Who is God? Part 3
Dave Scholes
Like we said last time, God has two types of attributes: some that only He has (like omnipresence, eternal etc.), and some that He has given to us as well. These shared attributes are things about God that we can experience a little bit of first hand. To experience these attributes growing in our lives is what it means to become Christ-like.
Let’s look at a few:
- God is loving.
- God is knowledgeable.
- God is wise.
- God is truthful.
- God is faithful.
- God is good.
- God is holy.
- God is free.
- God is glorious.
There are many more, but we can see by looking at just these few that we share these attributes in some way. We do not share them fully however, and the Christian life of following Jesus causes these attributes to grow in us over time.
For example. God is loving. The Bible says that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8), which means that love itself gets its existence and definition in the nature and character (personality) of God. Now, we are not love in the same sense as God is love. But we are loving beings. We consistently pour out love on to other people and things. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. Christian growth leads us to love God centrally and most in our life, then to love other things secondarily, and to not love bad things at all.
The same can be said for all the other attributes in the list. God has them fully, we have them partially and can grow into them more fully. God is holy; we are able to be free from sin for a while and do good but not until Heaven will we be completely holy. We can be faithful or faithless, but God is always faithful (2 Tim 2:13).
– Dave