What is God like?

There is no description which fully explains what God is like. However, the Bible gives us glimpses of Him and tells us about some of His characteristics. For example, His love, compassion, power and creativity. God is holy, perfect and blameless. But there are elements of God that we cannot grasp because they are simply beyond our comprehension. God exists beyond our understanding of time and space. The universe exists because He made it happen. He is self-sufficient and self-sustaining. He does not need us. And yet Christians believe that we can know this God personally, even intimately, and that this is what He wants too.

Triune God

Christianity teaches that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons (the Trinity) who are in perfect unity and relationship with one another: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Son became man as Jesus Christ, who lived in the Middle East in the first century. In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of the intimacy and unity He shares with His Father: “I and the Father are one,” and “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) record what He said and did, based on eyewitness testimony. In Jesus we see God’s compassion and love, His desire for justice, His anger at hypocrisy and evil, and His self-giving love in laying down His life though He was innocent. He truly rose from the dead and reigns as Lord. During His earthly life, Jesus was truly human and truly God. One Person in two natures, without confusion and without division.

The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. Fully God and personal, not an impersonal force. Though unseen, He makes God’s presence known. The Spirit dwells within believers, applying the work of Christ to their lives: He convicts of sin, comforts in weakness, guides into truth, produces Christlike character, and empowers for holy living and witness. He gives spiritual gifts to build up the church and advances God’s mission in the world. In all this, the Spirit glorifies Jesus and brings believers into a living communion with the Father through the Son.

The Creator

God is the creator of the universe and all that it contains. Despite being distinct from His creation, God actively sustains and governs it and He desires a personal relationship with humanity. Genesis, says he made us ‘in His image’. He has given us the capacity to be immensely creative and to love unconditionally; we too have the capacity for moral choice and the ability to experience love, joy, and purpose, which sets us apart from other living creatures.

God did not just create the universe and walk away. He remains intimately involved in it. He cares about people. Genesis (the first book of the Bible) tells us that even when humanity’s relationship with God went sour in the garden of Eden, he promised a Redeemer (which hints at the coming of Jesus Christ to restore that relationship).

God’s Character

To grasp the nature of God, we must examine His attributes, which can be classified into two categories: communicable (those we can understand and reflect) and incommunicable (those above human experience) attributes.

Communicable Attributes:

• Love: God is the embodiment of love, and His love extends to all of creation.
• Wisdom: God possesses infinite wisdom, comprehending all things perfectly.
• Justice: God is perfectly just, ensuring that every action has appropriate consequences.
• Mercy: God is merciful, showing compassion and forgiveness to those who seek Him.
• Holiness: God is completely holy, separate from all moral evil and fully pure.

Incommunicable Attributes:

• Eternity: God has no beginning or end, existing outside the constraints of time.
• Omnipotence: God is all-powerful, capable of accomplishing anything within His nature.
• Omniscience: God is all-knowing, having complete knowledge of the past, present, and future.
• Immutability: God is unchanging, remaining consistent throughout eternity.
• Omnipresence: God is present everywhere, not limited by space or location.

God’s Holiness

The Bible declares that God is a holy and righteous Being. From Genesis to Revelation, God reveals Himself as a holy God. He is perfect in every detail. He is too holy to endure sinful living because He is a good, perfect God.

If we could ever get a vision of God’s majestic righteousness, what a tremendous difference it would make in the way our nations live. If we could once see the appalling difference that separates our unrighteousness from God’s perfect righteousness, it would change our way of living immediately. We all fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23).

The Scripture declares God to be Light in whom there is “no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). It is impossible to understand the Bible unless you have a clear understanding of the holiness of God. His holiness determines all His other attributes.

Because God is holy, a gap exists between God and us as sinners. The Scripture says, “your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2, NKJV). Not only is the sinner separated from God, but God is separated from the sinner. Because God is holy, He cannot look on sin with favour.

Before sin came into the world, humanity and God had fellowship with each other. Now that fellowship is broken, and it is impossible for a sinner to have fellowship with God unless it’s through Jesus Christ. People do not possess or acquire the sinlessness that is necessary to access God. Christ, however, came to make such access possible.

God’s Love

God is love. Many people have misunderstood that part of God’s nature. The fact that God is love does not mean that everything is sweet, beautiful and happy and that God’s love could not possibly allow punishment for sin.

God’s holiness demands that all sin be punished, but God’s love provided a plan of redemption and salvation for sinful people. It was the love of God that sent Jesus Christ to the cross: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

You may think, “Does God really love me?” No matter what sin you have committed, no matter how dirty, shameful or terrible it may be, God loves you. But it is up to you to believe in Jesus Christ, ask forgiveness for your sins and receive His gift of eternal life.

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God is the one, living and holy God—perfect in love, wisdom, justice, mercy and holiness. He is not a collection of parts but perfectly one, eternally existing as three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father wills and sends, the Son reveals and redeems, and the Spirit indwells and renews; together they act with one will and purpose.

This article has only sketched the surface. Exploring God’s nature through Scripture, prayer and the life of the church is a lifelong joy that shapes how we live and love.

Most of all: God loves His world, and He loves you. Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection (and by the Spirit’s work) He invites you into a reconciled, forgiven, living relationship with Himself now and forever.