One of the things that I find more and more today is an ignorance among professing Christians as to who God is. Many understand certain things about Him, facts like: there is only one God, Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins and that all who believe in Him will be saved. But this doesn’t mean they really know Him for who He is. Well, you may ask, why is it important for Me to know who God is? Because without a real understanding of who He is, it is possible to misunderstand what ‘faith that saves’ really is.
So how can we know who God is? The only place that God has revealed His person to man is in the Scriptures, and He has done this by revealing to us His attributes. For example, the Bible teaches that God is a God of love. How do we know this? Because I John 4:16 tells us that “… God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in Him.” So, perfect love is one of His attributes. Also, we know that God is holy because Leviticus 11:44 tells us, “… ye shall be holy, for I am holy; …” Now these are just two of God’s many attributes that He has revealed to us in Scripture that tells us who He is. A few other prominent attributes that Scripture declares that He possesses are that He is eternal, faithful to keep His promises and long-suffering towards us; that He is merciful, patient and kind. He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent.
Now there is one more thing we must understand, that God will never violate His character in any actions He performs, which brings us to a couple of attributes He possesses that I don’t think many people consider, but are also critical to understand if we are to know who God really is. First, God is ‘immutable,’ which means ‘He never changes’, not in any way nor to any degree. So how do we know that? Once again, because Scripture declares it. For example, Malachi 3:6 says, “For I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore, you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.” (NKJV) And in Numbers 23:19 we read, “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. … has He spoken, and will He not make it good.” (NKJV)
There is another attribute akin to His immutability that God possesses. He is ‘impassible’. This means that, outside of God, there is nothing that anyone or anything can do to effect any change in Him, as James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” (NKJV)This is very important to understand because we are now living in a time when there are those, even in ‘Christian’ circles, that believe God ‘can’ be affected by His love for us; that He in some measure ‘evolves’. This is part of the teaching known as ‘Process Theology.’ To adhere to this thinking is to violate Scripture’s claims about God’s impassibility. So why does this matter?
Because the fact that what God considers sin and the way He deals with it never changes. What He considers sin in the Old Testament will always be considered sin, and unrepentant persistence in sin always results in judgment. Anyone who claims to be a child of God while refusing to turn away from a sinful lifestyle is deceiving themselves. If you have any doubts about the truth of this statement, please read the following passages: Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 5:5-7, Revelation 21:7-8; 22:14-15 and I Corinthians 6:9-11.
Now in case you didn’t catch it, all of the passages listed above are in the New Testament and belong to the “Age of Grace”. No, God does not change, and this is why it’s important to really understand who God is. If we don’t know the God of the Bible as He truly is, we are not worshipping the true God, but have created another god, an idol which, if not corrected, will cause many to be on the outside looking in at the final judgment.
Now, I don’t know if you noticed that those described in I Corinthians 6:11 are true Christians, because after enumerating their previous sinful lifestyles in verses 9-10, verse 11 says, “And such ‘were’ some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (NKJV) These had turned from their sins unto Christ and now, because of that, belong to Him and have a future awaiting them in heaven. And this is why it is so critical that we have a Biblical understanding of who God really is.
For God’s glory and His alone,
Pastor Terry.