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What
is GOD really like?
Have you ever thought about what God is really like?
His character. His personality. It’s
a pretty important question. If
we’re going to choose to worship someone, we better know who He
is.
It’s a question even long-time Christians need to
think about. Why? No matter how many Sunday school lessons and church services
we have attended, there is still plenty of opportunity for misconceptions
about the character of God.
Let’s take a moment and look at some places where we might get some
WRONG IDEAS about God.
1)
Christians. It’s sad, but it’s a fact of life. Christians make mistakes.
Sometimes those mistakes hurt people.
Sometimes they hurt others severely.
When we undertake this challenge of trying to walk in love the way
Jesus did, God renews our hearts and gives us strength to overcome sin.
A true Christian should be one of the most loving people you have
ever met. But, even the best
Christian still occasionally sins. Unfortunately, there are others whose hearts have drifted far
from God, and scarcely a remnant of His love remains in their personality.
These people can hurt others badly “in the name of God”.
2)
Our parents.
We call God our Father, because that’s a good metaphor for our
relationship with Him as Christians.
But whether you’re a Christian or not, it’s a good bet that
your perceptions of God have been colored by your experience with your
parents. If your earthly
father is loving and forgiving, it may be easy for you to imagine a loving
and forgiving God. But, if
your earthly father is controlling and manipulative; if he is indifferent
to your suffering; if he is emotionally unavailable; if he is angry and
unforgiving – well, you may have to overcome a strong tendency to relate
to God as if He were similar to your natural parents.
Take a moment and think about how you may be misperceiving God in
this manner.
3)
Our
experiences. The
world can be a cold, dark place. We
don’t have to look far to find suffering.
Some of us have experienced some pretty awful things ourselves. But what does this say about God? Some people reason that God must be mean, or at least
indifferent. But this is
not true. The presence of
suffering in the world is one of the most important issues that faces any
religion. Christianity has an
answer. This subject was
addressed in a prior discussion, Too Good to Be True.
We’re going to address it further in the discussion below.
HOW do we know
what God is like?
The Bible is our
first and most important source. It
is God’s love-letter, textbook, and instruction manual all in one.
In the Bible, God tells us about Himself – what He thinks, what
He feels, what He wants, what He stands for, what He will do, what He will
not do, what He loves, what He hates.
God further helped
mankind understand Him by coming to dwell among us in the person of Jesus
Christ. Here was a living,
breathing Person that thousands of people met.
They touched Him, talked with Him, laughed with Him, and cried with
Him. They saw how He related
to people. We can study the
life of Jesus recorded in the Bible and see how He handled every situation
with grace and love. Jesus
said that His actions were the Father’s actions, and His words were the
Father’s words (John 5:19, 6:38, 8:38, 14:24).
Jesus told us that when we know Him, we know the Father, because He
and the Father are One. (John 12:44-45, 10:30).
OK, so what’s God really like?
God
CARES about you
This is a good place to start. God created you. He
cares about you and your life – your joys, your sadness, your successes
and your failures. He is not
cold and indifferent. He
wants to be the focus of your life. He
cares about you so much that He went to the ultimate extreme to reconcile
your relationship with Him – death on a cross.
(More on that below.)
You are special and unique.
God made you, and He knew what He was doing. You are the “apple of His eye”
(Psalms 17:8)
God wants you to trust Him enough to let Him help you
with all of your problems and fears.
“Cast all your anxiety on Him because he cares for you.” (1
Peter 5:7)
Just as you are a unique person, God has a unique
plan for your life. God tells
us in the Bible the kind of life He intends for you:
- For I know the plans I
have for you," declares the LORD,
"plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you
hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to
me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you
seek me with all your heart. (Jer. 29:11-13)
For more on the good plans that God has for your life
and how to make sure you fulfill them, be sure to check out our
discussion, Seven
Steps to Destiny.
God
is HOLY
God
is not a mixture of good and bad. There
is no evil in Him at all. His
personality is not complicated by a “dark side”.
He is not even moody!
The apostle John, who was perhaps Jesus’ closest
confidant, writes:
-
This
is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is
light; in Him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)
God
is pure good. He is the
definition of good. (Mark 10:18) He
is perfectly moral in every way. That’s
holiness.
Part
of holiness is the complete rejection of all that is evil.
God, who is perfectly holy, totally embodies good, and totally
rejects everything that is evil.
God
is FORGIVING
We mentioned above that God took extraordinary
measures to reconcile our relationship with Him.
Why did our relationship need reconciling in the first place?
Sin.
We’ve all sinned.
Some of us more than others. But
because God is holy, even one sin means that we fall short.
In the face of God’s holiness, even a little sin contaminates us
and alienates us from God.
We all start with the same dilemma: we’re stained
by sin and separated from relationship with God.
Thus, we need to be reconciled.
God’s solution is Jesus Christ.
The Bible says that Jesus bore our sins as He gave His life for us
on the cross. The punishment
that should have been ours, He took for us.
He was our substitute. We
traded our sin and shame for Jesus’ righteousness.
(What is righteousness? Right standing with God.
Jesus had complete righteousness because He, unlike us, never
sinned.)
Here is God’s offer to
every single person on earth (yourself included!):
1)
Admit that you have sinned
2)
Repent (express heartfelt sorrow for your sin, and determine to sin
no more)
3)
Trust in Jesus Christ. In
other words, believe that He bore your punishment for you and that
you have received His righteousness in exchange. In light of this awesome truth, make a commitment to
follow Jesus as your Savior (the one who saved you) and obey His
teachings.
The Bible promises that if anyone trusts in Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of his sins in this fashion, he is
forgiven. The close, intimate
relationship that God intended is restored.
-
If we
claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in
us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will
forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
(1 John 1:8-9)
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If you
confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in
your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
(Romans 10:9)
There is no sin so large that it cannot be
forgiven. Jesus paid the
ultimate price, His very life. That
price was sufficient to ransom your life and pay the punishment for every
one of your sins.
Once that transaction becomes a reality in your life
by your choice to accept it by faith (which the Bible refers to it as
being “born-again” or being “saved”), you are totally forgiven,
and totally free to enjoy relationship with God.
God does not hold your forgiven sins over your head.
They’re gone - removed by the cleansing blood that Jesus shed for
you on the cross.
-
As
far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our
transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)
If this concept of God’s forgiveness is new to you,
I encourage you to study it further yourself.
A great place to start is the story of the prodigal son, found in
the Gospel of Luke 15:11-32. It’s
a parable that Jesus used to demonstrate the love and the forgiveness that
our heavenly Father has for us, if only we will choose to be reconciled to
Him.
God
is GOOD
God is good. Period.
We have already established that God is perfectly
holy. It follows naturally
that if God’s nature is completely holy, then His actions
are always just, good, and loving.
The Bible tells us that God is love.
(1 John 4:16) He is
not merely characterized by love. He
defines love. His
actions demonstrate love every second of every day for all eternity.
He is not capable of anything less.
The Bible teaches that God’s love is
unconditional. That means
that God loves you irrespective of your behavior.
Rather, He loves you for who you are.
This does not mean that God does not care how we behave.
We’ll discuss that below. Sometimes,
God hates our behavior, but He always loves us.
(For more on God’s unconditional love, we recommend Joyce Meyer’s
Tell Them I Love Them.)
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Very
rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man
someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own
love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Rom. 5:7-9)
And yet, as we mentioned above, there is suffering in
the world. Lots of people
ask, “Why couldn’t God just make it so we don’t suffer? God must be cruel.” Even
some Christians, when something bad happens, such as a sickness, attribute
it to God.
But the Bible contradicts such reasoning.
Love does not hurt people. Evil
does. God is not evil – not
even a little bit. (1 John 1:5) Jesus
described His mission like this:
-
The
thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they
may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)
Jesus is the author of life (Acts 3:15), and wants to
give us eternal life with Him in heaven, as well as a good, abundant life
here on earth. He also wants
to give us peace
(John 14:27) and joy:
-
I
have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy
may be complete. (Jn.
15:11)
Jesus backed up His words with actions.
He healed the sick (Mt. 4:24).
(He never afflicted someone with disease!)
He loved the outcasts (Luke 5:12-13).
He had compassion on sinners (Matt. 9:36, John 8:3-11).
He defended the helpless. And
in the ultimate expression of love, He took the punishment we deserve, and
gave His very life for us on the cross.
What an expression of love! On
the third day after His death, God raised Jesus from the dead.
After spending some time on earth giving His followers some
instructions and encouragement, He ascended to heaven, where He reigns to
this day. If you have made
Him the Lord and Savior of your life, then His Spirit lives inside you as
well!
The point is that God intends good things for your
life, not bad. (Jer. 29:11)
He is our loving Father, always looking out for us, always doing
good things for us. He does
not bring evil upon us. That’s
what the Bible says and what Jesus demonstrated – it’s a fact.
So how do we explain suffering?
We’ll tackle that next.
God
loves FREEDOM
Freedom? What
does that have to do with anything?
God created the whole world - everything and
everybody, including every person and every angel.
As the almighty, holy Creator of the universe, He deserves our love
and worship – He’s not only God, but He’s a great God!
But God does not force us to love Him.
He does not force us to serve Him or worship Him.
He leaves that up to us. Why?
If you think about it, love and worship must be given freely
– they cannot be compelled. Love
that is forced is not love at all. Obedience
can be compelled and demanded. Or
it can be given out of love and respect.
God prefers the latter. God
certainly has the capability of creating a bunch of robots that always do
what He wants. He could even
make them sing really nice songs about how great He is.
But the gratification from that situation would not last very long.
God wants our true love. He
wants us to worship Him of our own free will.
But to do that, He has to make us free.
When He created humans and angels, He gave us freedom to choose –
freedom to choose how we live our lives, whether we will have a
relationship with Him, and whether we will obey Him.
Now, don’t get the idea that just because God gave
us freedom that He doesn’t care what we do with our lives – to the
contrary. He has certain
principles that He expects us to live by.
These are dictated by His holiness.
They are also dictated by His love.
Many people think of God’s commands as arbitrary decrees of a
distant and authoritarian ruler. Not
at all! God wants the best
for us (because He’s so loving). And
He knows what’s best for us (because He’s really, really smart!).
God’s rules of living are not only holy, but they designed to
produce the best possible life for us!
OK, we’re about to get back to the question about
evil and suffering in the world. God
has given every creature the freedom to choose whether to serve Him or
not. The Bible tells us that
long before the earth was even created, there was an angel in heaven named
Lucifer who took that freedom and rebelled against God.
Lucifer decided not to worship God any longer – he wanted to
exalt himself to that position. He
got some other angels of like mind to follow him, and together they
rebelled against God. God
cast them out of heaven and into another dwelling place we now call hell.
This fallen angel, Lucifer, is now more commonly referred to as the
devil, or Satan.
Jesus referred to the devil as “the thief” in a
verse we looked at above:
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The
thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they
may have life, and have it to the full. (Jn. 10:10)
Whereas God is pure good, the devil is evil
personified. The devil hates
us – his goal is to steal, kill, and destroy – and we humans are his
targets. He desperately wants
to turn us away from God and make us serve him.
Unlike God, he is not a kind, loving King.
Rather, he is an evil, twisted ruler who will take any opportunity
we give him to dominate us and deceive us.
His ultimate goal is to make sure that our destiny after this life
on earth is eternity in hell with him, because we have chosen to turn our
backs on God and His love and grace through Jesus Christ.
So,
reason number one why there is evil and suffering in the world: the
devil.
-
Your
enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone
to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
Fortunately, Christians, through faith in Jesus
Christ, have been given authority over the devil.
Jesus won that authority in His victory on the cross, and He gives
it to His followers who accept it by faith.
We are not helpless against the attacks of the devil.
If we are submitted to God, we can resist the devil, and he will
flee from us. (If this
concept is new to you, study the Scriptures for yourself and find a good
book the subject.)
-
I have
given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome
all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. (Luke 10:19)
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Submit
yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
(James 4:7)
Reason
number two: our own choices.
God gives us strong guidance in the way that we
should go, but He does not force us.
He lets us choose for ourselves, and then bear the consequences
of our choices. There are
natural and spiritual laws that govern our world.
If we drop an egg, it will fall to the ground.
If we don’t put gas in our car, it doesn’t run.
If we don’t sleep, we get very tired, and we don’t perform
well. If we sin, we reap
the consequences of that, too.
The Bible says that the natural consequences of sin
are destruction and spiritual death:
-
The
one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap
destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit
will reap eternal life. (Gal. 6:8)
-
For
the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 6:23)
God has planned good things for our lives, but we’re
not going to stumble upon them by going out and doing our own thing.
Apart from God, our own choices invariably include sin, because we
have a sinful nature.
-
You,
my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to
indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.
(Gal. 5:13)
So, the choice is ours.
We can choose a life of sin, and reap the negative consequences of
those choices; or we can live in obedience to God, and reap the blessings
that He wants to give us. God
loves us. He wants us to
choose to live the abundant life He offers us.
-
This
day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have
set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life,
so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD
your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life. (Deut.
30:19-20)
Like any loving Father, God corrects His children who
stray. That’s discipline.
If your young child wandered out into traffic, you would fetch him,
and then you would make sure you communicated to him that that kind of
behavior was unacceptable. Your discipline would include some pointed instructions, and
probably either a temporary restriction of some kind or a quick swat on
the bottom. You would want to
make sure that the child understood the importance of your rule called “Don’t
run into traffic!”
What would be your underlying motivation for making
and enforcing the rule of “Don’t run into traffic?” Your love and concern for your child, course.
It’s the same way with our heavenly Father.
-
Our
fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God
disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No
discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however,
it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have
been trained by it. (Heb. 12:10-11)
All his commands are based in His love for us –
they are for our benefit. (Even
the command “Don’t serve any ‘gods’ besides me” is for our
benefit, because serving the one, true God who is just, holy, loving, and
powerful is much better than serving sin, the devil, false gods, money, or
sex.) Just as the young child
may not understand all of his parents’ rules, including the one about
playing in traffic, we sometimes don’t understand why God says some of
the things He says. But as we
mature as Christians, we often see the wisdom of His commands.
Nevertheless, even if we don’t understand the purpose behind a
command, we can trust that God is good and He intends it for our
welfare.
Please understand this, however: God does not discipline us with sickness.
Nor does He “teach us a lesson” by killing our loved ones.
That’s not discipline. That’s
cruel. That’s the
devil’s business. Can
you imagine a loving parent trying to teach their child a lesson by taking
her over to the local hospital and infecting her with tuberculosis?
Ridiculous! Yet, when
some Christians contract an illness or lose a love one, they tell us that
God is punishing them. God
disciplines Christians. He
does not punish them. Those
who have rejected Jesus Christ will face judgment at their death, but
Christians are free from condemnation through Christ.
(Romans 8:1)
To review, God is not the source of our
suffering. He helps lead us
along the path that produces peace, joy, and eternal life.
The devil is the one bent on our destruction. Other pain we bring on ourselves by our wrong choices.
But what about the child born with a disease?
Or the child born in poverty and famine?
They didn’t choose to be born that way!
A
third reason that this life on earth is sometimes cruel is that we live in
a “fallen world”. What
does this mean? Well, God
never intended the world to include sin, sickness, evil, and the like. God’s initial creation was perfect. But man, having free will, chose to rebel against God.
Many of you recall the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden. Everything was great,
until they chose to sin. At
that point, sin entered into the world, along with all of its evil
consequences. God’s
perfect creation has been warped by the destructive nature of sin.
A good example of this principle is genetic diseases.
There was no disease, genetic or otherwise, in the Garden of Eden.
Our DNA, or genetic code, was flawless, and would have been passed
along to our children flawlessly. But
through sin’s destructive influence in this fallen world we live in, our
DNA is no longer completely protected from the ravages of our environment,
chance, and the forces of evil. Every
human being has DNA that is “less than perfect”.
Sometimes, this results in disease, including cancer and some birth
defects and childhood illnesses. These
diseases should not be viewed as God’s punishment against the child or
the parents. Rather they
are the very unfortunate result of living in a “fallen world.” We can take comfort in knowing that there will be no such
suffering in heaven.
The Bottom Line
God
is good. He is holy.
He has a great plan for your life, and He wants to help you find
it. He loves you and He wants
to have a close relationship with you. He wants to spend eternity with you in heaven.
He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer and die for our sins,
and to bear the punishment that we deserve.
Those who trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins will be
saved from the destruction that sin yields and will rejoice with Him
forever in heaven.
One could define faith as believing that God
is who He says He is. When
evil and calamity arise in this world, the devil often tempts us to
believe that God is the source of it.
Resist that temptation! Believe that God is who He says He is! There is always another explanation. God does not lie.
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God
is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should
change his mind. (Num. 23:19)
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What
if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's
faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar!
(Rom. 3:3-4)
Before you blame God and accuse Him of evil, you had
best reconsider.
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Would
you discredit My justice? Would you condemn Me to justify
yourself? (Job 40:8)
We
serve an awesome God! Rejoice
in Him. Trust Him.
He will never let you down.
We welcome your comments or
questions. Email us at joministries@f2s.com.
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