Around the throne were elders clothed in white robes with crowns of gold. From the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Before it burned seven lamps of fire. Around it and in the midst of it were four living creatures who do not rest day or night, but cry continually:
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.”
That is where we should begin as we discuss the Doctrine of God. We do not begin with ourselves, our feelings, or what our culture says is acceptable. We begin where the Bible begins: with a God who is.
As Reformed Presbyterians, our second vow is:
“Do you believe in the one living and true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Scriptures?”
It asks us whether we believe in God as he has made himself known. That is an important distinction, because humanity exchanges the truth of God for “the lie.” Romans 1 says that men “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” That is not merely the sin of ancient pagans, it is the condition of fallen man. We want a god fashioned according to our own minds. We exchange revelation for imagination. We exchange the truth for the lie.
That lie often sounds sophisticated—we assume God has many names. One of the illustrations that is frequently used in defense of religious pluralism is the old story of the blind men and the elephant. One touches the trunk and says the elephant is like a snake. Another touches the leg and says it is like a tree. Another feels the side and says it is like a wall. Another touches the tail and says it is like a rope. Another touches the tusk and says it is like a spear. Each, we are told, has part of the truth, but none sees the whole.
John Hick helped popularize that idea in the modern West. The argument is that all religions are really grasping after the same reality from different angles. But the problem with that illustration is obvious. The pluralist is always the one who claims to see the whole elephant! Everyone else is blind, but somehow he alone sees clearly. Scripture does not tell us that all men are partly right about God. Scripture says that men exchange the truth of God for a lie. Left to themselves, they do not merely misunderstand pieces of God, they suppress the truth about him.
“What do various people think God is like?” is not our question. The real question is, “What has God said about himself?” That is why our vow says, “as revealed in the Scriptures.” The Bible is the foundation. The Bible is the authority. The Bible is where we go to know who God is.
And the first thing Scripture teaches us is that God is one, living, and true.
One, Living, and True
God is one. Deuteronomy 6:4 gives us the great confession of the Old Testament church: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” That is the confession of God’s people—the Shama. We are monotheists. There is one God. Not three gods. Not competing divine beings. Not a committee of deity. There is one God.
God is living. Our God is not dead. The gods of the nations are dead because they are idols. They are the work of men’s hands and the product of men’s minds. But the God of Scripture lives. He is not an abstract principle or a philosophical concept. He is the living God.
God is true. The gods of the nations are false. The psalmist tells us that idols have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear. In contrast, the true God hears, sees, speaks, knows, judges, and saves. He is the true God over against every lie that man invents.
Even that much is enough to offend modern man. To say that there is one God is offensive. To say that our God is living and the gods of the nations are dead is offensive. To say that our God is true and false worship is false indeed is offensive. Yet that is the Christian confession. The God of the Bible is not one option in a religious marketplace. He is the one living and true God.
The Character of God
Once we ask who this God is, we begin to think about his character. If someone asked you what a friend of yours is like, you would not only describe his appearance. You would describe his character. You would tell what sort of man he is. So it is with God. When we ask who God is, we are asking what God is like.
Traditionally, the attributes or character of God are divided into incommunicable and communicable. Incommunicable attributes are those that belong to God alone in a way creatures do not share. Communicable attributes are those that are reflected in us in some measure, though never in the fullness or perfection that belongs to God.
God is self-existent. He has life in himself. He depends on no one and nothing. He is not caused, sustained, completed, or improved by anything outside himself. This is why, when Moses asked God what name he should give, God said, “I AM THAT I AM.” God simply is.
God is immutable. He does not change in his being, character, purposes, or promises. He does not improve. He does not decline. He does not learn. He does not forget. “I am the LORD, I change not.” That means His faithfulness is not unstable. The God who promises is the God who remains.
God is infinite. He is without bounds. He is not confined by space or time. He is not limited in knowledge or power. Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him. There is nowhere we can flee from His presence.
God is simple. That does not mean shallow or simplistic. It means that he is not made up of parts. God is not part love and part holiness, as if one attribute could be weighed against another. He is not divided. He is fully and perfectly what He is. His love is holy love. His justice is perfect justice. His goodness is not in competition with His sovereignty. He is without passions and without parts, according to our Standards.
Then there are the communicable attributes.
God is knowing. He knows himself perfectly, and he knows all things actual and possible. He never learns because he never lacks knowledge. Nothing is hidden from him.
God is wise. He orders all things according to the highest and best end, which is his own glory. Wisdom is knowledge rightly applied, and God is perfectly wise in all his works.
God is good. He is good in himself, and He is good in all that he does. His goodness overflows in kindness, mercy, patience, and benevolence. “Thou art good, and doest good.”
God is love. Of course, we must understand that biblically. God’s love is not sentimental weakness or emotional instability. It is not the setting aside of righteousness or justice. God’s love is holy love, sovereign love, covenant love. It is seen most clearly in the righteous work of Christ.
God is holy. God is pure and exalted. He is separate from all sin and glorious above all creation. And the more clearly we see his holiness, the more clearly we see our own sin and our need for grace.
God is righteous. He always does what is right. His law is righteous because it reflects his own character. His judgments are righteous because he Himself is righteous.
God is truth. He cannot lie. He cannot deceive. He is faithful in all he says and does. His Word is true because he is true.
God is sovereign. He rules over all things according to his holy will and for his own glory. He does whatever he pleases, and none can stay his hand. Yet his sovereignty is never detached from his wisdom, goodness, holiness, or justice. God is never sovereign in a way that contradicts who he is.
These truths matter because we are always tempted to create a god according to our own preferences, grasping at our understanding of the elephant. We want a god that is loving but not holy, sovereign but not just, merciful but not true. But the God of the Bible is not the creation of our imagination. We must reject “the lie.” He is who he is. And if we are going to believe in him, we must believe in him as he has revealed Himself.
That is one reason the Westminster Confession chapter 2 is so helpful in considering the character of God. It gives us language drawn from Scripture that helps us meditate on the greatness of God: “one only living and true God, infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth.”
That language is not meant to replace Scripture, but to drive us back into Scripture with better eyes and clearer categories.
The Holy Trinity
But God has not only revealed his character in the Bible, he has revealed that he is triune. We can understand something of love, wisdom, and goodness because there are creaturely reflections of those things in our experience. But the Trinity is a mystery beyond anything in creation. Still, it is not a mystery because the Bible is silent. It is a mystery because the Bible reveals something about God that is true, glorious, and beyond our full comprehension.
The word Trinity is not found in the Bible, but that is no argument against the doctrine. The word Bible is not in the Bible either! We use words to summarize what Scripture teaches. The question is not whether the moniker appears, but whether the truth is there. And the truth is there in a number of ways.
First, there are places where God speaks of Himself in the plural. “Let us make man in our image.” “Behold, the man is become as one of us.” “Let us go down.” Those are not casual remarks. They tell us something about God.
Do you believe in the one living and true God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Scriptures?”
Second, there are places where God and God, or Lord and Lord, are distinguished. Psalm 2, Psalm 45, Hosea 1, Psalm 110, and the New Testament’s use of those passages all show us personal distinction within the Godhead.
Third, there are places where the three persons are expressly mentioned together and distinguished. We see that in the baptismal formula: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” We see it in the apostolic benediction: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.” We see it in the coming of Christ, in his baptism, in his teaching, and throughout the New Testament.
So the church did not invent the Trinity. The church confessed what the Bible teaches. There are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. These three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory, though distinguished by their personal properties.
The Father begets. The Son is begotten. The Spirit proceeds. These are the personal properties that distinguish the persons without dividing the essence.
The Father is God.
The Son is God.
The Spirit is God.
Yet there are not three gods, but one God.
And this is not a contradiction. It would be a contradiction to say that God is one person and three persons in the same respect, or one God and three gods in the same respect. But that is not what Christians say. We say that God is one in essence and three in persons. That is mysterious, yes. But it is not irrational. It is not nonsense. It is simply beyond the full reach of finite minds.
The Language of the Trinity
Historically, the church has used words like person, substance, and essence to help explain what the Bible teaches in regard to the Trinity. We believe there are three persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When we say persons, we do not mean three gods, and we do not mean three parts that make up God. We mean that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. They are truly distinguished from one another. At the same time, they are one in substance and essence. Those words, substance and essence, are getting at the same basic truth: the one being or nature of God. God’s is-ness. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, not as three separate beings, but as the one true and eternal God.
That is why this language matters so much. If we lose the language, we start to lose the doctrine. The persons are distinguished, but not divided. The essence is one, not multiplied. There are not degrees of deity in the Trinity, as if the Father were more God than the Son, or the Son more God than the Spirit. No, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same in substance, equal in power and glory, though distinguished by their personal properties. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That is the historic language of the church because it is the careful language that guards the truth of Scripture.
Conclusion
The Christian should expect that God is beyond our minds. If God were small enough for us to fully comprehend, He would not be God. The problem is not that the Trinity is too high for us. The wonder is that God has revealed even this much. Joel Beeke, in his Systematic Theology, says:
“In response, we say that our lack of comprehension is no argument against the doctrine. We should expect that our knowledge of God will always fall short of who he is. He is the infinite Lord. We are finite creatures. Recognizing that the Trinity is a mystery produces the practical fruit of humility. The only way to know God is to humble ourselves and let his Word teach us what is true.” Systematic Theology, 175.
Calvin was right to say that if we think of God without thinking of Father, Son, and Spirit, we are left with only a bare and empty name of God floating in our brains. He said, ”While he declares himself to be but One, he proposes himself to be distinctly considered in Three Persons, without apprehending which, we have only a bare empty name of God floating in our brains, without any idea of the true God.” Institutes, 1.13.2.
The God of the Bible is triune. The Christian faith is Trinitarian at its root.
And this is not given merely for theological discussion—it is given to lead us to worship. The living creatures of Revelation 4 do not merely define God, they adore Him.
They cry out, “Holy, holy, holy.”
That is where the doctrine of God should lead us: humility, reverence, obedience. It should lead us to praise.
When we confess, “I believe in the one living and true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Scriptures,” we are confessing the God who is. The God who speaks. The God who sees. The God who hears. The God who lives. The God who is holy. The God who is true. The God who is triune.
And that is the God we want to know. Not the god of our culture. Not the god of imagination. Not the god of pluralism. Not the god that man invents when he exchanges the truth for a lie. We want the real God—the one living and true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Scriptures.
Do you believe in the one living and true God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the Scriptures?