God tells us He is the Great I Am. “I am God Almighty.” “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” “I am who I am.” “I am the Lord.” All of these quotes are from Genesis and Exodus. God is eternal. With God, there is no time. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8) While God tells us much more than this, what can we say of these first few quotes?
God created all of the world, the heavens and the earth, the universe, the stars, the lands and the oceans, the plants and the animals, and people. Man, we can then say, is a creature. What is the relationship between creator and creature? Man can create many things from many materials. All things that we create, we have the power to destroy. No man-made thing has dominion over man. Such is the relationship of creator to creature.
Therefore, what God creates, He can wipe away from existence with the shrug of a shoulder, or the blink of an eye. What is more, God creates ex nihilo, from nothing. Everything that man can make, man must start from some raw material. Only God can make something from where just before there was nothing. This is the God moment of creation, to create something from nothing. All philosophy and science must eventually address this one issue. It is the moment of existence that cannot be explained by reason, philosophy or science.
But we do not need to remain in the dark about this event. God has revealed much to us through His Word. Is it reasonable for us to expect to understand creation? Are the motives of God in creation revealed? Are we to be given the knowledge of ex nihilo creation? Certainly, it can be argued that these questions and many others remain hidden. God does not reveal the nuts and bolts of creation, nor does He reveal his motives. What does God reveal?
God reveals that He expects worship and obedience. That’s not asking much for One who created everything. Fear and awe might be expected of One with such omnipotent power and omniscient knowledge. Certainly, we may expect that this is a posture that should be assumed in approaching God, dare we ever deem it necessary to approach God. Clearly, this is the sort of relationship that existed between God and Israel.
In creation, there are what theologians call eternal covenants, edicts or decrees. These are not actually documented in the revealed Word of God, but covenants that can be inferred by logic and understanding of Scripture. For example, what is the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit? While we have revelation about these relationships, the actual nuts and bolts of these interactions remain unknown to us. John 1 tells us that Jesus was with God before time and that He was involved in creation as its instrument. This is a controversial position, despite its clear presentation in John 1. The Arian heresy, the first great heresy that required resolution, remains with us to this very day. Ask a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon about John 1 and you will get either a vastly different Bible version or a wholly different Holy Book that enables them to deny this basic Christian premise. So, we can say that there were covenants or formal relationships between the persons of the Trinity before time, eternal covenants.
In creation, we have eternal decrees implied as well. These eternal decrees will form the basis of the next post in this series. These decrees are the basis of Truth that we receive through divine revelation. These decrees order all of creation and therefore our relationship with God. We cannot understand all that God has revealed about Himself without some manner of addressing these eternal decrees.
Therefore, Who is God? God is the great I AM. God is the creator. God is capable of erasing that which He created. God expects worship and obedience. God is Good. God is Just. This opens up two more huge kettles of fish that we will also address in the future. If God is good, how did evil enter the world? If God is Just, how can He allow injustice to occur in His creation? The answers to these questions will reveal more about God.
The purpose of this post was to raise an important question: Who is God? Without understanding all that we can know that God has revealed to us about Himself, it is impossible to understand how we should be expected to live, to worship, to know and to understand God. We all want to have a relationship with God, and yet we do not take the time to know who God is. Let us endeavor then to understand the nature and Truth that God has revealed about Himself through Scripture.
Who is God?
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