PCEA

God is a Person

We might think that since God is a Spirit, He is not really a Person. But the Bible teaches us that not only is He a Person, but that He is the Supreme Person, the perfect standard of personality.

Let us try to understand what that means. Man is a Person. This is what distinguishes him from the lower creation. His personality unifies all his faculties — his thinking and feeling and willing — so that he can act responsibly and intelligently. His person is the whole of him.

Resemblance

God, who made man in His own image and after His likeness, is therefore a Person, though on a divine level. In spite of this enormous distinction, there must be some resemblance between personality in man and personality in God. For one thing, it means that God has character, and that He has, therefore, personal characteristics, qualities that belong to Him as a Person. These we call His attributes. Since God is divine, and man is human, His attributes are on a divine level. But they bear some resemblance to the qualities of a man’s character. This is the argument employed by Christ: “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father … how much more shall your Heavenly Father give you” (Luke 11:11-13).

We know, for example, that God has a moral character, and He has, therefore, qualities that belong to the moral character of His creatures. To put it very simply, we can say that God has mind, and heart, and will, though on a much higher level than man. But they have similar functions, though on the “how much more” principle. With our minds we think, and God is Supreme Mind. The infinite intelligence of God is stamped on all His works. Though God does not need the testimony of man, Einstein’s definition of his religion is interesting: “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior Spirit who reveals Himself in the slightest details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning Power, which is revealed in the comprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

But God has heart as well as mind, though Einstein’s knowledge of God did not extend that far. He is Infinite Love, and His love, like all love, finds expression. We know from our Bible that God’s love found its utmost expression in giving His Son to redeem perishing men.

And since God has moral character He has will. He is Supreme Will. The will of God is absolutely free and is the moving power in the whole universe.

Contrast

On the other hand, since God is God and not man, there are attributes of character that belong exclusively to God both in their nature and manner of operation. They are qualities which He does not share with any of His moral creatures, and they exist in Him in a degree that is utterly beyond our comprehension. We speak of man’s power, but it bears no analogy to the infinite power of God. He is the Almighty. Man’s power is largely the intelligent use of power that is already existing, such as wind, water, steam, electricity. But God’s power is creative and not dependent on existing material, and He would not be God without it. Then again, man’s presence is largely localised and he cannot be in two places in person at the same time. But God has no such limitations. He makes His presence felt everywhere. He is the Omnipresent God. Read again Psalm 139 and you will see not only that God is everywhere, but that He is Himself The Everywhere.

This is true also of knowledge. Man has to acquire the knowledge he has, and however much he learns there are still big gaps in his knowledge, But God does not need to learn. Knowledge belongs to His nature as God, and it extends to all things and to all categories, to future as well as to past. This is the Omniscience of God.

Holiness

There is yet another attribute of God’s character which we have not mentioned: it is His holiness. It would seem to be, not so much an attribute, as the outshining of all that God is, so that we can speak of His holy love, His holy justice, His holy wisdom. The holiness of God puts right and wrong on eternal foundations. It is the Great White Throne against which moral character will be judged at the last.

Our conclusion must be that without personality in God there could be no religion. An abstract ideal, however beautiful, could not be the basis of a religion that would command the entire commitment of rational beings. The worship of a Personal God means that we are entering into personal relationship with Him, and that we can respond to His fellowship in reverence, love, and obedience.