The Attributes of God

The Holiness and Sovereignty of God in Edwards and Calvin

The attributes of God, what a subject to even attempt to address. I want to begin this evening with the words of men far better prepared than I to discuss this subject, some of the things that they have said.

Since I came to Northampton, I have often had sweet complacency in God and views of his glorious perfections and of the excellency of Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me a glorious and lovely being chiefly on account of his holiness.

The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes. The doctrines of God's absolute sovereignty and free grace and showing mercy to whom he would show mercy and man's absolute dependence on the operations of God's Holy Spirit have very often appeared to me as sweet and glorious doctrines.

These doctrines have been much my delight. God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me a great part of his glory. It has often been my delight to approach God and adore him as a sovereign God and ask sovereign mercy of him.

Sometimes only mentioning a single word caused my heart to burn within me or only seeing the name of Christ or the name of some attribute of God. And God has appeared glorious to me on account of the Trinity.

It has made me have exalting thoughts of God that he has subsisted in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced have not been those that have arisen from the hope of my own good estate but in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel.

When I enjoy this sweetness, it seems to carry me above the thoughts of my own estate. It seems at such times a loss that I cannot bear to take off my eye from the glorious, pleasant object I behold without me to turn my eye in upon myself and my own good estate.

Once, as I rode out into the woods for my help in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that was for me extraordinary of the glory of the Son of God as mediator between God and man in his wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love and meek and gentle condescension.

This grace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour, which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.

I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and to be full of Christ alone, to love him with a holy and pure love, to trust in him, to live upon him, to serve and follow him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.

I have several other times had views very much of the same nature and which have had the same effects.". Those are the writings of Jonathan Edwards. Here is a man who loved the attributes of God, loved the holiness of God and the sovereignty of God, something you hear very little about.

A man about 200 years earlier wrote, "...nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.

Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly and fancy ourselves all but demigods.

Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God and to ponder his nature and how completely perfect are his righteousness, wisdom and power, the straight edge to which we must be shaped. Then what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness.

What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.

For how can the thought of God penetrate your mind without your realizing immediately that since you are his handiwork, you have been made over and bound to his command by right of creation that you owe your life to him.

Of course, that is from the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. Here are two men who understand what it is to contemplate the attributes of God and to recognize the centrality of the attributes of God to Christian theology.

The Unfathomable Nature of God’s Revelation

There is no way, no matter how long we would stay here this evening or how many scripture passages we would read and how much discussion we might engage in for us to exhaust the subject of the nature and attributes of God.

Indeed, Job said in Job 26 .14, Behold, these are the fringes of his ways, and how faint a word we hear of him, but his mighty thunder, who can understand? So even though God has revealed himself, we know that his revelation of himself is not exhaustive.

God has not told us everything there is to know. And there will be many who will ask you questions about the nature of God, and eventually we come to a point where we simply don't have any more answers because God has not revealed anything beyond that point.

And some will say, well, that means that what you say about God is therefore not true. But that assumes that we have to know everything there is to know about God, and I would submit to you that we as creatures will never know everything there is to know about God.

Or if we possibly could do that, then he would not be God. For God is infinite and eternal and unlimited, and we as creatures are limited and finite in our understanding. So as we look at the nature and attributes of God, we do not suppose or presume to think that we are exhausting the subject, but we will attempt, anyhow, to present the biblical perspective on who God is and what God has revealed about himself.

Now in doing so, in trying to create an outline, we recognize immediately that you simply can't put God upon the examining table and draw nice, neat lines and dissect him or anything like this. Many of the categories that we'll look at this evening will overlap with one another and will be directly related to one another.

And it is very difficult to keep the two aspects of one point from our consideration at the same time, and it's a difficult subject. And so I ask you to really put some effort into concentration this evening and looking with me at the Word of God in regards to the nature of God.

The Solitariness, Unity, and Self-Existence of God

We begin with what I consider to be the most foundational, fundamental revelation of God in Scripture, and that is what I have called his solitariness. That is his being the only God. There is only one God.

And I have put down five subcategories that we could subsume under the topic of his solitariness. We mean by that broadly the fact that he is the only true God, that he is the only true deity. But flowing from the concept of monotheism, the fact there is only one God, there are a number of other issues that we might want to look at.

For example, the fact there is only one God leads us to understand his unity, the unity of God. While we confess the Trinity, we must recognize the Trinity comes from tri-unity, and we must never allow our commitment to monotheism and to the unity of God, the fact that there is only one being of God, to be lost in the discussion.

The Israelites in the great Shema of Deuteronomy 6 .4 would say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And in so doing they were confessing that there is but one God for them, and that this God is a unity, that this is not a council, this is not a group of beings functioning as one God, but that God's being is indivisible, that God's being cannot be divided up into small parts, or even into three parts, as some Christians want to do in misunderstanding the doctrine of the Trinity.

So we see unity. We see simplicity. This is connected with unity, that the being of God is one. There are not different kinds of being in God, in the concept that you might have a basic being of God, and then a more advanced being of God, or different kinds of being of God.

God's being is one, and hence is simple, and not complex, or divided up, or of different kinds. We see also the uniqueness of God. This is important to recognize, for since God is unique, there is nothing to which we can compare Him.

If we make the attempt, we must always do so with great care, because of the fact that we may go too far, and in comparing Him to something in the created order, end up teaching a falsehood about Him.

Something that is unique cannot be compared to anything else. That is the definition of uniqueness. And in light of that, any of the analogies that we would utilize will necessarily come short, will necessarily fall short at some point in the description of God.

Now the Bible talks to us about the fact that there is none like God, that He is unique. In Jeremiah 10, verse 6, we read that no one is like you, O Yahweh. You are great, and your name is mighty in power.

In Isaiah 44, verse 6 -8, we read that this is what Yahweh says, Israel's King and Redeemer, Yahweh Almighty. I am the first, and I am the last. Apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me? Let Him proclaim it.

Let Him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come. Yes, let Him foretell what will come. Do not tremble. Do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?

You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? Yea, there is no other God. I know not any. In the 77th Psalm, verse 13, we read that your ways, O God, are holy. What God is so great as our God? And in the 113th Psalm, verse 5, we read, Who is like Yahweh our God, the One who sits enthroned on high?

And so it is throughout the testimony of Scripture that God is unique. There is none like unto Him in all the universe. We also understand from the fact that there is only one God, His absoluteness. And what does this mean?

I think this is very important. Since God is the only God, since God is the creator of all else that then is, everything within the creation can only find its true meaning, can only be properly defined itself in reference to an absolute center point.

And God, since He is the only God and the creator of all, is that absolute center point. Whenever we attempt to define something, we have to attempt to define something in regards to some center. If we have an object, an object out here, just whatever we might call it, if there is no center point to which we can relate it and everything else that might be in the created order, then we have no way of defining anything.

We have no way of saying there is truth or there is love or there is right or there is wrong without an absolute center point. And God is that absolute. We speak much today of the fact that the philosophies of man are completely relativistic.

You've got your truth, I've got my truth. The word truth doesn't have any meaning in those two sentences. Why? Because man has jettisoned the concept of there being an absolute. In the field of ethics, we have no right and we have no wrong because the idea that an absolute God, an eternal personal God, has revealed what is right and what is wrong has been abandoned.

And so the fact that there is one God, that he by his being has created all else that is, provides for an absolute center, an ability to define and to have order and meaning in this world. And finally we see from the solitariness of God his self-existence.

This is an important thing for us to emphasize over against the eastern philosophies that are simply flooding our nation and are finding a much more ready acceptance amongst our people than anyone ever would have thought and a much deeper inroad into, for example, our public educational system than most Christians have any idea.

God is self-existent. That is, God is not dependent upon anyone or anything else. I have shuddered in horror hearing Christian preachers in sermons speak about how God had to create because he was lonely or he wanted to express his love to man and so he created and there is an emptiness in God that is filled by the creation as if God were dependent upon or in need of anything or anyone.

God is self-existent. Nothing pre-existed him. His existence is not owed to anything or anyone. He is the grounds of all other existence. Now, this is over and against all those concepts of pantheism that are sweeping our nation.

Shirley MacLaine standing on the beach saying, I am God, I am God, I am God. No, she is not. That concept that God and his creation are interconnected and dependent upon one another is utterly foreign to the biblical revelation of who Yahweh is.

Completely contradictory. These are important things to remember. Now, moving to the next point under natural attributes, what we refer to here are those attributes that describe the being of God, his living essence, those things that apply to him as he exists.

God as Spirit, Personal, and Living

For example, spirituality. Our Lord Jesus taught in John 4 .24, God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. The nature of God is spiritual.

Spirit.

King James has God as a spirit, as if he was one spirit amongst many spirits. That's not really accurate. God is spirit. His being, if you wish to ask what the substance of his being, if you wish to use that kind of terminology, is, he is spirit.

He is not limited to the physical realm, for he is the creator of the physical realm. He is not limited, as we will see later, to the time-space situation in which we find ourselves as created beings, for he is spirit.

He is personal. In that great passage, in one of the greatest revelations of God's being in Exodus 3 .14, God said to Moses,.

I am who I am.

This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. We are going to come back to this passage again, but the point here is that God is personal. He uses personal pronouns. He recognizes his existence over against the existence of the created order.

God is not an impersonal force. We hear today much about higher powers. There is a higher power. Well, yes, there is a higher power, but it's not just a power. 120 volts surging through the lights above us is a higher power than I'd like to encounter, but I don't worship electricity.

God has great power, but he is personal. He reveals himself as Yahweh. He came in personal form, the person of Jesus Christ. He dwells within us in personal form in the person of the Holy Spirit. And so the Christian God is not a God that is simply a power.

This is in opposition to what I would in all seriousness submit to you is the official established state religion of the nation in which we live, naturalistic materialism. The concept that everything we see around us can be explained by the operation of natural laws.

And it has come to the point where those, many of those who are within the scientific community, worship the very laws they say brought about creation as we see it today. And so there is almost a reverence.

Recently a gentleman that I talked to talked about being in awe before nature rather than being in awe before nature's God. That is idolatry. And so we speak of the personality of God. He is not a set of rules.

He is not a higher force. He has revealed himself as personal, having a will that he is working in this world. And thirdly we see that he is living. Jeremiah 10 through 11. But Yahweh is the true God.

He is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles. The nations cannot endure his wrath. Tell them this, these gods who did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.

So we have the description here of Yahweh as the true God, the living God. In fact, he is the source of all the life. The fact that there is life coursing through your body right now that you are able to think, that you are able to write, that you are able to consider with me this evening these things concerning the nature of God is due to the fact that God in his mercy and grace has granted to you every second of your life that very life that is yours.

It is a gift from God. One that we should be very thankful for but very frequently are not. So God is the source of all life. He did not receive his life from anyone else. He is the source of life. He has always had life and it is his to give or to withhold as he sees fit.

God’s Eternity, Immutability, and Decrees

We move now to those attributes pertaining to his infinity. What do these refer to? Well, the first and foremost in my mind, the one that to me is most misunderstood amongst Christians that is to me so central to a proper understanding of the rest of the attributes of God and the work of God in this world is God's eternity.

God's eternity. What do I refer to when I talk about his eternity? I refer first to his timelessness. Not his extended existence within time but to his timelessness. Now it is right here that we know that we encounter a great difficulty for we cannot conceive of timelessness.

We are temporal beings. Our thought patterns, our whole way of thinking, our language itself is completely based upon our existence within time. We have never experienced anything outside of time and therefore to speak of God's unique existence outside of time is truly beyond our full comprehension.

Yet we must make the attempt for God has seen fit to reveal himself in this way. For example, the psalmist Moses in the 90th Psalm Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

From everlasting to everlasting. Now to us that simply bespeaks an incredible amount of time. And yet as we begin to think about it, we begin to think about the nature of time and creation and things like this, we begin to understand that surely the way in which God has revealed himself to us is simply an accommodation to our limited ways of understanding.

For if we suppose that God has simply existed eternally, then we are forced to recognize that at some point we must confess that time is as eternal as God, is separate from God, and in fact is superior to God.

For if God is constrained by it and has always been in that situation, then time had to pre-exist God himself. But that is not logical. When God speaks in Exodus 3 .14 and says,.

I am who I am,.

When he speaks to Moses in that way, he speaks to us of his eternal existence. Now if God is timeless, what does this mean to us? Well I have drawn a world famous visual aid on the board. It is simply a straight line.

Well, relatively straight. Those of you in the back of the room can see it is planting somewhat to the right. It is a straight line. If we understand this is time, we understand that time progresses. That despite all of our scientific fancies to the contrary, time is going in one direction.

Let's say this is the beginning down here, and here is the end down here. To confess the eternity of God, the timelessness of God, is to confess that that is time, and the entire board upon which it is written is God.

If this entire board represents the being of God, and this within it is time, what does this tell us? It tells us first of all, that God is present equally and fully in every point in time. It tells us as well, that all points in time are instantaneous to God.

It tells us that God is not experiencing a progression of events. If God were experiencing a progression of events, what would this tell us about God? It would tell us that God is growing and experiencing and changing.

And sadly enough, there are many today, because of their unwillingness to confess the eternity of God, and if you are thinking with me, you know what flows from this. You see the immutability of God. You see the sovereignty of God, the absolute providence of God flowing from this.

Directly from this. And so, in an attempt to get away from that, much in modern theology has decided to jettison this. That God does experience a succession of events. That he is growing, changing. But one must confess that is utterly different from the God of scripture.

So we see that all points in time are instantaneous to God. That time itself then, time and all the actions in time, are what? Creation of God. Time can only be one of two things. It can either be the creation of God, and hence determined by him, and directed by him.

Or it exists separate from God, outside of his control, as a separate entity. Uncreated, and hence equal or maybe even superior to God. The second thing that flows from the eternity of God, is the immutability of God.

Immutability, what does that mean? He is changeless. God does not change. Psalm 102, verses 25 -27. In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, from the heavens the works of your hand. They will perish, but you remain.

They will all wear out like a garment, like clothing. You will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. James speaks of this in James chapter 1, verse 17.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. God does not change. God is immutable. If God could change, let's say today God exists in state A, but tomorrow he exists in state B.

There's been a change. Now let's say that we confess that in state B, God is perfect, complete. What does that say about state A? Imperfect, incomplete. If God changes, he can either change for the better, which means he wasn't perfect in the first place, or change for the worse, which means he's now not perfect in the first place.

In either way, we will be denying the very essence of deity himself.

So God does not change.

He is immutable. Certainly, I recognize that those who wish to avoid the idea or concept that God is eternal and hence provident over all creation, in so doing, jeopardize the immutability of God. Unfortunately, in our culture today, it doesn't seem to be very important to people, whether you do that or not.

We see from this as well that he is perfect. For if he is timeless, if he is eternal, what does that mean in regards to the perfection of his being? Since he does not experience a progression of events, since he is not limited to time, as if time were something greater than he, and since he is the only God, the creator of all else that is, would he create something that would cause his own being to be less perfect?

Is there a possibility of change in him so as to become imperfect? No. He is perfect. He is complete. There is nothing that he lacks. Of course, we've seen a lot of that before when we talked about his absoluteness and self-existence.

But we also see something that starts striking closer to home when we think about the decrees of God. The decrees of God. What are the decrees? Well, the decrees of God are immutable as well, because God is.

But the decrees of God, such as those which we speak of at the beginning of the Westminster Confession of Faith, where we, in talking about the nature of God and the attributes of God, the men who drew up the Westminster Confession of Faith spoke of the fact that God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass.

Anything that happens within time is a part of the decree of God. We have examples of this. In Ephesians chapter 1 we are told, In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him, who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

God is described as the one who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

Everything.

What this tells us is that when this came into existence, when time is created, God's decrees as to what will happen in our experience as we experience the temporal progression are simply a recognition of God's control over his own creation.

That is, when God created time in its fullness, in its completeness before him, it was he who decided what was going to happen and not someone else. That's what God's decrees are. From his perspective.

From our perspective, we see the decrees working out in time. But if all points in time are instantaneous to God, then the decrees of God simply recognize the fact that when God created time, when God created the universe itself, that it was he that determined its beginning,.

Its middle, and its end.

That it was he who freely chose to make it work the way that he chooses to work it for the ends he chooses. And he was under no obligation to do it that way. That's the way he chose to do it. Now this also helps us to understand God's foreknowledge.

Now I use that term to refer to the idea that God has knowledge of future events before they take place within time. Surely he does, if we see this. I am not using the term as it's used in the New Testament.

The term as it is used in the New Testament does not refer to what we normally think of when we think of foreknowledge. For the Old Testament background, the term foreknowledge in the New Testament actually refers to the gracious choice of God to enter into relationship with someone.

Never do we read in the New Testament of God having foreknowledge of events. It's people that he has foreknowledge of. But here we're using it more in the philosophical realm and that is, in the standard way of what most people think of, God knowing the future.

Have you ever wondered how God knew the future? Have you ever wondered how the prophets could prophesy the future? If God is going along a timeline with the future indistinct, unclear, or uncreated, if he is experiencing time as we are experiencing time, then I would submit to you there is no way he could know the future.

Not with certainty. You say, well Satan can know the future, can he not?

In a sense.

But I think that is only due to the fact that he has access to a whole lot more information than you or I. If we had access to as much information as he has access to, then we could make some probably pretty good guesses as to what's going to happen in the future.

But that's exactly what they are. They are guesses. That's how you can know what a false prophet is. He's not going to get it all the time. He may get some, Deuteronomy 18. He may have good enough information to be able to figure out that something is going to happen.

But he's not going to get it all the time. He's not going to get it all the time. In fact, one of the very challenges laid down by God that we'll look at in a little more detail here in a second, from the book of Isaiah, when God challenges the false gods, is tell me what's going to happen and tell me what did happen and the purpose for it.

We'll look at it just in a second. But let's look at this line just for a second and talk about foreknowledge. Let's say here's the burning bush with Moses, and here's the cross, and we'll get real eschatological tonight and say we're down here real close to the end.

If you're a post-millennialist, please forgive us. Let's say that's the sequence of events. Now, back here, God knew about this. God knew about the cross. Ever read Isaiah?

God knew about it. How?

How did he know?

When Isaiah prophesied the coming of Cyrus, and I know a lot of modern Bible scholars who reject all this, reject even the possibility that Isaiah could have done that because they don't believe miraculousness exists anyways, but when Isaiah prophesied the coming of Cyrus, 100 years before Cyrus came,.

How did Isaiah know?

Well, God revealed it to him. How did God know? God simply foresaw it? Well, does that mean this existed outside of God's creative action?

No.

God had created the whole thing. God knew it was going to happen, and there was no chance in the world that it wouldn't happen. No contingency. Not a popular position today in church in America. No contingency!

But if you know anything about the history of theology, you know that I stand firmly, smack dab in the middle, of Reformation theology to make that statement. Calvin, Luther, Sharnock, Edwards, read any one of them, they'll say the exact same thing.

No contingency. God is not at the mercy of faith. God has created time, it exists in him. I would much rather have God in control of determining the actions in time than not in control of determining the actions in time.

I'll take the tough questions that come as a result of that any day over the concept that God might not know what's going to happen. If you'd rather avoid the tough philosophical questions and believe in a God who doesn't know what's going to happen in the future, I'll take the tough philosophical questions and trust in him.

That's a nice trade-off. So God is just as much present, the burning bush as at the cross, as right here with us today. The burning bush is just as much a reality to God. For us, we look back on it because that's where we are.

But not for God.

Not for God.

So this is how God has knowledge of future events. It's not that he has a crystal ball and looks into the future. He created the future. He's already there. He's present there. He knew what was going to happen.

One of the neatest things about this is there's a purpose then in everything that does happen. This, folks, is the theology that underlies Romans 8 .28. Do you hear me? Romans 8 .28. We know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God and them who are called according to his purpose.

This is the theology that underlies that. For we can confess that there is a purpose in creation. Modern man is utterly and completely tetherless, floating around upon a huge, huge sea. We look out at the stars and we see this huge creation around us and we're left this insignificant little blob of dirt.

No purpose. Jacques Monod speaks of the chance roll of the cosmic die that resulted in us. No purpose. No meaning.

Just us.

But as a Christian, we know there's a purpose in creation because God, who created this, is personal and purposeful. Isaiah chapter 41, beginning at verse 21. Present your case, says Yahweh. Set forth your arguments, says Jacob's king.

Bring in to tell us what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were so we may consider them and know their final outcome. Or declare to us the things to come. Sing for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done this.

Shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, O mountains, O forests and all your trees. The Lord has redeemed Jacob. He displays his glory in Israel. This is what Yahweh says, O redeemer who formed you in the womb.

I am Yahweh who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself. Did you hear what he said? He did the same thing up in Isaiah chapter 44, verses 6 through 8.

That is, okay, you gods, you who pretend to be gods, here is your challenge. You want to prove you are a god? Here is how you do it. Here is one of the things that the true god can do. In fact, I would submit, give the same test to a lot of modern theologies.

Give the same test. And what is the test? Tell us what is going to happen in the future. Tell us what is going to happen. They can't. Why? Because they can't see the future. They are not eternal. They don't exist outside the realm of time.

But that is not the only challenge. Did you notice it?

Did you notice it?

This is the other challenge. Tell us what has happened and the purposes for which it happened. I had read that passage many times before I ever saw it. Tell us what happened. Not just a bold recitation of historical facts, but tell us what happened and why it happened.

See, we can look back on our lives and we can see tragedies or difficulties and we don't know why it happened. And God has never promised to tell us why it happened in this life.

But He knows.

You see, the whole underlying concept is whatever has happened, has happened for a purpose. And the true God is the only one who knows what that purpose is. Now sometimes we get to see. Sometimes we do get to see.

But sometimes we don't. And the true God lays down the challenge to the false gods. You want to win the war here of the gods? You tell us what's going to happen in the future. You tell us what's happened in the past and the purpose for which it happened.