God is
self-existing and without origin. “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together”
– Colossians 1:17.
God
never changes. “I the Lord do not change.” – Malachi 3:6
God has
no needs. “For
as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in
himself.” – John 5:26
God is
always everywhere. “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to heaven, You are there; if I
make my bed in depths, You are there. If
I rise on wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there
Your hand will guide me, and Your right hand will hold me fast.” – Psalm 139:7-10
God is
gracious. “The
Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and rich in love.” – Psalm 145:8
God is
loving. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is
from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God,
because God is love.” – 1 John
4:7-8
God is
holy. “Holy,
Holy, Holy, is the Lord almighty” – Revelation
4:8
*** The
following attributes are taken from Bible Study Fellowship. (www.mybsf.org)
From
the beginning when God made Adam and Eve, He was accessible, or near. In the covenants God made with the
patriarchs, He promises to be in relationship with them always. Later God commanded the people to build the tabernacle
so He could live among them. God made
Himself even nearer to people when He became a man, the Lord Jesus Christ, the
true tabernacle. Now He is accessible in
the most intimate way possible. His
Spirit lives in every believer. Whenever
you pray, He hears you.
Creator
There
was never a time when God did not exist.
Before there was anything at all, even time, God existed. No one made God. God made everything, from the tiniest
subatomic particle to the farthest galaxy in the universe. Everything came from God, what we can see and
what we cannot see – heaven, angels and the whole spiritual realm. He spoke and all these things came into
existence. God alone is able to bring
something out of nothing.
God
exists outside of time. He is not
measured by anything. We measure time by
the movement of the planets and stars, which God created. God has always been and always will be. No one is like Him. Because God is eternal, He can give us
eternal life.
Faithful
God
knows and loves each of His own. He will
do all He has promised: care for and
make strong; forgive and make new; protect and purify. From the beginning, He has had a plan to
restore the world that sin broke, and God is faithful to His own plan. We know God is faithful because He sent His
Son to the cross to keep His promise.
Now nothing can separate God’s people from His love. He is faithful to Himself and His Word. We can trust Him to keep all of His promises.
Father
As the
Creator, God sustains and provides for all He has made, but He is the Father
only to those who believe in His Son Jesus Christ. He gives us His Spirit, adopts us into His
family and makes us His children. He has
a loving relationship that lasts forever with every believer. He speaks to us personally through His Word
the Bible, and we speak to Him in prayer.
Even the best human father has flaws but God is always good, wise and
loving. God loves, protects, cares for,
trains and disciplines His children.
Glory
God’s
glory is the total of all His attributes.
God displayed His glory in the beauty and wisdom of His creation. Throughout history, God has revealed His
glory to His people through His power, mercy, grace, judgment, holiness, love
and every other attribute. In the Old
Testament God was symbolically present with His people in the glory cloud. This cloud, known as the Shekinah glory,
guided His people in the wilderness and filled the tabernacle and later the
temple. The Lord Jesus Christ reveals
God’s glory completely.
Good
We see
God’s goodness in His love and faithfulness.
All of God’s ways are righteous.
He is good to all people. God’s
blessing is His goodness to us personally.
God is compassionate. He
satisfies those in need. He offers hope,
refuge and care to all who come to Him.
God’s children experience His goodness even when bad things happen. God promises to make all things work together
for our good.
Gracious
Grace
is God’s kindness to those who do not deserve it. God is slow to anger and longs to forgive
people. God’s grace in salvation reaches
out powerfully to sinful people and makes them alive in Christ when they were
dead in sin. God shows grace to all
people. He gives life, families,
sunshine, rain, music, talents, etc., as good gifts even to people who do not love
Him.
Guide
God
leads us in the way we should go. His
Word teaches us how we are to live and think.
Because God gives His children the Holy Spirit, they recognize His voice
and follow Him. We can trust God to lead
us in the right way. Without God’s
guidance, we stumble and fall like people in the dark.
Holy
God is
high and lifted. He is set apart from
His creation. Our English word “holy”
is from the same root word as “whole”.
God is whole – perfect in goodness and righteousness. No one is like God. Even God’s holy angels tremble in reverent
worship before Him. God sets apart His
children for Himself and commands us to be holy as He is holy. Being holy makes you whole, what God intended
you to be.
Immutable
God
does not change. We can count on Him
always to be holy, always to be good, always to be faithful, always to love us,
always to hate sin. God’s Word is like
Him; it does not change. We can count on
His promises. Because God never changes,
we can trust Him always.
Impartial
God saves
people regardless of what they have done or will do. He saves people who have families in church
and people who do not. He saves people
who are rich and those who are poor. He
saves people who are smart and those who are not smart. He is always fair. There is nothing anyone can do to force God’s
hand, or put God in their debt. God will
always do right by every person, in every situation. No one will be able to blame God for His judgments.
Incomprehensible
We cannot understand God’s thoughts and ways. God
is infinite and eternal; He knows
all things. God made human beings in His image, but we are
finite and flawed by sin. In heaven, we
will be perfect. However, we will still
not know all there is to know about God because we will always be finite. We can understand all we need to know about God because He has given us His
Word and His Spirit.
Infinite
God has no beginning and no end; He has always
existed and He always will. This is why
God declared His name to be “I
AM.” God IS. God also has no ‘size.’ There is no place that can contain God because God has no limits of any kind. There is no way to measure God, for everything
that God is, is limitless. God’s power
has no limits. God’s knowledge has no limits. God’s love has
no limits. God the Father, Son and
Spirit are all the same: infinite.
Invisible
God is Spirit, and we cannot see spirit. We cannot see Him or feel Him physically, just
as we cannot see or feel sound
waves, light waves, energy and atoms. However, God has made Himself visible
through the Person of Jesus Christ.
We can experience
Jesus’ presence with us now, and we will see Him when He returns.
Jealous
God’s jealousy is one of protective love. The Lord seals every believer to Himself
through the Holy Spirit. Unlike human
beings, God does not experience feelings of insecurity,
fear and anxiety about His relationship with people. He
is righteously angry when His children choose to devote their time and
attention to lesser things. When God’s children turn their backs on Him, He
pursues them.
Just
God’s justice is perfect. His
decisions are always based on His righteous character. God cannot ignore sin because He is holy. It would be unjust to ignore wickedness,
rebellion and sin. God is just and does
not show favoritism. Every penalty will be fair and right. God does not treat
His children as their sins deserve because Jesus suffered the full punishment for our sins. Because God is just, He will never punish His
children for the sin for which Jesus paid
on the cross.
Love
God has always been love. Before He created the world the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
loved one another. God’s love
never fails. God loves the world. He showed His love by
sending His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as Savior.
When we receive His Son as our Savior, we
can love God.
Merciful
God in His mercy
does not give us what our sins deserve. He
restrains evil and holds back
sin. He makes His gospel known in places where people have turned their backs
on Him. God seeks those who
are lost, alone, hurting and in need. He
forgives and restores those
who repent and turn to Him in faith.
Omnipotent
(all-powerful)
God has unlimited power, authority and influence. He does all He wants and intends to do. God’s powerful Word spoke creation into being from nothing. God is the source of all power whether atoms,
energy, life or human strength
and authority. Without God’s power, everything would fall apart. His power holds the stars in the sky and sustains human lives. Nothing can stop God. Evil and death will not
win. God has promised a day He will
raise all His children to life
that does not end, and God has the power to keep
His promise.
Omniscient (all-knowing)
God is never surprised. He knows all there is to know. Nothing is hidden from God. God knows the past and the future; He knows every person even before
we are born. He knows the
number of our days and all the plans He has for
us. He knows what every person thinks,
feels, says and does. Only God knows the
choices people would make if
their circumstances were different. Therefore,
we can trust God to judge perfectly.
Only God knows all things.
Patient
God is patient. He could put an end to human
rebellion immediately, but God has pity on people whose lives are broken by sin. He loves His creation. His
plan is to restore creation and reconcile repentant sinners to Himself. Today is the day of salvation, but one day God will come to judge all
people.
Perfect
Everything God is, does and says, all His
attributes, His revelation, and His works, are completely
free of fault or defect. Because
God is unchanging and faithful, the measure of perfection begins with God. What God wills is good and perfect; His ways are flawless;
His judgments are upright; His Word is without error. Therefore, everything God is, does or says is right,
including His Word in Scripture.
Person
God is a person. God is not an idea or an
impersonal force. Like us, He has
identity and personality. He is one being in three persons. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and all
work together to accomplish our salvation. As a person, God has a mind and a will,
and He communicates. God made people in His image with a mind and a will and the ability to communicate. He speaks to us through His Word, the Bible,
and we speak to Him through prayer.
Preserver
When we trust Christ, we can know that God will
continue the good work He started in us. God preserves
our lives for His purpose, and
He preserves our salvation. Jesus
promised that no one can take you out of God’s hand. No temptation,
no failure, no person, not even Satan can cause God’s children to lose their
salvation. God preserves us so He will
accomplish His purpose for us because He is our preserver.
Provider
God provides for every creature He has made. He
feeds the birds and gives us our daily bread. We do not have strength
or goodness of our own but God gives it to us generously. He provides
a way out of temptation and protects
us from evil. God’s greatest gift is His
Son. Because He gave us His son, we can
trust Him to give us everything else we need.
Righteous
God is right in all He does. He has always been right and always will be
right. All of His words and actions are right. All of His plans are right. God has
no sin and is positively perfect. God never lies. He is fair, just and faithful
in all He does. We never need to wonder whether God is right,
so we can trust God when we do not understand.
We
do not always see God’s righteousness in the world today, but He has promised
that His righteousness will prevail.
Because God is righteous, He expects us
to be righteous. Even the best person
cannot be perfectly righteous.
But God sees His children as clothed with Christ’s
righteousness!
Savior
God reaches down and rescues sinners from the
penalty of death and hell that our sin deserves. We have no power to save ourselves from sin because we are
dead in our sin. God has planned from
eternity past to save His
children fully from sin —from its penalty, power and presence. He sent His Son to live the perfect life we
cannot live and die in our
place for our sin. On the cross, Jesus
satisfied God’s full wrath against our sin. Therefore, Jesus saves completely from the penalty of sin. God has no punishment left for His children. Jesus saves His children from sin’s power. He gives us new desires and a new ability to
fight sin through the power of the Holy Spirit. One day, our
Savior will free us from the
presence of sin when we see Him face to face.
Sovereign
God controls all things. There is nothing that is outside of God’s wise
control, even the exact time and place for each
person to live. No one tells God what to
do. What God plans, happens. No event, no natural disaster, no person, not even Satan, can stop God’s plans.
When God permits evil, we can trust He
has planned to use it for His people’s
good and His glory. God planned the time
for His Son to come the first time and a time for His Son to return. God will accomplish His plan because
He alone has power to do it.
Wise
God is not simply all knowing. He always uses His knowledge to do exactly
what is right. God’s Word is full of His wisdom. Both His plan of redemption and His creation
are perfectly wise. Science is still discovering the riches of God’s wisdom. The order of an atom displays God’s wisdom. Mathematics and music are possible because
they were first in God’s mind.
God is wise in how He put people in families and families in communities and communities
in nations. God is wise in the plan He
has for each of His children individually. All wisdom comes from God. To be wise we must seek Him.
Hope to
see you here for our next study. --- I
encourage you to trust in Jesus.
__________________________________________
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