Scripture Proofs
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:24)
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his understanding is beyond measure. (Ps. 147:5)
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Ps. 90:2)
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17)
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!” (Rev. 4:8)
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne;
steadfast love and faithfulness go before you. (Ps. 89:14)
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:6, 7)
To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (1 Tim. 1:17)
I will admit I was a little reluctant to try to tackle this question. I have no idea why; I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that "What is God?" is a question that took over 1,500 years to answer so far as humanity can understand it, and I'm definitely sure it's not because God is infinite, meaning we as finite beings can never fully comprehend him anyway. And I'm sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that whole libraries of books have been written on the topic and my task is to compress it into one or two blog posts. Or, you know, it could be exactly because of those things.
That said, I think that this question gives about as adequate a summary as one could find in a single sentence. It's basically a list of God's attributes. I think I'll go through them one-by-one.
Spirit
"God is spirit" (John 4:24). I tried to find out what this means, and the best I could figure is that it means that God is not a physical being. Jesus said, "A spirit does not have flesh and bones" (Luke 24:39). Now, I suppose one could say that this means that Jesus cannot be God because he does have flesh and bones, but that argument doesn't stand up to Scripture, which clearly affirms that Jesus is both God and man (Col. 2:9).
Infinite
I don't think that we as finite humans can even comprehend infinitude. It seems to me that no matter how much of something we can think of, we can always think of more, and any amount of anything we think of will always have some limit. In contrast, God is infinite. Scripture repeatedly affirms that God's ways are unsearchable (Job 59; 9:10; Isa. 40:28). Psalm 147:5 says that God's "understanding is beyond measure." And as Zophar said to Job, "Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?" (Job 11:7). Our God is infinite. This doesn't mean we can't understand or comprehend him at all; it only means we can't do so fully.
Eternal
God is also eternal. The Biblical concept of this is that God had no beginning and has no end; that is, he has always been and always will be. There never was a time when God wasn't around. "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Ps. 90:2, emphasis added). Job 36:26 says, "The number of his years is unsearchable." The Psalmist says to him, "Your years have no end" (Ps. 102:27). God also calls himself the first and the last (Isa. 41:4; 48:12). By implication, he has the power of being in and of himself, and was not caused by anything else; otherwise, whatever brought God into being, rather than God, would be the eternal thing. Just for information's sake, the theological/philosophical term for this is aseity. If all this is hard to wrap your mind around, then you know exactly what I was talking about in the last paragraph about God's infinitude.
Unchangeable
The theological term for this is immutability. We as humans change, we mutate. We are mutable. God, in contrast, does not change. He does not mutate. He is immutable. But I digress.
As the Bible puts it, with God "there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17). What James is saying is that we can trust God fully because he does not change. He doesn't say he's going to do something and then not do it. He doesn't make a promise he can't and won't fulfill. And all those other attributes we haven't even covered yet, his "being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth"? Those never change either. He doesn't become less holy, just, or good. He never becomes less wise. He never becomes more of those either, since he is also infinitely and eternally good, just, and so forth.
In the next post, we'll take a closer look at those attributes, his "being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth."
To read the full catechism, click here.
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