Attributes: These are some of God’s attributes or qualities which we, His creatures, possess but only in a measure. They include righteousness, wisdom, power, justice, faithfulness, mercy, love, and goodness. God is all-wise; but we also possess a measure of wisdom; He is all-powerful; but we also exercise some limited power; He is all-righteous; but we also can be righteous [c.f. Romans 1:17; 4:22] and so on. These are some of the attributes the Apostle Peter urges Christians to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
God is fully expressed in each one of His attributes individually and in all of them together. For example, we cannot say that God is partly love and partly justice and partly wisdom; He is all love and all justice and all wisdom. Man remains man even if he does not possess certain human attributes, but God is not God without all His attributes.
Full knowledge of God
It must be admitted that, even when we have known all that we can possibly know of God and His attributes, we will never have a comprehensive knowledge of Him in this imperfect world. Nevertheless, the much He has been pleased to make known to us in the Bible is sufficient to aid our proper worship and service to Him whilst on our earthly pilgrimage. It is upon us to obey and endeavour to do them; for “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
But still, the Christian’s greatest hope remains firm and sure, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
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