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)
Last time I talked about the fact that God is Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Today I plan to go over the remaining attributes: his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. The reason I chose to separate the question at this spot is because, from the way the answer is worded, it seems to me like Keach was trying to apply the attributes of eternality, infinitude, and unchangeability to the remaining attributes; that is to say, his being is an eternal, infinite, and unchangeable being. His holiness is an eternal, infinite, and unchangeable holiness. His justice . . . well, you get the idea.
Being
I feel like God's being has already been adequately covered, to be honest. All the attributes are part of his being. I mainly just included this header so people wouldn't say "Hey, wait a minute."
Wisdom
I think that Psalm 147:5 is a really good statement of just how wise God is: "His understanding is beyond measure." He is so wise that we literally cannot measure his wisdom. That seems to square pretty well with his infinitude, doesn't it? Paul also points out that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men" (1 Cor. 1:25). Not that God can ever been foolish; I think his point was that, even at his wisest, man cannot even begin to remotely compare to God.
Power
A while back I did some number-crunching about the universe that God created and was overwhelmed by just how awesome in power God truly is. God created all things. He "formed the earth and the world" (Ps. 147:5). I honestly think that the greatest statement of God's power is Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." We often take that for granted, but think about it: God created everything. Can you even imagine how much power that takes? We cannot create anything from nothing; all our inventions are just that: inventions made from the palette of materials God created out of nothing. Isn't that incredible?
Holiness
I've said this before, but R.C. Sproul wrote an entire book on the subject of God's holiness, so I will not even be deluded into the idea that I can adequately cover it in a paragraph or two. I will say, however, that God's holiness is the only attribute of God that is repeated three times in succession, in more than one place in the Bible (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8). In Hebrew, repetition was how they emphasized something. If we English speakers want to say something is really great, we say it's "really great," or we may compare it to something else by saying it's "greater." In Hebrew, to my understanding, they would say it's "great, great." But God's holiness is repeated not twice, but three times. That puts it in a category all its own. The Bible does not say that God is "love, love, love" (as our overemphasis on God's love in Contemporary American Christianity might lead you to believe). God's holiness is "great, great." It's far greater than that.
Justice
I don't think we think of God's justice a lot in our culture. We tend to see God as this big, loving guy who should never punish people when they sin. But the Bible says that God "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. 34:7). God is very concerned with justice; he is the perfect judge of the world. This thought should cause us to tremble like Isaiah did when he beheld the Lord (Isa. 6:5), because we are all just as guilty before God as he was. But we must also remember that, in the same passage in Exodus God declares that he is "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" (Ex. 34:6, 7). God's justice and mercy may seem to be contradictory, but they are not. Rather than simply overlook sin, God has provided a substitute to pay for them. "so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26).
Goodness
Jesus makes this point in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, "Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matt. 7:9-11). The contrast is between people "who are evil" and "your Father who is in heaven." Jesus is comparing between evil man and good God. If evil man gives good gifts, then a good God will give even more. Jesus also bluntly says that God is good when he says, "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18).
We often don't think of God as being good when he is being just. I don't understand why this would be. If an earthly judge punishes a bad person, we think of him as a good judge, and so we should. If he lets a criminal go despite compelling evidence that he committed the crime, we think of him as a bad judge, and so we should. But if God punishes a sinner, we think of him as cruel. And if God doesn't immediately punish someone we think of as bad, we call him a bad judge. We don't give God much credit, do we? But God is a good judge; his justice is as good as he is.
Truth
Even a cursory reading of Scripture should reveal that God is the God of truth. Paul is so concerned that God be shown true that he says, "Let God be true though every one were a liar" (Rom. 3:4). John says of the Holy Spirit, "The Spirit is the truth" (1 John 5:6). Jesus says of himself, "The one who seeks the glory of him who sent him [the Father] is true, and in him there is no falsehood" (John 7:18). As a result, God hates falsehood. He says of the land of Gilead, "Falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, declares the LORD" (Jeremiah 9:3). He also calls the enemy, Satan, "a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44). As a result, "everyone who loves and practices falsehood" will be "outside" New Jerusalem in the end (Rev. 22:14, 15). God is a God of truth!
When I separate these attributes into a list, by no means am I trying to say they are mutually exclusive; God's attributes can be stated of each other. What I mean by that is that we can say that God's holiness is a good, true, and just holiness. His justice is a true, good, wise, holy justice. He has the power to execute his justice. He also has the power to be merciful and to provide atonement for sins. His Word, the truth, has power to save and to condemn. They are all interconnected.
These past two posts barely scratch the surface of the depths of God. If you want to know more about God, I know of a book you can read.
To read the full catechism, click here.
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