Core Questions: What is God?
A Cut Above the Rest
It is common for us to compare ourselves to God or to speak of ourselves being like God. God is love, we can love; God has knowledge, we have knowledge, etc. And this is true and what theologians call God’s communicable attributes.
But God is not just a bigger version of us. Instead, God is in a class all by Himself; He is a cut above the rest. This is what the word holy means in the Bible.
When we read that God is “holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:1-3) or “There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you” (1 Samuel 2:2, ESV, emphasis added), God is telling us about His unique greatness and majesty.
R.C. Sproul wrote this in his famous book The Holiness of God, “The primary meaning of holy is ‘separate.’ It comes from an ancient word that means ‘to cut,’ or ‘to separate.’ To translate this basic meaning into contemporary language would be to use the phrase ‘a cut apart.’ Perhaps even more accurate would be the phrase ‘a cut above something.'”
God’s holiness is the only attribute that is repeated three times in this fashion of Isaiah 6.
God alone is God, there is no one like Him. God is not like us, and this is good news.
It is precisely because God is not like us that He is worthy of all praise, power, blessing, and honor. And it is only because God is not like us that God can save us.
What is God?
A children’s catechism (a question/answer teaching tool for Christian instruction) based off of the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it this way:
Q: What is God?
A: God is a spirit, and does not have a body like men.
God is a spirit (John 4:24). This means also that God is invisible as Colossians 1:15 and 1 Timothy 1:17 tell us.
For us, this means that God is not bound by a body, so that He couldn’t be everywhere at once. God is an eternal, infinite, and boundless spirit. He truly is not like us!
Our God does not have any needs as we do, but He gives life and breath and everything to all mankind (cf. Acts 17:24-25). Our God is not made up of parts, but is infinite and eternal in all that He is.
His love is as infinite and eternal as His power; His holiness is as infinite as His sovereignty; His wrath as infinite as His mercy and grace and patience and righteousness.
Therefore, because God is spirit and does not have a body like men, He is the wellspring of all life and truth. He is the Creator, we are the creature.
The gap between Creator and creature is infinitely greater than that of a lightening bug and a lightening bolt!
Behold Your God
Stand in awe and wonder, then, that this infinite, eternal Triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — would desire to demonstrate His infinitely glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14) towards His rebellious creatures.
You see, it is precisely because God is not like us that the incarnation of Jesus Christ as a true man and yet truly God is amazing. He became what He was not (man) while never ceasing to be what He was in eternity (God).
Jesus Christ took on a human body and limited Himself to be like us in every way and yet without sin (cf. Hebrews 2:17, 4:15). We cannot even fathom the depths of humility for the eternally blessed, holy, and infinite God to become human (Philippians 2:5-11).
The glory of Christ as the God-man is seen as He still resides in His resurrected body (Acts 1:6-11).
And all of this, so that on the cross God the Son would bear the wrath and curse of Almighty God in order to rescue all those who would put their trust in His death and resurrection.
Everyone who turns from their sins in repentance and turns to God in faith will be made right with their Triune God (John 3:16; Romans 5:1-10). We are made right with God by faith alone.
To live then as a Christian, is to live a holy life, is to live a life different — set apart — from the rest of the world in how we think, talk, act, live, and desire. We are perfectly holy in God’s sight because of Christ’s finished work and we must also continually grow in holiness in all of life.
The beauty of God’s glory is that He who is nothing like us became like us in order to save us for God’s glory.
This article is the second in a series of core questions crucial to understanding Christianity. Be sure to check out “Core Questions: Why Do I Exist?“
