What God is like

The name God gives himself

Ask a hundred people what God is like and you will hear a hundred portraits, many drawn from our hopes or fears. Christians begin elsewhere: we know God only because he makes himself known (the first lesson), so we start with what he has said about himself.

At the burning bush Moses asked for God's name, and God answered, "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14). Everything else has received its being from somewhere; God simply is, depending on nothing and no one. Matthew Henry, reflecting on the name, draws out that God is eternal and that he is "unchangeable in his word as well as in his nature" Matthew Henry. The one who exists of himself is also the one who keeps his promises.

Later, on Sinai, God proclaimed his name again and this time described his character.

The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness

Exodus 34:6

‘Loving devotion’ translates chesed (חֶסֶד), the steadfast, covenant-keeping love that does not let go. Yet in the next breath God adds that "He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished" (Exodus 34:7). Scripture never makes God simpler by deleting his mercy or his justice. The church calls these truths about God his attributes, and has often grouped them in two families: those that belong to God alone, and those he shares, in a creaturely measure, with us.

What belongs to God alone

God is self-existent and needs nothing. Paul told the philosophers of Athens that God is not "served by human hands, as if He needed anything" (Acts 17:25). He is eternal: "from everlasting to everlasting You are God" (Psalm 90:2). He is unchanging: "I, the LORD, do not change" (Malachi 3:6), the Father of lights "with whom there is no change or shifting shadow" (James 1:17). Matthew Henry offers a homely picture: "As the sun is the same in nature and influences, though the earth and clouds, often coming between, make it seem to us to vary, so God is unchangeable" Matthew Henry.

God is present everywhere and knows all things. Psalm 139 says this as a prayer.

Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.

Psalm 139:7-8

The same psalm confesses, "Even before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, O LORD" (Psalm 139:4), and Hebrews adds that "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight" (Hebrews 4:13). Yet for the psalmist this is not surveillance but safety: even at the farthest sea, "Your right hand will hold me fast" (Psalm 139:10).

God is almighty. Jeremiah prayed, "Nothing is too difficult for You!" (Jeremiah 32:17), and the angel assured Mary, "For no word from God will ever fail" (Luke 1:37). Almighty does not mean that God can do things contrary to his own character; Scripture says plainly that "it is impossible for God to lie" (Hebrews 6:18). His power always moves with his truth and goodness (see Can God do anything?).

Jesus told the Samaritan woman, "God is Spirit" (John 4:24). God has no body, so no mountain or temple can contain him; whether calling God Father makes him male is discussed in Is God male?. Augustine answers the person who longs for a high mountain to pray on: "Yes, God dwells on high, but He has respect to the humble. Wherefore descend that you may ascend" Augustine. The God who is above all is also nearest to the lowly.

Holy love

The second family of attributes are those God shares with the creatures made in his image. Isaiah saw the seraphim calling to one another:

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.

Isaiah 6:3

To be holy is to be set apart, utterly other than the world and utterly pure. John says, "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). And the same apostle says, "God is love" (1 John 4:8). God is also just and good: "The LORD is good to all; His compassion rests on all He has made" (Psalm 145:9). He is faithful, so that a man weeping over a ruined city could still say of his mercies, "They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!" (Lamentations 3:23). And he is wise beyond our tracing: "O, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Romans 11:33). God calls us to be holy, loving, just and faithful too: in him these are infinite, in us they grow as we come to resemble him.

God is not a collection of attributes bolted together, with love in one compartment and justice in another. His love is a holy love, and his holiness a loving holiness. Theologians call this God's simplicity: not that God is easy to understand, but that he is not made of parts. That is why at the cross his justice and his mercy do not cancel each other out: God acts "so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26).

The Westminster Shorter Catechism gathers all this into one sentence: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth" Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q4. Augustine, opening his Confessions in prayer, strings the paradoxes together: God is "most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present" Augustine, Confessions 1.4.

Does God suffer?

Scripture says that the LORD "was grieved in His heart" (Genesis 6:6), and in Hosea God cries, "My compassion is stirred!" (Hosea 11:8). Yet it also says, "God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind" (Numbers 23:19). Christians have held these texts together in different ways.

The classical view, taught by the Fathers, by Thomas Aquinas and by the Reformers, is that God does not change or suffer in his divine nature. These are called his immutability and impassibility. The doctrine does not picture God as cold. It means that his love is not a passion stirred up from outside, rising and falling with events, but the full and steady love of his own being; Scripture's language of grief and regret is God speaking of himself in human terms, so that we grasp how truly he responds to us. A God at the mercy of what creatures do could not be the rock we rest on, and his love is not less for not being a passion, but more sure. The Westminster Confession (2.1) and the Thirty-Nine Articles (Art. 1) confess God as "without body, parts, or passions" Westminster Confession, ch. 2 Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. 1.

Since the twentieth century many theologians, from several traditions, have argued that God is truly affected by his creatures and suffers with them. Jürgen Moltmann, in The Crucified God, read the cross as an event in which God himself enters into suffering Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God. Those who hold this view say God's suffering is not weakness but the free choice of love, that a love untouched by the beloved's pain is not the love the prophets describe, and that cries like Hosea's should be read with their full weight.

Both sides agree on a great deal. God is unchanging in his faithfulness and his promises. He is not indifferent to us. And the Son of God truly suffered: "Christ suffered in His body" (1 Peter 4:1), as Truly God and truly man will explore. For more, see Does God have feelings? and Does God change his mind?.

Knowing what God is like is not an exam to pass but a reason to trust. The God who knows us completely loves us steadily, and the God who is everywhere holds us fast. For a fuller portrait, see Who is God?.

Practice