2 - Who is God - Part 1

The question, “Who is God?” seems like the most preposterous question for any human being to answer, because who are we, mere mortals, to even attempt to describe who God is. The objective of this and the following articles is not to try and define God as though He were definable, but to find 4 different ways of arriving at the answer to this question, ‘Who is God?’

The first way would be to find all there is to know about Him based on what He has done throughout the history of mankind. The second way would be to find all that He said about Himself. The third way would be to learn from those who had a personal relationship with Him. And the fourth, and to me, the most compelling way would be to share all that I’ve come to know God to be by my personal relationship with God and this would be built on the first three approaches as well.

Knowing about God through Creation

God existed even before He created this world. He wasn’t created – He existed from time immemorial. We learn from the above statement that God is Eternal – He was never created and He will never die. God created this world by merely speaking it into existence. God did not use anything to create everything. He merely spoke and it came to be. From this fact of creation, we learn that God is Powerful and Creative (not only because He created things so beautifully but because He created everything from nothing). We also learn that God’s Word has Power. He can bring things into existence by merely speaking them into existence. We therefore learn that God’s Word is Powerful. When He created everything, He created it good and He Himself said that it was good. We learn from this that God is Good.

After creating all other things, man finally created man and He created man in His own image (with the character, nature, likeness of Himself). Humans were created to have a personal relationship with God forever. When God created the first two humans – Adam and Eve, He was known to them in such an intimate way that they walked and talked together. No other part of God’s creation was created in God’s image with the ability to have a personal relationship with God. The relationship between God and Adam and Eve was so intimate at that time, that there would not have been a need for anyone to have to write an article like this in those days, because the question of who God is would not have even arisen.

It’s when humans decided to disobey God and eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil that God had commanded that they not eat, that they became aware of right and wrong and began to choose to do evil rather than do good. Ever since then, humans have rebelled against God and not sought to have a relationship with Him. We became so perverted that we rejected our Creator and began to make gods of men, animals, reptiles, birds etc. and began to worship God’s creation rather than worship Him – The Creator. Therefore the knowledge of God became more and more scarce and hence the need to answer this question, ‘Who is God,’ became a lot more necessary.

If you’re wondering when I’m going to begin addressing the answer to the question, ‘Who is God,’ you’ll discover that I’ve already begun doing that. I mentioned that God is the Creator. He is Holy – and created man to be holy. He is loving and caring and did not want man to face the consequences of disobedience and so warned man against it. God is relational and desired to have a relationship with us humans.

As man continued to sin against God, God realised that He had to do something about it and so He decided to wipe mankind off the face of the earth and so He sent a flood to kill all humans, animals, birds, except 8 humans of one family and 2 of each of the animals, birds and creeping things so as to continue the process of populating the earth. But even this did not change the heart of man. As humans began to populate the earth, sin continued to increase again. Here we see God is Just. He could not tolerate sin and had to destroy those who sinned. For those of us who struggle to come to grips with this fact of God destroying His creation, let’s remember that it’s His creation and He can do what He wants with it, especially if His creation is destroying one another and destroying the very purpose for which they were created – namely to have a personal relationship with Him. We also see that God is Gracious when He spared the lives of 8 humans of a family and 2 of every animal, bird and creeping thing.

After this destruction, God decided that He would never again destroy the entire earth with a flood and He even set a rainbow in the sky as a reminder to Him that He should never destroy the earth with a flood ever again. We see here that God is merciful. And the Lord has kept His word regarding this and has never again destroyed the entire world with a flood. We see God’s faithfulness at play here. He kept His word to man.

He knew that man could not change his ways on His own and so He revealed His plan to save man when He called a man called Abraham, who had such faith in God that he became the model to all of mankind of the kind of faith they needed to have in God to be saved (more on that later). God made Abraham righteous because Abraham believed God’s promise that He and his and his wife would have a child in their old age. We see God is Trustworthy-He kept His word and gave Abraham and his wife Sarah a son in their old age – they were 100 and 90 respectively when they had their son. God’s plan was to raise up a nation called Israel, whom He would teach His ways and who would then be a light to those around them and help them come to know God as well. We see God as a God of Salvation – He seeks to save all humans.

But things didn’t work out as He planned, as man continued to be rebellious and rejected God and followed their own ways of living and created their own Gods. But God remained faithful to His creation and He called a man called Moses to lead His people out of bondage in Egypt, where they lived as slaves. Through this man Moses, God gave His law to let man know how holy He was and that He had moral expectations of humans. Once again we see God as Holy and desiring that man live holy as well. But his standards of holiness were too high for man to live by, and God began to slowly reveal a plan He had already come up with, to save man from his bondage and slavery to sin. The ceremonial laws that God gave to man were a picture or a shadow of the process God had in mind to save man from sin. We see God’s Wisdom here.

Nothing changed in the human heart – it continued to be rebellious and turned away from God continually, but we still see God’s faithfulness to His creation and He sent prophets to teach and warn His people to turn back to God and He even punished His people in love, by sending them into exile so that they would learn to follow His ways for their own good. We see that God as a Loving Father to His people. A loving father chastises his children in love – he doesn’t let them live any way they like as they would bring themselves to ruin.

Even that didn’t change the heart of man – sin continued to reign and rule in the heart of man. So God eventually revealed His amazing plan to save the world when He sent His own Son Jesus into the world, born as a man and yet fully God as well. He sent Him with the express purpose of saving the world from sin in a way that no human mind could have conceived. Jesus was absolutely sinless and He came to take the penalty of the sins of the people of the world of all time - yours and mine included. The penalty that God decided for sin was death, and so it meant that each of us should have died for the sins we committed. No matter how big or small the sin was, we were worthy of death. If all of us died as a result of our sin, then how would we live to have a relationship with God? So Jesus died in our place so that we did not need to die for our sins. Not only did He die, but He also rose again from the dead on the third day, ascended back into Heaven and is alive forevermore. We see the Wisdom, Love, Grace, Mercy, Protection and Kindness of God through this amazing work of Jesus on our behalf.

Now all one needs to do to get forgiveness of sins - to be restored into a right relationship with God and to be able to live a new life, free from the clutches of sin, is to trust in the work of Jesus on our behalf. This is a choice that each of us needs to make to set our lives back on track in relationship with the Creator of this universe.

God knows that as long as man lives on the earth, he will face temptations to sin again and by Himself, he would not have the ability to say ‘no’ to sin and so He sent His Holy Spirit to live inside all those who believe in His Son so that they would now have the power over sin in their lives. We see the Power of God at play in this act of God. The same Holy Spirit of God who powerfully raised Jesus from the dead, is living inside those who trust in Him to enable them to live a new life that reflects the image (character, nature) of God – the image that was destroyed in the Garden of Eden. God cannot and will never try to force anyone to believe in Him; He only invites people into a relationship with Him through faith in His Son.

Once one enters into a relationship with God through belief and trust in His Son Jesus, God adopts us into His family where we are now His children, saved to live a new life here on earth, as well as to live forever with Him in heaven. We see how Forgiving and Welcoming God is to be willing to save sinful people like us and to adopt us into His family.

This article has not come remotely close to explaining who God really is, but it’s one of the four ways I attempt to try to explain who God is. The next article will be, ‘Who is God? - Part 2’ and will be based on what God actually says about Himself.

If you were blessed by this article, please share it with others.

Michael Collins

E-mail: mikesthersusy@gmail.com