It would not surprise you to learn that the world, particularly our modern world, is divided about God. Who is he? What is he like? Is God a he or a she? How many gods are there? Is there even a God at all? Is this God knowable? There is no broad consensus about any of these questions.
In the middle of this fray, it would be normal for a Christian to feel a bit out of their depth. After all, there is not really a Sunday school class that prepares one to deal with our ever evolving cultural dialogue about God. But this series of blogs is being written in part so that you may know who God is and what he is like. Last week, we argued for a God who speaks clearly to us in his word. This week I will seek to show that we can pierce through the blurry image of God our culture has, and arrive with a clear picture. This should be important to christians because we live in a world that is desperate to know its creator, we serve a God who is intent on revealing himself to his creation, and we have been made ambassadors of that self-disclosure.
An Inevitable Choice
Our world is starving for a knowledge of God. As secularism takes hold of more of the western world1, it should not be surprising that anxiety and a slew of other mental health problems have been steadily on the rise.2 Human beings cannot live life to the fullest apart from their creator. Belief about God is an inevitable choice. As Tozer has said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”3 Make no mistake, everyone answers the question about which kind of god they serve.
This is a choice that one makes either consciously or subconsciously. But either way, the consequences of that choice are born out on a daily basis. This is because, “everyone has a worldview”4 and that worldview is our grid for interpreting the world around us. The most popular alternative to the Christian God in the western world is some more tame variation—some non-relational god who endorses our desires. In that frame, each of us does what is right in their own eyes, or as James Sire puts it, “each of us is monarch of our own subjective world.”5 If one thinks they are a monarch they will live their life differently than if they are under a monarch. So the blurry picture we have of God today in our culture is a consequential one. It leads to rapid cultural change regarding truth, ethics, virtue, and beauty, just as a person with blurry vision would drive a car erratically.
Putting On Glasses
If someone has poor vision, they can often be assisted with corrective lenses. In a similar way, God knows how corrupted our view of him is, and he provides for us a clear picture by means of his self-disclosure. To quote James Sire again, “If God desired, he could remain hidden. But, God wants us to know him, and he takes the initiative of the transfer of knowledge.”6 This is done through the medium of his word, “Every word from God to man interprets the meaning of reality.”7 Scripture gives us a clear picture of God.
If this is all true then how can we account for the cacophony of voices that speak about God in the west? Well we must account for the rebellion of man against God. Graeme Goldsworthy says, “The sinner deliberately reinterprets every fact and gives it a meaning that fits with his denial of God.”8 Then it is no wonder that we can’t see God clearly. Yet Scripture speaks truly to us about God. So let’s put on some glasses, and learn who God is.
“Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:”I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen. Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any” (Isaiah 44:6–8).
Imminent and Transcendent
Here we can learn a number of things about God that will speak to the confusion of our culture. Firstly, he is a God who is both transcendent from his creation and immanent to it. That might seem like two points, but they are really unified. God is not distant from us. Isaiah tells us in verse 6 that it is the Lord who is delivering this message, “Thus says the Lord.” It is God who raised up Isaiah and made him to be a prophet to Israel. Even in Israel’s abandonment of their redeemer he seeks them out so they might know him. We can see then he is available to us, what theologians call his immanence. He desires for us to know his character and nature. It is why he speaks. Similarly, we can see he is transcendent from that creation. He says, “Who is like me?” There is none who is like him. Since there is nothing to compare him to, he remains partly beyond our ability to grasp. We can know God truly, but not exhaustively.9
Redeemer
Secondly, we may see that he is redeemer. If one were to read the rest of Isaiah 44 a very clear picture of God would emerge. He is resolved to save Israel. This is in spite of their apostasy from his previous acts of deliverance and establishing them in the land. He deals with their sin in verse 22, “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist,” and he is even pleased to use Cyrus, the pagan king, to accomplish the rebuilding of Jerusalem (vv. 26–28).
Triune
Thirdly, as the broader corpus of Scripture shows, God saves us by means of his triune involvement in the world. How is it that he blots out sin without showing partiality? The sending of his son, “was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that [God] might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). Even in Isaiah 44:3 God speaks of the coming redemption by means of the pouring out of his Spirit. This event is clearly referring to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at pentecost. Therefore, one cannot see God as redeemer without necessarily seeing him as triune. It is through his triune activity that he saves humanity unto himself.
God Sends Us As Emissaries
The final idea we get from this text is that God’s people are to be emissaries of his message to the world. This is where the rubber meets the road for Christians. It is not enough that God rescues us from the clutches of sin. He then drafts us and sends us into the battle. In the western world, one trend that strongly correlates with the cultural confusion about God is a growing confusion in the church about God. Many who know what to say are too timid to speak. For a long while, the bulwark that is the church has spoken without authority on the matter of who God is. The result is that people rarely know who God is and what he demands.
But God has given us a message and a burden to share that message with our world. As he says in verse 8, “I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen. Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses!” Are we not told the same thing of the church in the New Testament? Jesus says to his disciples in Acts 1:8, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” This is not to say that all Christians should be full time missionaries. It is saying that the Church and every particular local church has one mission, to be Christ’s witness to the world.
So just because our world is confused does not mean Christians need to be. And Christians don’t need to be quiet about the fact that we have the truth. It has been entrusted to us. After all, we are God’s witnesses. We are the ones who he has appointed to share his redemptive message with the world. There is no room for timidity, pussyfooting, obfuscating, or shoulder-shrugging. God has spoken so his Church must speak as an act of obedience.
Discussion Questions
What are some of the things you have heard about God growing up?
If you were to talk to your co-workers, family, or friends, what would they likely say they believe about God?
Do you think it is possible to know truly who God is with all of the opinions that exist today?
What are some disciplines that will grow our understanding of who God is and what he is like?
If someone asked you about God’s message of redemption, could you explain it in 3 minutes or less?
“Each year the western world, particularly America, becomes more pluralistic than the year before.” James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, Sixth edition. (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2020), 47.
Renee D. Goodwin et al., “Trends in Anxiety Among Adults in the United States, 2008–2018: Rapid Increases Among Young Adults,” J Psychiatr Res130 (2020): 441–46, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2020.08.014, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7441973/.
A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (United States: Fig, 2012), 1.
Sire, The Universe Next Door, 5.
Sire, The Universe Next Door, 112.
Sire, The Universe Next Door, 24.
Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 41.
Goldsworthy, According to Plan, 42.
Stephen Wellum, “Divine Incomprehensibility and the Knowledge of God,” The Gospel Coalition, n.d., https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/divine-incomprehensibility-and-the-knowledge-of-god/.
