We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
God is Not What You Expect
Jesus with Child [Canvas on oil painting136.00
God is one, and yet we discover that his oneness is the oneness of eternal perfect love between three distinct Persons. God is all holy, but his holiness is his utterly unique love that leads him to become sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). God is righteous, but his righteousness is the justice of his love that leads him to become a cursed criminal for us on Calvary (1 Cor. 1:18). God is unfathomably glorious, but his glory is the radiance of a perfect love that leads him to become one who was despised, humiliated and forsaken out of love for us. And God is immutable, but his immutability is the unchangeableness of his eternal love that led him to change radically and take on our humanity, sin and condemnation.
This is what God is like! He really is this beautiful and loving! All of us have to one degree or another been conditioned to view God in a deceptive way, which is why many of us struggle to believe this. We’re tempted to see Jesus as perhaps part of what God is like, but not the very essence of God. Afflicted by the Accuser who fills our minds with condemnation and fear, we may wonder when “the other side” of God will show up and crush us.
How desperately we need to become confident that there is no other side to God. If we see Christ, we see the Father. The fullness of the Godhead dwelt in him. He’s the one perfect expression of the Father’s essence. God is light, John says, and there is no darkness in him (1 John 1:5). There’s no shadow side of God, no trace of malice, no hint of meanness. He’s altogether loving, compassionate and just. Calvary reveals the whole truth about God, and nothing but the truth.
Admittedly, there have been times when God in his love had to stoop to the level of instilling fear in people because their sin had tainted them to such a great degree that there was no other choice. But his ultimate goal has always been to have a people who receive and reflect back to him his perfect love. And perfect love drives out fear (1 Jn. 4:18). He wants a people who feel compelled to serve him not out of fear, but out of love.
God is different than you could ever expect because none of us could ever dream of God being as good as he is. This is the reason Paul prayed that we would be able “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:18-29)
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God is Love, Jesus
Related Reading
Oh Constantine
Once upon a time there was a Roman Emperor named Constantine who used the enemy-loving Jesus to kill his enemies. What does this have to do with us? Find out:
Overemphasizing Christ?
In response to my work, some have argued that I tend to overemphasize Christ. In light of the claim that in Jesus we have the one and only definitive Word of God and that no previous revelation should ever be placed alongside him or allowed to qualify what he reveals about God, some allege that…
The Cross in the Manger
There has been a strand within the Western theological tradition—one that is especially prevalent in contemporary American Evangelicalism—that construes the significance of the cross in strictly soteriological terms. The cross is central, in this view, but only in the sense that the reason Jesus came to earth was to pay the price for our sin…
Violence: What Did Jesus Do?
Thomas Quine via Compfight Here’s a spot-on reflection on what Jesus taught us about responding to violence. Whatever you think about the justification of violence in particular situations, as Christians we simply cannot escape the fact that Jesus demonstrated another way. From the reflection: And though he had access to unlimited power to have himself released…
A Coming Storm
There is a storm beginning to brew on the horizon. It is a debate among Evangelicals about the violent depictions of God, stirred up largely by Eric Seibert’s Disturbing Divine Behavior. Here is a post that sounds “the clarion call.” The debate is presently around two options. Option #1: Traditionalists argue we must simply embrace…
A Brief Theology of the Trinity
“The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.” This is the maxim introduced by the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner that should shape our discussion of the Trinity. It is simply a short-hand way of saying that since the way God is toward us in Christ truly reveals God,…