It is a majestic, glorious theme of the Bible that God is revealed as a real
being. It is also a fundamental tenet of Christianity that Jesus is the Son of
God. If God is not a real being, then it is impossible for Him to have a Son who
was the “image of His person” (Heb. 1:3). The Greek word actually means His
“substance” (RV). Further, it becomes difficult to develop a personal, living
relationship with ‘God’, if ‘God’ is just a concept in our mind. It is tragic
that the majority of religions have this unreal, intangible conception of God.
As God is so infinitely greater
than we are, it is understandable that many people’s faith has balked at the
clear promises that ultimately we will see Him. It is impossible for sinful
man to see God (Ex. 33:20 RSV) - although this implies that were it not for
our sinfulness, God is indeed a being who can ‘be seen’. Israel lacked the
faith to see God’s “shape” (Jn. 5:37). Such faith comes from knowing God and
believing His word:
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall
see God” (Mt. 5:8).
“His (God’s) servants shall serve him: and they
shall see his face; and his name (God’s name - Rev. 3:12) shall be on their
foreheads” (Rev. 22:3,4).
Such a wonderful hope, if we truly believe
it, will have a profound practical effect upon our lives:
“Pursue
peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord”
(Heb. 12:14).
We should not swear oaths, because “he who swears by
heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.” (Mt. 23:22).
In this life our understanding of the heavenly Father is very
incomplete, but we can look forward, through the tangled darkness of this
life, to meeting Him at last. Our ‘seeing’ of Him will doubtless be matched
by our greater mental comprehension of Him. Thus from the absolute depths of
human suffering, Job could rejoice in the totally personal relationship with
God which he would fully experience at the last day:
“And after my
skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I
shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” (Job
19:26,27).
And the apostle Paul cried out from another life of pain
and turmoil:
“Now we look in a glass mirror, with a poor image; but
then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12).
Old
Testament Evidence
These
promises of the New Testament build on a considerable Old Testament backdrop
of evidence for a personal God. It cannot be over stressed that it is
fundamental to appreciate the nature of God if we are to have any true
understanding of what Bible based religion is all about. The Old Testament
consistently talks of God as a person; the person-to-person relationship
with God of which both Old and New Testaments speak is unique to the true
Christian hope. The following are strong arguments in favour of a personal
God:
• “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”
(Gen. 1:26). Thus man is made in the image and likeness of God, as
manifested through the angels. James 3:9 speaks of “...men, which are made
in the similitude of God.” Our creation in the image of God surely means
that we can infer something about the real object of which we are but an
image. Thus God, whom we reflect, is not something nebulous of which we
cannot conceive. Ezekiel saw God enthroned above the cherubim, with the
silhouette of “the likeness of a man” (Ez. 1:26; 10:20); it is God Himself
who is located above the cherubim (2 Kings 19:15 RV). All this has a
practical import; because we are in the image of God, because it is
imprinted on every part of our bodies, we must give that body to God, just
as men were to give the penny which had Caesar’s image on it to Caesar (Lk.
20:25). Commenting on this matter in relation to Gen. 1:26,27, Risto Santala
writes: “There are two Hebrew words here, tselem, ‘image’ (in modern Hebrew
‘photograph’), and demuth, ‘figure’ or ‘similitude’… these expressions are
very concrete. God is a person and he has a definite form and being” (1).
• “He (God) knows our frame” (Ps. 103:14); He wishes us to conceive of
Him as a personal being, a Father to whom we can relate.
•
Descriptions of God’s dwelling place clearly indicate that He has a personal
location: “God is in heaven” (Ecc. 5:2); “For He looked down from the height
of His sanctuary; From heaven the LORD viewed the earth” (Ps. 102:19); “Hear
in heaven your dwelling place” (1 Kings 8:39). Yet more specifically than
this, we read that God has a “throne” (2 Chron. 9:8; Ps. 11:4; Is. 6:1;
66:1). Such language is hard to apply to an undefined essence which exists
somewhere in heavenly realms. God is spoken of as “coming down” when He
manifests Himself. This suggests a heavenly location of God. It is
impossible to understand the idea of ‘God manifestation’ without
appreciating the personal nature of God.
• Is. 45 is full of
references by God to His personal involvement in the affairs of His people:
“I am the Lord, and there is no other...I the Lord do all these things...I
the Lord have created it. Woe unto him who quarrels with his maker... My own
hands stretched out the heavens... turn to me and be saved, all you ends of
the earth”. This last sentence especially shows the personal existence of
God - He desires men to look to Him, to conceive of His literal existence
with the eye of faith.
• God is revealed to us as a forgiving God,
who speaks words to men. Yet forgiveness and speech can only come from a
sentient being, they are mental acts. Thus David was a man after God’s own
heart (1 Sam. 13:14), showing that God has a mind (heart), which is capable
of being replicated to some limited degree by man, although man by nature is
not after God’s heart. Passages like, “The LORD was grieved that he had made
man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Gen. 6:6), reveal God
as a feeling, conscious being. This helps us to appreciate how we really can
both please and displease Him, as children can a natural father.
If God is Not Personal...
If God is not a real, personal being, then the
concept of spirituality is hard to grapple with. If God is totally righteous
but is not a personal being, then we cannot really conceive of His
righteousness manifested in human beings. Once we appreciate that there is a
personal being called God, then we can work on our characters, with His help
and the influence of His word, to reflect the characteristics of God in our
lives.
God’s purpose is to reveal Himself in a multitude of glorified
beings. His memorial name, Yahweh Elohim, implies this (‘He who shall be
revealed in mighty ones’, is an approximate translation). The descriptions
of the reward of the faithful in God’s coming Kingdom on earth show that
they will have a tangible, bodily existence, although no longer subject to
the weaknesses of human nature. Abraham is one of the “many of them that
sleep in the dust of the earth (who) shall awake...to everlasting life”
(Dan. 12:2) so that he can receive the promise of eternal inheritance of the
land of Canaan, a physical location on this earth (Gen. 17:8). “Saints shall
shout aloud for joy... Let the saints be joyful in glory; Let them sing
aloud on their beds...and execute judgment upon the nations” (Ps. 132:16;
149:5,7). A failure by both Jew and Gentile to appreciate passages like
these, as well as the fundamentally literal, physical import of the promises
to Abraham, has led to the wrong notion of an “immortal soul” as the real
form of human existence. Such an idea is totally devoid of Biblical support.
God is an immortal, glorious being, and He is working out His purpose so
that men and women might be called to live in His future Kingdom on this
earth, to share His attributes, expressed in a bodily form.
The
faithful are promised that they will inherit God’s nature (2 Pet. 1:4). We
will be given a body like that of Jesus (Phil. 3:21), and we know that he
will have a physical body in the Kingdom. The doctrine of the personality of
God is therefore related to the Gospel of the Kingdom.
There can be
no sensible concept of worship, religion or personal relationship with God
therefore until it is appreciated that God is a real being and that we are
made in His image. We need to develop His mental likeness now so that we may
be made fully like Him in the Kingdom of God. So much more sense and comfort
can now be gained from the passages which speak of God as a loving Father,
chastening us as a Father does his son (e.g. Dt. 8:5). In the context of
Christ’s sufferings we read that, “it pleased the LORD to bruise Him” (Is.
53:10); although he “cried out to my God; He heard my voice...and my cry
came before him, even into his ears” (Ps. 18:6). God’s promise to David of a
seed who would be God’s Son required the miraculous birth of a human being
who was truly in the image and likeness of his father.
A correct
understanding of God is a key which opens up many other vital areas of Bible
doctrine. But as one lie leads to another lie, so a false concept of God
obscures the truth which the Scriptures offer. If you have found this
section convincing, or even partly so, the question arises: ‘Do you really
know God?’ We will now further explore Bible teaching about Him.
Notes
(1) Risto Santala, The Messiah In The Old Testament In The Light Of Rabbinical Writings (Kukkila, Finland: BGS, 1992), p. 63.