God’s nature and attributes

God and His works

People often begin a discussion of God by saying what they think He ought to be like. That can tell a great deal about the speaker. It doesn't necessarily tell much about God. If God has revealed Himself, the sensible starting point is what He has said and done. Otherwise, religion becomes the process of designing a deity who rarely disagrees with the designer.

Read Exodus 34:5-14

5 The LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the LORD’s name.
6 The LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, “The LORD! The LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth,
7 keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.”
8 Moses hurried and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.
9 He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, Lord, please let the Lord go among us, even though this is a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”
10 He said, “Behold, I make a covenant: before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been worked in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD; for it is an awesome thing that I do with you.
11 Observe that which I command you today. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
12 Be careful, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be for a snare among you;
13 but you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and you shall cut down their Asherah poles;
14 for you shall worship no other god; for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

Moses hears both mercy and justice in the same declaration. God forgives, and He does not pretend guilt is innocence. Those truths can seem incompatible only if forgiveness means ignoring wrongdoing. The rest of Scripture shows why that assumption fails. Notice the historical setting as well. This comes after serious covenant betrayal, not after Israel has earned a favorable review. God's patience is real precisely because the offense is real. Mercy is more substantial than the decision to stop caring about right and wrong.

Read Isaiah 40:21-31

21 Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? Haven’t you been told from the beginning? Haven’t you understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in,
23 who brings princes to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
24 They are planted scarcely. They are sown scarcely. Their stock has scarcely taken root in the ground. He merely blows on them, and they wither, and the whirlwind takes them away as stubble.
25 “To whom then will you liken me? Who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these, who brings out their army by number. He calls them all by name. By the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is lacking.
27 Why do you say, Jacob, and speak, Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and the justice due me is disregarded by my God”?
28 Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might.
30 Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall;
31 but those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.

Isaiah doesn't describe God as one powerful being competing with other powerful beings. Creation depends on Him. He isn't waiting for advice about how to manage it. Yet the passage ends by addressing weakness and weariness. That connection is easy to miss. Divine greatness is not presented to make a struggling person feel irrelevant. It explains why God can sustain him. The promise should not be turned into a claim that every faithful person will have unlimited physical stamina. The point is reliance on the Lord who does not grow weary.

Suppose someone says a loving God could never judge. The immediate question is what love would mean if God were indifferent to the destruction of His creatures. Human affection can become sentimental when it refuses to confront what harms the beloved. Divine love is not afflicted with that confusion. But the opposite mistake also occurs: someone so emphasizes judgment that mercy begins to sound like a reluctant exception. Scripture corrects both reductions. The cross cannot be understood by selecting either justice or love and discarding the other. God has not revealed competing personalities. His saving action expresses the unified perfection of His character.

Read Isaiah 6:1-8

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple.
2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face. With two he covered his feet. With two he flew.
3 One called to another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of Armies! The whole earth is full of his glory!”
4 The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 Then I said, “Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Armies!”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.
7 He touched my mouth with it, and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin forgiven.”
8 I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”

Isaiah doesn't emerge from this encounter congratulating himself on his spiritual sensitivity. He recognizes his uncleanness. That is a useful correction to versions of worship that amount to self-approval with music. But the scene doesn't end with exposure. Cleansing is provided, and then Isaiah is sent. God's holiness doesn't make grace unnecessary; it makes clear why grace is necessary. A person who treats sin lightly may have underestimated the God against whom the sin is committed.

Read 1 John 4:7-21

7 Beloved, let’s love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love.
9 By this God’s love was revealed in us, that God has sent his only born Son into the world that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we remain in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world.
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God.
16 We know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
17 In this, love has been made perfect among us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, even so we are in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment. He who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
20 If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
21 This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should also love his brother.

John explains love through God's action in sending His Son. He doesn't begin with whatever currently receives the label loving and then require God to fit it. That reverses the direction of the argument. God's love reaches undeserving people and deals with their sin. It also has consequences for how those people treat one another. A person who claims deep knowledge of divine love while cultivating hatred has a problem that better terminology won't solve. The claim needs to be measured against the life.

Choose one attribute that is difficult for you to hold together with another. Perhaps mercy and justice, or sovereignty and goodness. Read the passages together instead of discarding the inconvenient one. God is not improved by removing the part of His character that challenges us. Worship begins with receiving Him as He reveals Himself.

Consider your perspective

God's love, holiness, justice, and goodness are not competing moods. This steadies trust when circumstances are painful: we can confess what God has revealed about Himself without pretending to know every reason for what happens.

Put it into practice

Name one attribute of God that your present circumstances make easy to overlook. Read a passage displaying it and let that truth shape an honest prayer rather than a forced explanation of your difficulty.

Reflect and respond

• Which attribute have you neglected?
• How does the cross display both justice and mercy?
• What changes when God’s character, rather than circumstances, governs trust?

Passages and further study

• Scripture: Exodus 34:1-17. https://ebible.org/engwebp/EXO34.htm
• Scripture: Isaiah 40:12-31. https://ebible.org/engwebp/ISA40.htm
• Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-13. https://ebible.org/engwebp/ISA06.htm
• Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21. https://ebible.org/engwebp/1JN04.htm
• Second London Baptist Confession (1677/1689), chapters 2, 5. Historical Reformed Baptist comparison; its first-day Sabbath teaching in 22.7-8 is not adopted here. Original text: https://1689confession.app/
• WEB text and public-domain notice: https://ebible.org/details.php?id=engwebp.

Scripture quotations are from the public-domain World English Bible (WEB). Historical confessions are study aids, subordinate to Scripture. This independent lesson is not an official denominational statement.