‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
13th teaching
10.29.2012
“Introduction to Theology
Proper”
“Knowing God”
I’m super excited that we’ve come this far!
So far we’ve built up a foundation. We’ve established
primarily that a theistic God exists, a single supernatural infinite Being
beyond the universe. We’ve established that this God can and does act within
the universe in the form of miracles. And finally we’ve seen that this God has
revealed Himself to human beings through a generalized revelation in Nature and
a more specific revelation in Scripture.
After we established that, we zoomed in on that Special
Revelation which we call the Bible. We studied how the Bible came into being,
how it was preserved through the ages and how it supernaturally affects our
lives.
We ended our study in Bibliology by examining the
relationship between Jesus and the Bible. The Bible reveals who God is and even
more specifically the Son of God reveals who God the Father is. Remember Hebrews 1:3? Jesus is the effulgence,
the out-shining of God’s glory as well as the express image of God’s person.
God has said it all in Jesus Christ. Looking at Jesus gives us a clear image of
what God is like.
So now we’ve established the reliability of the Bible, now
we can finally examine what the Bible
reveals about God Himself. That’s the bridge. That’s why our last study was
about Jesus and the Bible, the bridge between the written Word and the
description of God.
Everything we’ve studied comes to a point now. Think of it
this way: we’ve been sailing for an island and we’ve just now reached our
destination. Or think of it this way: we have a treasure map and we’ve just now
reached the X that marks the spot. That spot is the study of God. This study of
God is known as Theology Proper.
Specifically, Theology Proper is the
study of God’s attributes.
So Theology Proper is just studying about God. But
when we think about God, we may wonder ‘Well, what is God like’? Many millions
of people out there are wondering what God is really like. Who is God really?
Is He angry, is He good, is He loving, is He hateful, is He distant, is He
near, is He powerful, is He weak, is He kind, is He out there at all?
There’s millions wondering.
And so you have people who just make it up. Have you ever
heard someone say ‘Well, God to me is
like this’ or ‘I believe God wouldn’t
do this or that’ or ‘I don’t think
that’s what God is like’. People are confused about what God is like and so
many people have made-up what they think God should be like. And so people
believe that God just winks at your sin or that He doesn’t care, or that God is
angry with you or that God doesn’t love you. But to make up your own truth is
to ignore the real truth.
We’re surrounded by a world full of confusion about God.
Still other people may believe that God can’t even be
described or that God is unknowable. That’s agnosticism.
All kinds of weird ideas come into people’s heads when they
think about God because they don’t know what He’s really like. They haven’t
checked out His Autobiography in the Bibliography, in the Bible.
A Reformed theologian by the name of J. I. Packer said “The
world becomes a strange, mad, and painful place and life in it is a
disappointing and unpleasant business for those who do not know about God.
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder
through life blindfold as it were, with no sense of direction and no
understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose
your soul.”
So who will answer this confusion in the strange, mad and
painful place of the world? Who will describe God to the people who do not know
Him? It is our job as Christians who
have the Bible and who study the Bible to both know exactly who God is and to
be able to share who God is with others. This is a fundamental part of our
mission and our message.
Turn to Romans
10:13-14: “For ‘whoever calls upon
the name of the LORD shall be saved.’ How then shall they call on Him in whom
they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not
heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?”
How can they believe in a God they don’t know? How can they
believe in Someone that no one has described to them?
But if we’re going to describe what God is like,
we need to know what He is like. And
that’s why we’re studying Theology Proper, so we know who God is properly.
Theology Proper,
then, is proper theology. Everything we know is based out of God.
Everything we know about God is based in the Scriptures. So to have proper
theology, the properly know who God is, we have to examine the Bible and keep
in mind everything else we’ve previously studied.
Tonight, we’re going to have an introduction to Theology
Proper, the study of God’s attributes. The title of tonight’s study is ‘Knowing God’.
Here’s how tonight’s intro is going to break down:
1. The importance of Theology
Proper
2. What are attributes?
3. What kind of attributes are
there?
4. How the Bible describes
attributes
1.
The importance of Theology
Proper
There can be no greater study than studying God. There is
no more important of a topic than knowing God. Of all the information in the
world, information concerning God is the most precious. Why is it so important?
Why is it so key to know God?
Consider the following:
a.
Knowing God provides the basis
for doctrine
Pretty much every major
teaching in Christianity has its foundation in God. You can’t believe the Bible
is the Word of God unless you know God is the Author. You can’t believe Jesus
is the Son of God unless you know God is there to have a Son at all. Miracles,
prophecies, propitiation, creation… all exist because of God. So knowing God is
the key to knowing the teachings of Christianity.
b.
Knowing God keeps us from false
teaching
If we want to steer clear of
heresy and cults, then we need to know who God is. No one can persuade you to
believe anything false about God if you already are sure about who He says He
is. If we know what is true about God than we can recognize what is falsely
said about Him. Knowing the truth of God we’ll stay clear of the lies of men.
c.
Knowing God is needed for
salvation
How can someone believe that
Jesus died for them unless they know who Jesus is? How can they come to know
God unless God is made known to them? In John
17:3, Jesus says “And this is eternal
life, that they may know You, the only True God, and Jesus Christ whom You have
sent.”
d.
Knowing God is emphasized in
the Bible
The Bible is interested in your
mind as well as your heart. The Word of God places great emphasis upon knowing
God. Here’s a selection of a few Scriptures on that: Matt 22:37, “Jesus said to
him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul
and with all your mind’.” Ephesians
1:17, “…that the God of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of Him.” I
John 5:20, “And we know that the Son
of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is
true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true
God and eternal life.” Philippians
3:8,10, “But indeed I also count all
things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I
may gain Christ… that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the
fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death…”
e.
Knowing God is essential for
living the Christian life
A.W. Tozer wrote: “What comes
into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
John Piper, a Calvinist Baptist
preacher (and don’t worry, I’m not Calvinist…and I’m not a Baptist either…) …he
wrote: “But to enjoy [God] we must
know Him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be
intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when the fog
clears and you find yourself on the brink of some vast precipice.”
Norman Geisler, a modern-day
author and apologist, wrote “Our concept of God will have a marked effect on
our practical lives. It is a psychological fact that we tend to become like
what (or whom) we admire the most. Hero worship produces followers who tend to
emulate their idols, whether they are athletes, saints, or gods. Because
worshipers become like the gods they worship, our godliness tends to become
like our God. Our concept of God will, therefore, define the limits of our
godliness.
f.
Knowing God helps us to help
others to know God
As I mentioned earlier, people
are confused about God. Winston Churchill said “Men occasionally stumble over
the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had
happened”. That’s how people are. It’s as if they stumble about the truth of
God. Men and women need us to share with them the truth about who God is.
Look at it this way: learning about God is one of the most
important things you could ever do. It is the basis of doctrine, it will keep
you from heresy, it is necessary for eternal life, it is emphasized by the
Bible and knowing God will help you to live the Christian life. And don’t
forget, we must know God if we want to help others to know Him.
2.
What are attributes?
We’re studying Theology Proper. Theology Proper includes
other topics, but it is mainly concerned with the study of God’s attributes.
But what is an attribute?
Simply, the attribute of something is its property or
quality. For example: an attribute of water is that it is wet. You don’t have
to say how wet the water is! It’s a part of water for it to be wet. It’s a
water-like quality or property.
Similarly, if you heat up water you have hot water and an
attribute of hot water is that it is… well, it’s hot.
So an attribute is a characteristic or property which we
attribute to the nature of an object. That may sound complex, but it really
isn’t. Just think: an attribute is a specific characteristic.
Now it gets interesting when we talk about God’s
attributes. It’s easy to say that water has the attribute of wetness or that
ice has the attribute of being cold, but what about God? How can anyone have
the audacity to claim attributes for God? How can we know properties or
qualities or characteristics… how can we know the attributes of God?
Well, again remember that God has laid out just who He is
in His Word and in His Son. God is described to us by the Bible and by Jesus
Christ.
So… an attribute is a basic
characteristic of an object’s nature. Another word for attribute is quality or property or trait. Therefore,
an attribute of God is a basic
characteristic of God’s nature.
*One more note before the next point:
Attributes are things that are said about God.
They aren’t exhaustive descriptions, meaning no one attribute truly defines God
entirely. They’re just statements made about God.
This is important because we have to remember. We can’t fit
all of infinite God into our tiny, limited minds.
You may have heard it said “If God were small enough to be
understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped”.
An author once wrote about St. Augustine saying: “One day
as he was walking by the sea, he saw a small boy who, with the help of a shell,
was emptying water from the ocean into a hole he had dug in the sand. ‘What are
you doing, son?’ asked Augustine. He was impressed by the naive answer, ‘I'm
going to empty all the sea into this hole.’ Augustine smiled. An inner voice,
however, was saying to him, ‘You are trying to do the same thing by thinking
you can understand the depths of God with your limited mind’.”
The preacher A.W. Tozer wrote: “How completely satisfying
to turn from our limitations to a God who has none.”
I think this is something we all agree on, but many
Christians get hung up about Theology as being so technical and so intellectual
and worse of all, trying to fit God into our brains. I don’t believe that’s the
case.
We study theology all the time. We certainly do at every
church service and bible study. We talk theology whenever we talk about God
with other people. Theology doesn’t have to be some mystical, technical,
intellectual exercise. It should be practical to our lives and our understanding
of God.
But theology, to be clear, is not concerned with fitting
God into our heads. God is too big and too vast to be completely understood.
That’s not the mission of theology. Rather, it’s just a study about God and
what we can know about Him.
So the attributes of God are descriptions of God, not
exhaustive terms about Him.
3.
What kind of attributes are
there?
Many theologians and Bible students have different
ways of organizing God’s attributes. Some keep short lists of attributes. Some
keep longer lists of attributes. Some say there’s this many different kinds of
attributes, others say there’s that many.
For the purposes of our study, let’s just consider THREE
different kinds of attributes for God. They are:
A.
Metaphysical attributes
B.
Moral attributes
C.
Non-moral attributes
The Metaphysical attribute is a description of the way God
actually is. Just like a physical attribute of a rock is that it is hard, a
metaphysical attribute of God is that He is immaterial, that is He is a Spirit.
Other examples of a metaphysical attribute of God is His eternality, His
triunity and unity, and His omnipresence.
A Moral attribute describes God’s moral characteristics,
moral attributes of His nature and how He relates to His creatures: such as His
justice, His truthfulness and His love.
A Non-moral attribute doesn’t mean an attribute that is immoral. It means an attribute which has
nothing to do with morality. Non-moral attributes like Moral attributes
describe how God relates to His creatures based on His nature. An example of a
Non-moral attribute is God’s sovereignty.
*Pop-quiz: based on the information I just gave you, tell
me what category the follow attribute fits in!
God’s mercy. Is God’s mercy a Metaphyiscal, Moral or
Non-moral attribute?
What about God’s immortality. Is God’s immortality a
Metaphysical, Moral or Non-moral attribute?
Think of another attribute of God, something about God.
Where does it fall in?
*So each of God’s attributes will fall into one of these
three categories. Now we know what an attribute is, and we know what kind of
attributes there are… so how does the Bible use attributes to describe God?
4.
How the Bible describes
attributes
Before we take a look at some Scriptures, let us consider
that there are THREE possible ways we could describe God, THREE possible ways
which we could ascribe attributes to Him.
We can either make univocal
statements about God, equivocal statements
about God or analogical statements
about God.
Univocal means entirely
the same. So a univocal statement about God means we would ascribe
attributes to God in entirely the same
way as we do to creatures. Therefore, if we say that God loves univocally
then we mean that He loves exactly the
same way that human beings love. That’s a depressing thought. We know human
love to be petty and prejudiced and perverted. In fact, we can’t make univocal
statements about God, because God is an infinite Being and every creature is
finite. We can’t say that our existence is like God’s existence, because we’re
finite and He’s infinite. We can’t say our wisdom is like God’s wisdom, because
we’re stupid and He isn’t. No statement
about God can be entirely the same as a statement about a creature.
In fact, the Bible confirms this. Isaiah 55:8-9, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says
the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher
than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” So though we’re made
in God’s image, all over Scripture, man and God are contrasted. Man and God are
not entirely the same and no statement about them can be entirely the same.
Well, throw out univocal statements. But what
about equivocal statements?
Univocal meant entirely
the same, so equivocal means entirely
different. Therefore, an equivocal statement about God means to ascribe
attributes to God as entirely different
then human attributes. Using again the example of God’s love, this would mean
that God’s love is entirely different than
human love. Entirely different. But what’s the opposite of love? Hatred. Is
God’s love then actually hatred because it is entirely different. Or what about
God’s existence? If God’s existence is entirely the opposite than human
existence than He doesn’t exist at all, for the opposite of being is non-being,
and the opposite of existence is non-existence.
And so we’ve run into another problem. We can’t make
equivocal statements at all. Not only can we not say that God is entirely the
same as a creature, but we also can’t say that God is entirely different than a
creature.
C.S. Lewis sums up the worthlessness and impossibility of
equivocal statements about God in his book the
Problem of Pain. He wrote:
“Any consideration of the
goodness of God at once threatens us with the following dilemma. On the one
hand, if God is wiser than we His judgment must differ from ours on many
things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not
be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil. On the other
hand, if God’s moral judgment differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His
‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’,
while asserting that His goodness is wholly other [entirely different] than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we
know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral
grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall
obey, if at all, only through fear—and we should be equally ready to obey an
omnipotent Fiend.”
What He’s saying is that God’s goodness is equivocal, entirely different from human goodness,
then it is the opposite of goodness which would be badness.
Toss equivocal statements out the window.
We’re left with analogical statements. We can’t make
statements about God in entirely the same
way as creatures, nor can we make statements about God in an entirely different way than creatures.
We can only make analogical statements.
An analogical statement is a statement about God which is
an analogy. An analogical statement about God is a statement which says God is similar to something else. So while God
is not entirely the same or entirely different, He is similar to things that we know. God’s love is similar to ours, only
His is pure and infinite. God’s goodness if similar to ours, only His is
perfect. God’s existence is similar to ours, only His existence is eternal.
This is the only meaningful way to describe God
and this is exactly how the Bible reveals God, with statements that are analogical,
statements that portray God as similar
to something else. These statements in the Bible about God are analogies,
they’re metaphors and figures of speech often times. The Bible uses anthropomorphisms to describe God in
human terms. But when it says God has eyes or arms or even wings, it doesn’t
mean so literally, because God is immaterial Spirit (John 4:24).
Here’s some examples of the Bible’s usage of analogy to
describe God:
I.
Genesis 15:1 - “After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision,
saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great
reward.” The statement is an analogy. God is not literally a shield. He
isn’t made of metal and He isn’t an inanimate object. Neither is He a simple
piece of protective armor. No, God is a shield analogically. It means that God is like a shield in that He would protect Abram.
II.
Deuteronomy 33:27 – “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms…”
Does this mean that God has arms growing out from underneath of Him? No,
because again God is immaterial. He is a spirit. It’s saying that God will
support you like arms reaching down.
III.
2 Samuel 22:47 – “The LORD lives! Blessed be my Rock! Let God be exalted, the Rock of my
salvation!” It would be pretty silly if God was an actual, physical rock.
But what this is obviously saying is that God has attributes similar to a rock: such as God being
steadfast and unmoving.
IV.
John 1:29 – “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold! The
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” Obviously, Jesus Christ
came in the form of a man not a lamb. John the Baptist was using figure of
speech, analogy. Jesus was called the Lamb of God because like the sacrificial
lambs under the Law, He would atone for the sins of the people.
*Even when the Bible makes literal statements about God, such as God is holy, it doesn’t mean
the statement univocally or equivocally. For if God’s holiness was exactly the
same as ours, He wouldn’t be holy at all. Or if God’s holiness was entirely
different than ours, then why would we call it holiness? It would be more like
UN-holiness. Therefore, God’s holiness is like
human purity, but obviously it is perfectly pure holiness.
Next week, we’ll look at the first of God’s attributes (in
no particular order).
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