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There is a Basic Question of Vital Importance that Everyone Eventually Considers
The very fact that this question is so instinctive to our fundamental process of reasoning is very significant. It is difficult to explain apart from a God-consciousness, and the fact that the physical evidence surrounding us demands the existence of a being who is infinitely superior to ourselves. It is instinctive to the most basic level of reason that this world could not possibly have come into existence by itself. Apart from divine intervention, something- coming from nothing, is an absurd hypothesis that defies everything we know about the physical laws of cause and effect. With the inconceivable vastness of the universe, the diverse and ordered complexity of the physical world, and the inexplicable power that holds it all together - there can be no doubt that there is a God. There is no logical explanation for all that exists apart from Divine and deliberate exertion - the universe didn't just "happen" on its own, and it does not remain in its precise and fragile balance on its own. Creation bears an exuberant and continuing witness of the majesty of our Creator. Our own bodies provide further evidence of a Creator who is infinitely more intelligent than anything we can conceive of. The interdependent and extremely complex function of every part of the human body defies any contorted explanation of origins apart from Divine design. The fact that there is a creator is so obvious, it requires a determined antagonism to argue against it. The Psalmist states the universally obvious:
God is obviously real. God is the most important reality known to all of mankind. But there is a more specific question that naturally follows from this basic and obvious reality:
Who is God? There are those who acknowledge that there must be a God, but who insist that He is not knowable, at least not with any credible degree of certainty. Many people have adopted a view of God to their own liking. There are so many different views of God, that it can be very difficult to know if any view is worth listening to. It has become popular to accept any and all of these concepts as valid- as long as their adherents are sincere. The problem is, there are glaring inconsistencies and outright contradictions in these many different views of God. It is possible that all the views of God are wrong - but all of them cannot be right. The obvious contradictions make that impossible. In spite of philosophical delusions and distortions, God is who He is. God is not a vague or nebulous concept subject to the imaginative and evolving ruminations of the human mind. God is knowable. We can know who God is by paying attention to the specific ways He has revealed Himself to us. God Has Revealed Himself. There are many different and distinct ways that God has revealed Himself to us, so that we might know Who He is, and what He is like. Each of them offer obvious and reliable evidence of who God is. Together they provide a consistent and trustworthy understanding of who God is - apart from our own fickle feelings and self - serving speculation. The first way God has revealed Himself is through creation itself. God is the Creator of everything. In creation God has - and is - revealing His supreme glory.
As Creator, God is Lord over all the heavens and the earth.
Through the precise and profitable order of creation - in spite of the inconceivable complexity and variables - God is revealing His unsearchable greatness, and His incomparable importance.
In the earth itself God is revealing His infinite wisdom, eternal power, and divine nature.
From creation itself we are able to gain some very important insight in understanding who God is. This area of divine revelation is so obvious and crucial, that each and every one of us will be held accountable for how we have responded to it. God is our Creator, and this is the place to begin in understanding who God is. From this fundamental revelation of who God is, we need to proceed to what He has revealed of His character if we are going to come to a reliable and profitable knowledge of who God is. A second way God reveals Himself to us is through the witness of conscience. Through the witness of our own conscience, God reveals His moral character to us. Each of us has been given an instinctive sense of the difference between right and wrong - that is woven into the very fabric of our beings by God Himself. Our conscience bears witness, as our thoughts alternately accuse or defend our actions. This is how we are able to instinctively know the basic difference between right and wrong, even if we have never been given formal instruction regarding specific actions (Romans 2: 14-15). In this way God reveals to us the perfection of His moral character. God is righteous and just.
God is intimately aware of all that happens - even our thoughts and motives. He is intensely concerned about our doing what is right, to the point of making us instinctively cringe at doing what our conscience identifies as being wrong. This can be observed from the earliest stages of human development, even before the opportunity to become aware of parental or societal expectations. Through this personal moral awareness God reveals to each of us that His righteousness overrides the fickle and ever - changing assumptions of mankind. Through our conscience God grants to everyone an awareness of the unchanging reality that His justice will prevail in the end. But our conscience can be a very fragile thing. It is quite possible for us to ignore and abuse our conscience to the point where it is no longer reliable. People are prone to follow after their self-gratifying desires no matter how contrary they may be to the witness of conscience. Society may present something that is obviously contrary to our basic sense of what is right - and do so with such forcefulness and persistence as to blunt the natural pangs of conscience. Our conscience is also very limited - it is not the means of our knowing all that we need to know about God. Our conscience has been designed by God to remind us that there will be a day of reckoning for all that we have done. This can be a very serious hindrance to the pleasure we try to derive from doing what is contrary to God's character.
Conscience is one of the things that separates us from the animals. There is no legitimate explanation for this unique instinct in human beings apart from the fact that God Himself made us in His own image. In this way God reveals His love for what is right.
A third way God reveals Himself to us is through His written word. God has provided a written revelation of Himself to us that is utterly unique from all other writings - it is commonly referred to as the Bible. In it God reveals Himself to be holy. The Bible contains two main divisions. The first is the Old Testament, and the second is the New Testament. These two testaments were written by approximately 40 different writers, over a period of about 1,500 years. The Bible declares that each of these human writers were inspired directly from God, and that their original writings are therefore without error, possess Divine authority, and are of continuing relevance. (I Timothy 3:16-17, II Peter 1:20-21) This is confirmed in many ways. For one thing, the manuscript evidence for the Bible's authenticity far exceeds that of any other ancient writings known to men - even though they span so great a period of time, and so diverse a group of writers. There is also the undeniable evidence of their prophetic accuracy - as so many of the things prophesied in the Bible have already come to pass, even to the smallest details. Even though the books of the Bible come from 40 different writers over a period of 1,500 years, they are perfectly consistent in their description of God. God is holy - He is incorruptibly pure and inconceivably sacred (exalted) - to the point of being incomprehensible and inaccessible by mere mortals:
In the Scriptures God reveals Himself to us from many different perspectives. In revealing Himself to us, God exposes universal human depravity.
In the Bible God describes the human condition in such a way as to explain the things we observe in ourselves, and in everyone else around us. The description we are given of the human condition in the Bible is the only explanation that is consistent with all of human experience. The Bible presents the only reliable explanation of the actual human condition. If the God of the Bible is the Creator - then He ought to know us well. In reading through the Old Testament Scriptures it becomes obvious that this is the One who made us - He most certainly knows us very well. God knows exactly what the fundamental problem of mankind is. Every other writing that claims to be of divine origin or inspiration fails to see every one of us in a hopeless and helpless plight before God. They portray people as having some redemptive potential - or at least some faint glimmer of goodness in themselves. These writings cannot see us as we really are, because they are only of human origin. We cannot possibly see ourselves the way God sees us. Nothing can be more relevant and reliable than God's perspective. It is extremely important for us to see who God is in relation to us.
A fourth way God has revealed Himself to us is through His Own Son.
In all of Divine revelation to mankind - Jesus of Nazareth is the apex. This is because Jesus is, always was, and always will be - fully Divine. But at the perfect point in time He also became fully human.
In the Bible we learn that God is holy, and in Jesus Christ we realize that God is full of grace and truth.
In becoming a man - the only one who has lived a sinless life - Jesus willingly set aside the fullness of His divine glory for the time He lived on this earth. But His divine essence was - and still is - shining forth in the perfections of His character.
Jesus Himself declared this same reality. When one of His disciples asked Jesus to show them the heavenly Father, Jesus made this profound declaration:
The apostle Paul, by inspiration of the Spirit of God, makes an equally profound declaration:
God has revealed much of Himself through the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But He has also revealed much through His death. When Jesus suffered and died on a Roman cross, God demonstrated with graphic intensity some of the most important aspects of His character. On that day God exposed to the world the very essence of His nature in an event that would become the defining moment for all of time and eternity.
In Christ's crucifixion God first of all demonstrated His righteousness and justice. Because of who God is, He cannot grant saving grace to those for whom His justice has not been fully satisfied. God's righteousness demands that the just consequences for sin will be imposed in the end. There are temporal consequences of sin that can often be seen in this world - though we have difficulty in accepting the Divine justice that demands such terrible suffering. But the far more serious consequences are waiting for unrepentant sinners after this life is over. When Jesus was put to death, He was put to death in our place - on account of our sin. In that awful suffering, Jesus bore our sins in His own body. In His suffering and death God demonstrated His righteousness.
But God demonstrated more than His righteousness in the crucifixion of His beloved Son. He also demonstrated His love.
There is indeed a God. He is our Creator. He is the Lord of all the heavens and the earth. He is the One who gives and sustains all life. He is also the One who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up to suffer and die in our place, so that we might be justly justified and reconciled to our heavenly Father.
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"If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
John 8:31-32
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A Ministry of Free Grace Church
1115 Glenn St. Washington, IL 61571 |