God’s character

“Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God” – A.W.Tozer

When we talk about the nature or the character of God, we are simply implying what God has reveled to us through His word. The nature of God is an element left out of many presentations of the Gospel. A view of God is crucial, for it is the beginning of all knowledge. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.
Most theological heresy is caused by the misconception of the nature of God. When we fail to understand His nature, we cannot understand His gospel.
Many church people hold a Christian concept of God as merely love. If this is a person’s view of God, he will fit all your saying as you present gospel into that mold and it will be meaningless to him. God is love so what if man is a sinner? God is love so what if Christ died? God is love so why worry whether everyone believes in him since everyone will be saved anyway?

“Hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which he has made and what he has made is not God. If we insist upon trying to imagine him, we end up with and Idol, made not with hands but with thoughts, and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.” – A.W.Tozer

God is love, but if that’s your only view of who God is, I would dare to say that that is a low view of who God really is. You would miss out on the holiness of God along with his mercy, grace,faithfulness,justice and much more. Truly, truly the holiness of God is much more than just a single attribute of love.

“The Divine attributes are what we know to be true of God He does not possess them as qualities, they are how God is as he reveals himself to his creatures. Love, for instance, is not something God has in which may grow or diminish or cease to be. His love is the way God is, when he loves he is simply being himself. And so with the other attributes.” – A.W.Tozer

We see God also reveals Himself to be not just one but three in one. We see this throughout the Bible being that God has been revealed through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
A statement of faith from Nicene Creed towards the Trinity has been adopted by many.

> I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, begotten of him before all the ages, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the father, by whom all things were made.

‎> I believe also in the Holy Spirit the Lord and Giver of Life, which proceedeth from the father and the son, who with the father and the son together is worshiped and glorified.

Gods Revealed Character

• Self existence of God. (God has no origin) Gen 1:1 Rev 22:13

• Eternity of God (God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God.) “to be made for eternity and forced to dwell in time is for mankind a tragedy of huge proportions.” – A.W.Tozer

• ‎ Self sufficiency of God. “need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the creator.” – A.W.Tozer

• ‎ Immutability of God. ” to say that God is immutable is to say that he never differs from himself. ” one who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor Eternal, and so is not God.” – A.W.Tozer

• ‎ Divine Omniscience. To say that God is omniscient is to say that he possesses perfect knowledge and knows all things both now and always

• ‎ Omnipotence of God. To reign, God must have power. “Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power” Exodus 15:6

• ‎ Divine Transcendence. “He is exalted far above the created universe, so far above that human thought can imagine it.” – A.W.Tozer “far above” does not here referred to physical distance from the Earth but to quality of being.

• ‎ Omnipresence of God. God is infinite, this means that his being Knows No Limits. Therefore there can be no limit to his presence.

• ‎ Faithfulness of God – “then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.” Leviticus 26:42 We see the faithfulness of God fulfilled through Christ.

• ‎ Goodness of God. The goodness of God is the drive behind all the blessings he daily bestows upon us.

• ‎ Justice of God. “God’s compassion flows out of his goodness, and goodness without Justice is not goodness.” – A.W.Tozer

• ‎ Mercy of God. “When all thy Mercy’s, oh my God, my Rising Soul surveys, transported with the view, I’m lost, in wonder, love, and praise.” Joseph Addison

• ‎ Grace of God. “His Mercy is God’s goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so Grace is his goodness directed toward human debt and demerit.” – A.W.Tozer

• ‎ Love of God. – “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16

• ‎ Holiness of God. – God has been and always will be set apart. “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:16

• ‎ Sovereignty of God. “God’s sovereignty is the attribute by which he rules his entire creation, and to be Sovereign God must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely free.” – A.W.Tozer

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light

Audrey Assad

“We are Lost when human opinion means more to us than God’s.” – D.A.Carson

“God is love” 1 John 4:8

“I have loved you with an everlasting love” Jeremiah 31:3

God is love and has been love and always will be love. His love will never end nor will it change, His love is perfect. However a holy God can not co-exist in the presence of sin and a just God would not allow sin to go unpunished.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Exodus 34:6-7

“As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.” Ezekiel 18:3-4

Bible describes God as a just God, that he is jealous for his people, and one who hates sin so much that he gave his only son, so that sin might be defeated. God loves His people but hates the sin of His people. God is merciful, in that he does not want to punish us but God is Just, meaning He has to punish sin. We see through Christ that God showed both his love and wrath through the cross. We see the worst thing imaginable meant for Good in the Death of Christ. We see God reveling Himself to be both loving and just from beginning to end, never changing and never leaning towards one more than the other.

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Gen 50:20

“Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.” – J.I.Packer

The biggest problem we face as humans, is that God is holy, He is righteous, He is just and we are not. Understanding who God is and having relationship with Him, is our soul purpose for being Created. Our main purpose for living is to glorify God, (1 Cor 10:31) “Soli Deo Gloria” is Latin phase meaning Glory to God alone. The most important thing we can do is deepen our understanding of Gods character and out of that understanding worship will flow. At the end of each day we will either Reject Gods Glory or we will Reflect Gods Glory, sin enters our life to reject it and Christ enters to reflect it.

God is at the center of the universe, He is at the center of the Bible and He is most certainly at the center of the Gospel.

they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” Rev 4:8