How do you imagine God? Your answer makes an immense difference!

Most people agree that, for salvation, a Christian needs more than just a theoretical knowledge of God. Over our threescore and ten, we increase our knowledge of Him through life's varied experiences. We likewise grow in understanding by studying God's Word. In both areas, we can be snared by a major problem that traps many religious people in this world: emphasizing one of His attributes at the expense of others.

God is not one-dimensional. Though we should study each of His attributes and think on them separately, we should not separate them from the complete Personality that God is. Why? It distorts the Model we are to imitate and grow into. In addition, it can radically alter our expectations of what He will do. If He does not do what we expect, we are liable to become grieved because God "let us down."

For instance, the Bible emphasizes that God is merciful and full of grace. We should be thankful that He is! But we should not allow that to overshadow the fact that He is also just. If we do, His mercy can become a justification for failure to overcome besetting sins. Neither God's mercy nor justice can be separated from all that He is. Both are harmoniously applied to each situation and person He judges.

The same can be said of His compassion. Some see God as so compassionate that He disregards the causes of horrible problems and circumstances in a person's life. If God acted in this manner, flaws with painful results would go uncorrected, and the individual would fail to grow in Christ's image and perhaps fail to enter His Kingdom!

Still others construe God's sovereignty so that it seriously diminishes His goodness, portraying Him as rigid and inflexible. This person lives a guilt-ridden, fearful, and discouraged life, thinking that he or she will never please Him.

God Is Love

Probably the most familiar of God's attributes is found in John's statement in I John 4:8: "God is love." Here, John states a fact, not a definition, of God's essential nature. If he had declared that love is what God is, we would be forced to conclude that God is what love is. Literally, if God is love, then literally, love is God, obliging us to worship love as the only true God. This would mean God and love are identical.

We can be thankful that the Bible reveals God as a multidimensional Personality. If we eliminate the idea of God's complex Personality, denying outright all His attributes save one, the remaining attribute becomes God, a very subtle form of idolatry. This is not the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God's wholeness is a critical subject because some have become enslaved to words. Instead, we must give greater weight to meanings. Among other things, the Bible speaks of God as love and light, and that Christ is "the way, the truth and the life." We understand the words in the same sense as when we say of an individual, "He is kindness itself." Of course, we do not suggest that kindness and the man are identical, and no one misunderstands our intention.

The words "God is love" mean that love is an essential attribute of God. Love is something true of God, but it is not all of God. He has many other attributes. He is self-existent, eternal, holy, merciful, full of grace, immutable, just, omnipotent, omniscient, and many more things. He is the most complex Personality in the universe!

Because God is immutable, He always acts as God, and because He is a whole and perfect Personality, He never suspends one of His attributes to exercise another. God never acts out of caprice, whimsy, irritation, or resentment. He always acts in light of all the facts. David declares, "The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether" (Psalm 19:9).

Psalm 105:5 and 7 say:

Remember His marvelous works which He has done, His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth. . . . He is the LORD our God; His judgments are in all the earth.

The beauty, harmony, balance, and providence evident throughout the earth are witnesses of the wisdom, unity, harmony, and yes, the love in which He always acts.

Knowing God and Christ

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God asserts:

Thus says the LORD, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches: but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD . . .." (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

How important is it to know God? "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (John 17:3). As used here, eternal life is knowing God! He implies an intimate relationship with God that matures over a lifetime. Each party knows each other well, as familiarly as marriage partners. Thus Hosea observes, "Then shall we know, if we follow on [in the path of obedience] to know the LORD" (Hosea 6:3, KJV).

We admire good qualities in others, wishing we had them. But, at the same time, we realize that these people with such good qualities lack other necessary ones. Our God, though, has every good quality to the ultimate degree, and every attribute works in perfect and faithful harmony.

Studying God in His wholeness should teach us humility, caution in speech and action, and a deep reverence for Him. Too often, God's superiority overwhelms us when we compare it to our own lowly state. Though we are imperfect and limited in this life, we should not undervalue our current level of growth. We should not allow God's incomparable perfection to derail our progress in that direction, however slow and incremental it may be. Growth in godly character and personality is our calling—we are to be like Him (Matthew 5:48; see I John 3:2)!

Human life is a beginning: God made us in His image and is transforming us into the image of His Son. This process requires our cooperation in striving to "put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him" (Colossians 3:10). This is His will. So, in bringing us to His perfection, He reveals His entire nature so we can know it and allow Him to reproduce it in us.