The Baptist Faith and Message: IIA. God the Father (Part 2)

“God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.”

One of the glib truths often cited by people is that “we all have God as our Father, and we are all brothers.” There is an assumption that since God has created us, He also remains in a fatherly relationship to every person. It sounds so nice to our ears we just assume that the Bible teaches it.

Unfortunately, this isn’t what the Bible says. God is indeed a Father. First and foremost, He is the Father of Jesus, the Son, within the economy of the Trinity. The Bible reveals to us that those who stand in a right relationship to God are also His children. Jesus even taught His disciples to call God “Our Father” in prayer. Those who have their faith in Jesus Christ are adopted by God into His family (Romans 8:14-15). To do this, we must repent of our sin and rebellion against God and accept His way of salvation.

This is part of the meaning of the term “born again” as Jesus used it in John 3. Our original birth brought us into the world, but as part of humanity we came with a sinful human nature. (We’ll look at this topic more in a later post.) We aren’t just sinners by birth, though; we are also sinners by choice. We freely choose to pursue what we want rather than what God expects and commands from us. As a result, we are not part of the family of God, although we are a part of the human family. The “brotherhood of man” is a truth, but not one that brings us into a right relationship with God.

To our Western culture, this sounds bigoted, narrow-minded, and just plain wrong. If we say some people are not children of God, we may insult them or hurt their self-image. It doesn’t matter what is true, just what makes people feel good about themselves. People don’t want to face the consequences of their action, so they assume God will overlook “a few little faults” and let them into His family and into heaven.

It doesn’t matter how people feel about what the Bible reveals, however. If it is true that we must be “born again” to become part of God’s family, then we cannot find any other way to reach that goal. We cannot be part of a family whose Father we reject and openly defy. And frankly, why would you want to spend eternity with the One whose word you ignored and whose standards you broke whenever you chose?

Some might argue that even an earthly father can be reconciled to children who have rejected him or ignored what he wanted. Wouldn’t God be even more likely to want reconciliation? That is absolutely true. God has made it possible for us to be reconciled to Him through the work of Jesus. He won’t force us to be reconciled, though. We must choose to humble ourselves, repent of our sins, and accept His chosen means of reconciliation. Just as an earthly father can’t be reconciled to a child who refuses his advances, so God cannot be reconciled to those who reject His offer of reconciliation.

Now God does have a fatherly attitude toward all of humanity. He provides providential care for all, and He has made a way for all to become His children. But His fatherly attention is meant to draw us into a relationship with Him through Christ. Only then will He truly be our Father, as His Word reveals to us. 

The Baptist Faith and Message: II. God (Part 4)

“The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.”

If you asked most Christians, maybe even most people who have heard of Christianity, what the single most difficult teaching to understand is, you’d probably get an overwhelming consensus that it is the doctrine of the Trinity. The statement of the doctrine is simple, and this article gives it in a clear and concise form. What is hard to understand is what it means to worship one God who is three distinct Persons but only one essence. Was human beings, we have no mental category for such an idea.

The doctrine of the Trinity has been such a vexing issue for some throughout the history of the church that it has led to many teachings that deny its reality. Some think the three Persons are just different modes of God revealing Himself, not fully distinct persons. Others teach that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are actually subordinate gods, not one in essence with the Father. Still others simply deny the doctrine altogether, and believe that Jesus was a man adopted by God as the Son and that the Holy Spirit is just the power of God in action. Each of these ideas come from attempts to grasp the doctrine of God and of the Trinity in a way that makes sense to humanity.

The divine Trinity stands in contrast to the teachings about God or the gods in other religions. Judaism and Islam teach the absolute unity of God; they do not see any way that God can be “divided” into three Persons and still be one God. Religions like Hinduism have no problem with the concept of more than one god, but each of these gods is a fully separate and distinct essence as well as person. Many Eastern religions have a very impersonal conception of the ultimate One, which may emanate in a number of distinct forms in our current world, but which will ultimately reclaim its absolute oneness. None of these religions can accept the Christian formulation of the Trinity.

Many point out that the term “Trinity” is not found in the Bible, and they are right. However, the concept is found in a number of passages (such as Matthew 3: 16-17; 28:19-20; 2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 Peter 1:2). There is a sense in which the doctrine could be said to have developed from the understanding of the apostles and the Biblical writers, who understood the Jewish concept of God yet accepted both Jesus and the Holy Spirit as God. The lack of a specific term does not make a doctrine unbiblical; other terms not found in the Bible, such as inerrancy, sacrament/ordinance, omnipotence, and omniscience, are also used by theologians to describe Biblical teachings.

As a seminary student, I searched, studied, and thought hard and often of how to understand the Trinity and explain it to people. As an older minister now, I am not only comfortable with the idea of mysteriousness of the Trinity, but I actually have come to believe that it is necessary that God be beyond our human understanding in order for Him to be God. If we could grasp the essence of God, that would make Him like us, only with more power. We would believe God to be the ultimate expression of everything we as humans hope to be, but not as someone far beyond our conception. In a real sense, only a God who is beyond our human understanding is worthy of acceptance as God.

The fact that God is beyond our ability to fully grasp does not mean that God is totally inexplicable or impossible to understand at any level. The Bible gives us His own revelation of Himself, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is, of course, something we can state and believe, drawing from the teaching of Scripture, even if we can’t figure out just exactly how all of that works. (I’ll even go further for myself-I don’t believe that we’ll ever fully grasp the essence of God, even in Heaven, and that’s a good thing.) We are called on to believe in God as He is revealed in His Word, and to have faith that goes beyond what we as limited, finite humans can grasp with our limited, finite minds.

The doctrine of the Trinity is truly a mystery taught to us in Scripture, but that very teaching reveals a God who is beyond us and worthy of our worship. At the same time, as we will see, the Bible teaches us that this immense, infinite God is also involved in our world and in our lives, and wants us to be a part of His eternal family. Far from being a hindrance to our faith, the doctrine of the Trinity should encourage us that our God is indeed One worthy of our faith, our praise, and our obedience.

The Baptist Faith and Message: II. God (Part 3)

While the Baptist Faith and Message does not cover all of the attributes of God, I think it is good to take a look at a list of many of His attributes. Theologians don’t agree on the exact list of divine attributes, but these are some that occur on most lists, although they may be called by another name. The attributes of God are also broken into categories differently by theologians. Some divide them between “communicable” (attributes that can be shared by some degree with humans) and “incommunicable” (attributes that apply to God alone); others distinguish between God’s “natural” (referring to those that describe His essential nature) and “moral” (those that describe His interpersonal nature) attributes. For this post, I’m just going to list some attributes, without breaking them into categories. This isn’t an exhaustive list, just a mention of some significant attributes. The verses discussed also do not provide an extensive list of passages supporting each attribute, but a representative sample.

Some of the attributes of God besides holiness, omnipotence, and omniscience (covered in the previous post) are:

Self-existence: God’s existence does not depend on anyone or anything other than Himself. The name I AM suggests this fundamental eternal existence.

Immensity: God is beyond the confines of the universe. In 2 Chronicles 6:18 Solomon recognizes that nothing can contain God.

Eternity: God always was, is, and will be. He is not bound by time, since He is the Creator of time. Romans 1:20 speaks to the way creation reveals His eternal nature.

Immutability: God does not change in His essential nature. While He may choose to carry out His plans in a variety of ways, who He is truly is remains the same. This immutability ensures that God is faithful to Himself and His purposes (Malachi 3:6).

Righteousness: God always upholds the right over the wrong. Even in planning our salvation, the righteousness of God was maintained through the sacrifice of Jesus (Romans 10:1-13).

Love: God has eternally existed in a relationship of love (which we will look at later in this series), and everything He does is done in love (1 John 4:7-10).

Truth: God Himself is the standard of what is true. In Isaiah 45:18-19 He declares that He speaks the truth and declares what is right.

Each of these attributes could use an entire post for itself. (You can find entire books devoted to some of these!) This brief look just gives us a glimpse of who and what God is. We will see some of these attributes again as we continue our look in future posts at what the Baptist Faith and Message says about God.

The Baptist Faith and Message: II. God (Part 2)

IIb. “God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience.”

In revealing His name to Moses, God chose to use “I AM.” That name expresses the infinity of His existence, for God always was, is, and always will be. Because God “is,” everything that He is also is infinite. This statement singles out His holiness, an attribute that tells us why sin cannot endure in His presence. Since God is infinitely holy, all sin is an infinite offense against His very person. This has implications for some of the doctrines we will see later in this statement of faith.

Although this article doesn’t spell out all of God’s attributes, it does state that all of them are infinite perfections. We see here a statement about God’s power and knowledge. The theological terms we use for these are “omnipotence” (all-powerful) and “omniscience” (all-knowing).  Since He possesses these infinite attributes, God knows all things in all times. We don’t know exactly how God interacts with time; He created it, and stands outside of what we call “history,” yet He also chooses to act in that history. I like the way this article presents both sides of the ongoing debate over God’s sovereignty and human will, by stating what I believe is the Biblical teaching that our decisions are free, yet God knows from all eternity exactly what those decisions are.

There are many others attributes of God that are not listed in this article. In my next post, I will list and define some of these attributes. What is said here is that whatever God is and whatever He is like, He is the perfect expression of that attribute. He has always been and always will be who and what He is. Some contemporary theologians suggest that God changes along with His creation, and that He interacts with humanity so that we progress together to the ultimate goal of the universe. The Bible, however, presents us with an eternal, unchanging God, giving us grounds to trust that He will always be who He is when we come to Him, and that He will be faithful to His word.

Because God is infinite in holiness, power, and knowledge (not to mention everything we’ll look at later), He is not only worthy of our praise, but is owed our praise. One day every creature will indeed bow their knee to Him (Philippians 2:10-11), but it is the duty of every one to honor and glorify their Creator. It is also our duty to obey God. I am teaching on Psalm 119 at my church right now, and throughout that psalm we see the benefits of reading, knowing, studying, and obeying the Word of God. We are free to choose to disobey, however, but all disobedience is not only breaking God’s law, but rejecting our relationship to our Creator.

Certainly we understand that we don’t always obey God perfectly, and that growing to be like Christ is a lifelong process. As we get to know God better, and more fully understand who He is and what He is like, we should find it easier to give Him the honor and obedience He is due. Looking at our lives, we need to evaluate if we are learning to know God better, loving Him more, and honoring and obeying Him more consistently. Our knee should bow willingly, not under compulsion, as we see the infinite perfection of our God.

The Baptist Faith and Message: II. God (Part 1)

IIa. “There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe.”

"Who (or what) is God?" Almost everyone asks themselves this question, even if it's just to answer with skepticism that there even is a God. There are many different conceptions of God in the world today. Despite common sayings, these ideas about God cannot all be correct, since they differ widely in what they say God, the gods, or the Ultimate is. Their beliefs about God are so different that they are incompatible, no matter what cute bumper stickers about "Coexisting" may imply.

The religions of the world are often broken down into categories by the number and nature of the gods they worship. Christianity worships one God, so it is called a “monotheistic” religion. This follows from the Jewish belief about God expressed in the Sh’ma: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) Nothing else is god, neither the idols worshipped by the nations around Israel in the past nor the spiritual and material interests that drive humanity today. God is the one true and existing God, as expressed in the name He revealed to Moses, I AM (Exodus 3:14).

Our God is a living and personal God. He is not an impersonal force, nor is He some kind of indefinable “oneness” which is part of everything. He exists with His own thoughts, personality, and attributes (which we will cover in a future post). God is intelligent, which means He is able to think, to plan, and to communicate with Himself and with His creatures. He is the Designer and Creator of the universe, which can be observed to reflect His design and purpose (Psalm 19:1-3). He is spiritual, living not in a body but as a spirit (John 4:24). When Biblical authors use anthropomorphic language, which describes God in human terms, such language is an analogy, not a description of the reality of God. God is also personal, having the ability to relate to Himself and to His creation through His personality rather than as a mere directive force.

While God is the Creator, He did not stop with making the universe and His ultimate creation, humanity. God is also the preserver of His creation, enabling it to continue in its existence and order (Acts 17:27-28). He is the absolute Ruler over His universe, a fact reflected in the traditional beginning a many Jewish prayers: “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe.” This understanding of God as King carries over in the New Testament with the ascription to Jesus as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Revelation 19:16).

Perhaps most significantly to us, God is also our Redeemer. This redemption began with the announcement at the Fall of a “seed of the woman” who would conquer Satan, and was continually demonstrated in God’s mighty acts on behalf of His people, Israel. The great act of redemption in the OT, the Exodus, demonstrated God’s power and care for His people. The ultimate act of redemption came in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Later articles of our statement of faith will explore redemption further, but here we simply say that the redemption of humanity is all due to the power and grace of the one true and living God.

The simplicity of God (a complex subject)

I like to listen to theological podcasts while I work out at the gym. (You need something to make 40 minutes on a stationary bike seem like fun.) One topic that came up in a couple of the podcasts I used this week was the simplicity of God. It isn't something we often talk about, unless you happen to be in a theology class. Preachers (including me) don't allude to it much. Yet it may be one aspect of God that helps us poke through some of the tough questions raised about God and His work.

While we use the term "simple" almost as a put-down, in theology it is something that God possesses that is distinctive from His creation. In a nutshell, simplicity means that God is a single unified being, not a being made up of many parts. So all the attributes of God-His omnipotence, omniscience, love, holiness, etc.- are not parts of God, but are all entirely essential to Him. Now to us, this seems a whole lot more like "complex" than "simple." We don't really have a mental capacity for grasping this as finite creatures. But it underscores an important truth that no one attribute of God is more "essential" than another.

One of the reasons the simplicity of God may be neglected is that it is very tough to pin it down without risking making God seems like an impersonal mass of attributes. We do sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of God as what He is rather than who He is. Personality and personal attributes are also a part of His simplicity, however. You can't make God out to be some kind of cosmic impersonal power, or treat Him as if He was a single attribute such as love, without doing violence to the reality revealed to us in Scripture.

If this all sounds like a lot to digest, it is. I'm not trying to pretend that I have a full grasp on this topic, or that I ever will. (At this point in my life I'm quite comfortable with the knowledge that as a finite creature there are just some things I'll never fully comprehend, even in heaven.) What is important about it is how it helps us sort through some theological questions by rejecting arguments that are built on an understanding of God as somehow having some "essential" attribute that takes priority over others.

For example, one of the arguments for universalism, the doctrine that all people will be saved, is built on the love of God as His essential nature. Love triumphs over holiness, righteousness, or anything else, so all people must be saved or somehow God is thwarted. But if the love of God is no more essential than any other attribute, we need to consider how the balanced nature of God would deal with salvation. (It's also possible to go the other way, to make holiness trump love in a way that pushes the love of God aside or stunts it, which leads to other problems.)

We need to make sure that we do our best to understand God as thoroughly as possible, and to analyze what is said about God with the knowledge (however imperfect) that He is everything He says He is equally. Will this solve all or theological problems? No. But it will help us become clearer and more exact in our study and understanding of God and His Word, and keep us from making God less than He really is.

Who is your God?

Reading through Jeremiah, I can't help but be struck by how much the situation in Israel just before the Captivity reminds me of many aspects of current American culture. Israel placed her trust in her own strength and wealth, and followed whatever gods she felt would enhance those. The king and leaders, as well as many of the people, ignored the Lord unless they needed a favor from Him. As their situation became more precarious, they did start to call out to God, but they did so while presenting themselves as faithful and worthy of God's intervention.

It's not a reflection of a genuine faith ion God to turn to Him when all else has failed. As He reminds us through Jeremiah, when people turn to other gods He will let them continue to get their help from those gods. Israel had reached a point at which they were ripe for a well-deserved judgment, and the Lord wasn't about to accept half-hearted efforts to ask Him for help.

I think that in many ways our culture has pursued other gods-not carved images, but things like money, success, fame, and position. Even good things like family and church can become a false god when put in the place that the Lord deserves. It may well be that when we scramble back to God in times of trouble He could say to us, "Go ask the god you've been serving for its help."

Is judgment in our future? I can't say that. I can say that what our society values and pursues are gods that can't help us, and that God may well let us reap the consequences of pursuing those gods. But I also know that He is merciful, and that if His people turn to Him, and the Holy Spirit works in hearts, we can see a revival in our churches and a great harvest of those who turn to the Lord.

I certainly am concerned about what I see happening in our culture. The stories I see on the news show that there is no value given to serving the Lord, and little even to serving others. People seem to be concerned almost exclusively with their own desires, and that brings about breakdowns in relationships, crimes against others who have what we want or are in the way of us getting it, and an obsession with and greedy hoarding of material possessions. I don;t see the love and mercy of Christ reflected in society as a whole, and, sadly, sometimes not even in the church.

A former pastor of mine had a vision for our church, which he summed up as, "We need to love people until they ask us why." That vision has carried on even though he has moved on, and our church strives to show the love of Jesus in our community to open doors to the gospel. We are still working on it, but I see progress. I think that attitude needs to be lived out in our culture, to show people what it means to turn from gods of self to the God who made us. As we do, we can expect the Spirit to work through us to touch our society for Jesus.

God never shuts down!

In the US today we're experiencing another in a series of occasional "government shutdowns." That hardly leaves us bereft of government, but it makes for fascinating political theater as the parties do everything they can to not solve the problem while blaming the other side for the shutdown. (For the record, I think everybody's at fault on this one.) While the markets get nervous and some government employees are on furlough, history tells us that the long-term effects of this shutdown will be minimal. Still, a government that can't keep itself running is a concern to everyone living under that government.

I'm glad today that, while I am a citizen of the US, I am first and foremost a subject of the kingdom of God. I have a total confidence that He will always be in control, and that His kingdom will never shut down. I may experience many ups and downs in my life, but I know that my ultimate destiny is in the hands of an almighty God who promises me He will always be with me.

This confidence comes from theological beliefs. Many Christians think of theology as a difficult and esoteric field, limited to those who have the time, education, and inclination to spend hours in deep study to learn truths that rise above what the average person can understand. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Theology is, first and foremost, the study of God and His relationship to us. Every Christian is a theologian, even if they haven't been to seminary.

Theology can be a source a great comfort. The belief I state above, that God is always present and in control, relies on an understanding of the nature and power of God. God is everywhere, at all times, He loves us, and He has the ultimate power over everything He has created. That is the truth that brings us comfort today, and many Christians would agree with it.

Yet it is ultimately a theological statement. I could phrase it like this: God is omnipresent, timeless, omnipotent, and has a communicable attribute of love. I think many Christians would be, at best, puzzled by that statement. It's couched in scholarly language, which C.S. Lewis noted has the advantage of brevity at the expense of simple clarity. To me, that statement is meaningful and comforting, because I spend a lot of time studying theology and learning its "shorthand." The goal for a teacher or preacher is to make those concepts understandable to those who haven't learned the "shorthand" yet.

In the end, the comfort we find in our dependence on God is based on our theological understanding of God, however we express it.  And it contrasts starkly with any confidence we can have in man-made constructs like human government. (As an aside, if you think theological language is hard to understand, try reading the laws passed by Congress!) My nation's government is shut down today, but my King will never shut down!