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.

Can You Believe It?
The origin of human sin and the world’s oppression goes back to a deceptive, untruthful picture of God given to Eve by Satan. Jesus came, in part, to finally reveal the absolute truth about God. He is the way and the truth (alethia) and the life (Jn 14:6). The word “truth,” literally means “uncovered.” And what we find once God is uncovered in Jesus Christ is that he’s completely different than what we fallen humans generally expect God to be.
With the coming of Christ, God is revealed to us as the one true God, and yet we discover that his oneness is the oneness of eternal perfect love between three distinct Persons: Father, Son, Spirit. 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. 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.
When we keep our focus on Christ as the definitive revelation of God and therefore understand that God’s very essence is love, the various attributes of God can be seen as simply different ways God’s love is put on display, like light flowing through a prism creating a rainbow of distinct colors. This is not the kind of God we expect because too often our focus strays from Christ, and then we define God according to our own fallen tendencies.
However, when we keep our eyes focused on Jesus, we can see that this is what God is like! He really is this beautiful and loving! He really is as exceedingly good as Jesus demonstrated on the cross. 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 mind 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. The coming of Christ that ultimately led to the cross reveals the whole truth about God, and nothing but the truth.
The question for us every day is whether or not we will actually believe this hard-to-believe revelation of God in Christ. Only then are we free to receive the beautiful life he has for us.
Photo via quentcourtois via VisualHunt.com
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Jesus, Truth
Topics: Attributes and Character
Related Reading

Why Did Jesus Curse a Barren Fig Tree?
While no one argues that the NT advocates violence explicitly, many allege that some passages reflect violent attitudes toward outsiders, and especially toward non-believing Jews, while others detect an element of violence in some of Jesus’ teachings and behavior. Some scholars argue that this violent aspect of the NT laid the groundwork for later Christian…

The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God
In the previous series of posts I’ve argued that a merely “Christocentric” approach to God is too general, as can be shown by the widely different conceptions of God people arrive at, despite their claim to be “Christocentric.” The confession that Jesus reveals what God is like is simply too abstract, for it leaves too…

A Revelation of Beauty Through Ugliness
In my recent post, Getting Honest About the Dark Side of the Bible, I enlisted no less an authority than John Calvin to support my claim that we need to be forthright in acknowledging that some of the portraits of God in the OT are, as he said, “savage” and “barbaric.” What else can we…

Jesus and His Father
Greg addresses a question from a reader about the nature of the Godhead. If Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, what does this mean about the Trinity, if there are indeed three distinct persons?

Loving a Twilight Zone God?
David D. Flowers posted this insightful reflection over on his blog about an episode of The Twilight Zone and what it says about some pop views of God. Can we really love a God that exercises this kind of random control just because he can? We can certainly fear a God like this, but can…

Was Jesus Fully Human and Fully God?
The New Testament is very clear that Jesus was a full human being. He had to grow in wisdom (Lk 2:52) and learn obedience by going through trials, just like every other human being (Heb. 5:8). He grew hungry and tired, like the rest of us. He experienced the same range of emotions as the…