TRUMP & THE TRINITY

 

TRUMP & THE TRINITY

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In some ways the USA is like a great train engine. The Western nations, indeed, the world’s nations, are like the carriages the American motive power pulls. That engine had been sidetracked, nay, it had been derailed for four years with the Biden presidency. However, with the re-election of Donald J Trump, the engine is back on track and now the carriages are beginning to pull in behind.

God has been kind. Wokeism has been defeated by the ballot box. We can now talk freely once again. We can agree to disagree with the Left and their Political Correctness without them shouting us down with all their Saul Alinsky demonising tactics. They may continue to call us racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic names, but, because they have been sprung, their Neo-Marxist catcalling now falls on deaf ears. The world has awakened to them and their destructive strategies. The rebuilding has begun.

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Revival is no longer the domain of the giant marquees along the sawdust trails in America.  It is now in the universities and halls of government. The Leftist Bishop of the Washington DC Episcopalian Church, by lecturing President Trump and the rest of the congregation on the very things that had just decisively been defeated in the election, showed to the whole world that Wokeism was as much in the Church as in the State. Now the cleanup begins. Gospel expansion continues. The doors and tent flaps of the Revival marquees have been removed. “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited” (Isa. 54:2-3).

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The Serpent’s head was crushed by the Seed of the woman at Calvary. The war against evil has been won by Christ and the weapon of His cross. America and the West had forgotten this. The purveyors of Wokeism are like those jungle fighters of WWII that didn’t know the war was over. Peace has broken out once again. The Prince of Peace has won the day. Lay down your arms and bow the knee to the Saviour of sinners, swear allegiance to Him and go and sin no more.

Trump and the Trinity means that he and the Republican Party, at the federal level, have won back the State. The State is not the Nation but is only one important aspect thereof.

The following is excerpted from a book which I coauthored with D Rudi Schwartz called The Kingdom: Every Square Inch. If there are two main Bible teachings that many Christians don’t seem to know much about, they are Politics and the Trinity. Many Christians detach Politics from Christianity and, along with this, they also detach Western culture and civilization from the Trinity. The error here is in the misunderstanding and misapplication of the separation of Church and State, which in turn was left wide-open to become the Leftist mantra of the separation of God and State. See where Trump and the Trinity come in in the following:   

 

Christians ought to seek to advance the Kingdom of Christ only in accordance with God’s design (Gen. 1:26-28; 9:9:1-7; Exod. 20:1-17; Rom. 13:1-7). When it comes to nations, State Constitutions must be shaped by natural law, but need to be illuminated by the light of Scripture, especially the Ten Commandments and their ‘general equity’ applications as exemplified throughout the whole of God’s Word.

‘Sphere sovereignty’ or, as it is sometimes known by its apt description, ‘differentiated responsibility’, is a reflection of the Trinity seen in creation in the light of Scripture. Thus, the Scriptures must be studied if we are to arrive at a proper understanding of what a nation is, and how God would have that nation function.

If the doctrine of the ontological Trinity were expressed in human terms as a nation, then Family, Church, and State would interact and interpenetrate each other while each would remain sovereign in its own sphere of function. In other words, as are members of the Family, so are members of the Church and members of the State; all are members of the one nation. Like each Person in the Trinity being distinct from the Others yet all are one, it is the same for the three main pillars of the nation…

Redemption has to do with what Christ has redeemed, as in purchased, bought back. To leave the State operating according to natural law in terms of common grace, when Christ has commissioned Christians to teach the nations to obey His law, is to be disobedient, even cruel. For example, State-sanctioned abortion on demand is infanticide. What Christian in their right mind would approve of this? It boggles the mind to think that there are Christians who believe that Christ has left places in nations where Satan and those he has blinded can hide. No! Every square inch belongs to the King.     

The State owns the sword of justice and, as such, is Christ’s minister for justice. It exists to promote good and punish evil, therefore, it is a religious entity. It reflects aspects of Adam’s role in the garden, i.e., “to cultivate and to keep it.” In this way the State exemplifies the biblical concept that culture is religion externalised. Even though it wields the instrument of death, the State is to cultivate life in its nation. Thus, why the State needs also the light of Scripture. The punishment must fit the crime and not go beyond it. An “eye for eye” means equitable compensation for the victim, and not a life for an eye (Exod. 21:24; Lev. 24:17-22; see also where Jesus corrects the greedy abuse of the law of compensation, Mat. 5:38-42).

The Church owns the sword of the Spirit, yes, with the keys of the Kingdom. Just as a screwdriver or other such implement can be used to prise the lid off a paint can, so the sword of the Spirit can and must be used to lift the lid off the State’s suppression of the truth (Rom. 1:18) so that even the State is without excuse for ignoring God. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20 ESV)…

It needs to be noted, a) that hints of the ontological Trinity can be seen in natural law, glimpses of the Creator and Redeemer God which the unredeemed suppress in unrighteousness, and b) because Two Kingdom Theology eschews sphere sovereignty, wherever this aberrant form of (R2K) theology is to the fore, sooner or later the State will be seen pushing its foot in the door of the family home, and eventually marching in and trampling underfoot the God-given rights of Family. The Church, likewise, will be persecuted by unlawful State intrusion. The implementation of sphere sovereignty (by the Spirit with His Word changing hearts) will guard against this. Thus, and therefore, to advance the Kingdom, we are to take Christ’s gospel and law to the nations as per the King’s Great Commission.

The function of the State is to serve and protect the nation, i.e., its people and its borders. The State is its guardian. To withhold the fruits of Christ’s redemption from the State is akin to suppressing the real reason for its existence, and it puts that nation in jeopardy of God’s covenantal judgment upon disobedience. Like the Family and the Church, in any nation, the State exists to glorify God. We hear echoes of God’s covenant promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 in the following, “For the nation and kingdom which will not serve you shall perish, and those nations shall be utterly ruined” (Isa. 60:12; Zech. 14:17; Rev. 21:24). Here is one of those places that unites those purveyors of dualism such as Dispensationalism with its nation destroying separation of the people of Old Testament Israel with the New Testament Church, and Two Kingdom Theology with its sacred and secular division between Church and State. For the Dispensationalist, the Church is that spiritual entity that is going to be ‘raptured’ off the planet earth so that the Lord can once again get back to working with His so called ‘chosen people’ in the modern-day nation of Israel – as if the Church is not made up of His chosen people, both Jew and Gentile! (Gal. 3:26-29). Yes, Christians are Abraham’s offspring.

Dispensationalism has a faulty view of the Church, and Two Kingdom Theology has a faulty view of the State. However, they are united in their over spiritualising of the Church to the point that the blessings of God given to Abraham and his seed remain hidden from the nations, hidden behind the Church’s four walls. Here we see the difference between Church and Kingdom. Christ has one people, His Church. And He has one Kingdom, the good news and blessings of which are to be spread to every nation by the Church. Family, Church, and State are the three main pillars that support every nation. Get between or remove any one of these three pillars (through Rapture Theology or Two Kingdom Theology) and that nation is in grave danger of perishing. Two Kingdom Theology weakens the pillar of the State by withholding from it the spectacles of Scripture.

When we study the Mona Lisa, our eyes are always drawn to the centre of her face, her nose, with the intriguing smile underneath and above are those hypnotic eyes that follow you around the room. Natural grace, as it were, leaves you wondering if Da Vinci designed things that way. Particular grace, so to speak, explains the Fibonacci Sequence to you and how Da Vinci used this mathematical wonder of God’s creation, the “Golden Ratio”. From nautilus shells to violins to music to oil paintings, God receives His glory only when His designs in creation are utilised and He is acknowledged for them.

God has designed the State, in its own sphere of function and operation, to serve and protect the nation and every lawful sphere thereof that operates therein. To the glory of the Triune God.           

FOUNDATIONS OF COVENANT THEOLOGY (Review)

 Foundations of Covenant Theology: A Biblical-Theological Study of Genesis 1-3 is a pithy condensation of some of the basic points of Covenant Theology. It has a helpful glossary, and its twelve short and to-the-point chapters, as per Biblical Theology, logically progress through time, from the Triune God in the absolute beginning to the redeemed with Christ in Paradise.

Tipton’s slightly different slant is that Paradise is located (and seems forever to remain located!) in the highest heavens, a place, he believes, God created as His dwelling-place before He began His six days’ work of creating the heavens and the earth and all therein. Only on the seventh day God entered into His everlasting Sabbath Rest (in the highest heavens), where the redeemed join Him after death. I was left wondering if Lipton was suggesting that this is the final state as opposed to the intermediate state, as ordinarily taught in Covenant Theology. However, I am aware that a short book of less than 150 pages cannot cover everything. Therefore, this is an excellent primer, covering, as stated in its informative title, foundations of covenant theology, especially those found in Genesis 1-3.

THE ONE LIVING & TRUE GOD

 

THE ONE LIVING & TRUE GOD

Westminster Shorter Catechism 5

Quest. Are there more Gods than one?

Ans. There is but One only, the living and true God.

One God Only

It may seem strange to claim that there is only one God. However, people have been making gods since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden. The Greeks and the Romans had a Pantheon of gods. The Romans just gave new names to a lot of the old Greek gods. E.g., they renamed Neptune, their god of the sea, Poseidon. The Norse people, such as the Vikings, worshipped many gods.

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Some of the days of the week are named after some of the gods of the Teutons. Sunday is named after the sun, Monday, after the moon. Tuesday is named after Tiw, Wednesday after Woden, Thursday after Thor. Friday after Frigg or Fria, a Norse goddess of love. And Saturday was called Sater-daeg by the Anglo-Saxons, after the Roman god Saturn. And, we shouldn’t really wonder why the days of the week are named after Teutonic gods, since English is the most widely spoken of the Teutonic or Germanic languages.

Now, I mention all of this, to remind you that we, in Western society, are surrounded by reminders of the many, many gods of the pagans. It’s not just in the mystical Eastern religions such as Hinduism that many gods are found, but traces of many gods are right under our own noses.

But, regardless of the many, many gods of the pagans, the Bible reveals that there is but One God only. E.g., the Lord through His Prophet Isaiah says to His people in Isaiah 45:5, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God beside Me.” Then in verses 6 and 7 the LORD identifies Himself as the Creator, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things.” In verse 12 He says, “I have made the earth, and created man on it. It was I – My hands that stretched out the heavens, and all their host I have commanded.” The end of verse 14 says, “…There is no other God.” Then He says in verse 18, “For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD, and there is no other.” And finally in verse 22 the LORD says, “Look at Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”

So, even from this one chapter of Scripture, i.e., Isaiah 45, we see that there is only One God. And we see that this one God is no “local” or “localized deity.” This One God is stating that He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Therefore, what does this make your Neptunes and your Poseidons?  I mean, these pagan gods are supposed to rule the seas and such like! But this One God who reveals Himself in Scriptures claims to have made the seas. As His people said in Nehemiah. 6:6, “You alone are the LORD; You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things on it, the seas and all that is in them, and You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.”

So, one can only wonder why some folks allege that the Christian’s God is just one God among many. Right from the very outset of the Bible, right from the very first verse God demonstrates His uniqueness. For, it says in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So how can God possibly be only one god among many when He says Himself that there is no other god?

And how can He be one god among many when He alone is the Creator of all things. Therefore, even if there were such things as other gods, God would still be God. For these other gods would owe their very existence to the One living and true God. So, to claim that the God who has revealed Himself through the Scriptures is anything like the pagan deities is clearly blasphemous. It’s to break the first table of God’s Law, and the 1^st Commandment in particular.

God means it when He says to Mankind, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” (Exod. 20:3). He’s not just saying this to Christians. He’s not just saying, “Christians, have no other gods but Me. But as for the rest of you, you can have as many other gods as you like!” No, there is only One God, the source of all life, and He is the only true object of worship.

It’s as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, “…there is no other God but one. For even if there are so called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is only one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ…”

So, for Christians there is indeed only one living and true God. However, for the non-Christian, there are any number of ‘so-called gods’ as Paul calls them. These gods, so-called, do not exist, they are idols, i.e., false gods. They exist only in the mind of fallen man whose “…heart is a factory of idols”, says Calvin. However, we should note, just in passing, that Satan and his demons are behind many of these so-called gods. But just before we move on, we need to consider the oneness of God in and of Himself.

Now, I know I’m not alone here, but whenever I try to contemplate the Being and nature of God my head begins to hurt! But what else should you expect when you think about the Infinite, Eternal and Unchangeable One? But this shouldn't deter or stop us. We need to keep on striving to gain deeper knowledge of our God. For how else are we to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever if we don’t know much about Him?

Our forefathers referred to a piece of Scripture as the “Shema.” The Shema is the first word in a passage of Scripture found in Deuteronomy 6. “Shema” is the Hebrew word for “Hear!” The Shema begins in Deuteronomy 6:4: where the Lord says through His Prophet Moses, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!”

Literally it’s, “Hear Israel, Jehovah our Elohim, is one Jehovah.” “Elohim”, the Hebrew word translated “God” is a plural word, as you know. It’s not a singular word, nor is it a dual word as you find in the Hebrew language. Rather “Elohim” when it refers to God, is a plural word meaning at least three Persons who are that One God.

Yet, elohim is also the Hebrew word for “gods” plural. You’d see this if you were to look at, say, Psalm 136:2, e.g. There you’d read these words: “Oh, give thanks to the God of gods.” The God of gods is literally the Elohim of elohim. So, we need to hang on to what God is telling us. He is telling us, as we’ve seen, that He alone is God, i.e., Elohim. Yet God is, as we know from Scripture, a plurality of persons, triune, i.e., the Trinity. So, with all of this in mind, the Shema teaches us that, Jehovah, while being a plurality of persons, is at the same time only One Jehovah. (Jehovah or Yahweh are simply English pronunciations of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton YHWH). The Hebrew word ‘one’ in the Shema, ‘ehad’ speaks of the unity or oneness, or singleness, or uniqueness of God.

So we see in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, then, clear indication of the oneness and the manyness of God, or the unity and the diversity of God. Therefore, God is not one god among many. Rather He is the One and the Many, the Triune God. For God the LORD is the united One.

But the main emphasis of the Shema is the declaration that there is only one God. And we’re considering Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 5, which deals with the Oneness or Uniqueness of God. However, Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 6 deals with the doctrine of the Trinity. Therefore, we'll hold off till the next Q&A before we really study the Triuneness of God. But for now, we’ve seen then that there is One God only, and that this God is One.

One Giver of Life

Our Catechism says that He is the Living God. By Living God is meant that He alone is the one and only God who is alive. Our God is the one and only God there is in existence. All other gods are mere inventions of the fallen and fertile imaginations of men.

God, then is the one and only God living. And because He is the only God living, He is the only God able to give life and sustain and maintain it. That’s why Isaiah says, “O God of Israel, the Saviour” (Isa. 45:15b). That’s why God says in Isaiah 45:22, “Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”

The Living God gives life – He saves life from death. He alone is the Creator. And He alone is the Sustainer of His creation. He alone is its Saviour. Therefore, He is unique in that all things depend upon Him for their being and existence. It’s as the Apostle Paul said to the Athenians, “…In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28b). So, all creatures, including you and me, owe our existence to God. Therefore, He alone is God and worthy of our worship. For He alone is the life giver.

Some people claim that there would be no life on earth, were it not for the sun in the sky. If by this they mean that without the sun the plants wouldn’t grow and without this source of food we’d starve, then fair enough. We all heard about photosynthesis and chlorophyll and all of that at school. We heard how God has designed plants to convert carbon dioxide, etc, to carbohydrates, by use of sunlight.

Perhaps your school neglected its moral obligation to teach you about the Creator's sovereign control of it all? If this is the case, then you would have been left with the impression that the sun is god. For god is that to which all living things owe their existence. Therefore, if the sun fits the bill, then the sun must be god!

Sunday got its name from the pagan Romans. It was a holiday to them, it was called dies solis, meaning ‘sun’s day.’ The ancient Egyptians would worship the sun, or the sun-god Ra or Re. Ra was usually represented as the creator and controller of the universe. And what’s the difference between this and what the modern-day Naturalist teaches? Don’t both the ancient Egyptian and today’s Evolutionist teach that the sun is the source of all life? However, they both see the need to add water to their pantheon of gods. The Modern Naturalist doesn’t believe that life can exist without water. And the Ancient Egyptian placed much of his hope on the god of the River Nile. Mind you, the One Living and True God demonstrated to the Ancient Egyptians that all their gods were false gods. Jehovah Elohim proved to them that He is the God of gods – Elohim of elohim – by sending them the Ten Plagues, didn't He?

If you look into it, each of those plagues paralleled ten Ancient Egyptian gods. E.g., when God turned the Nile to blood, He demonstrated that their god of the Nile had no control over the River Nile. And in the final plague, the death of the firstborn, God demonstrated that Pharaoh himself is no god in that he couldn’t even preserve the life of his own son!

Yet the Ancient Egyptians worshipped their Pharaohs as gods! So, the Ancient Egyptians kept on ignoring the revelation of the only living and true God, given to them by God through Moses and Aaron, and they paid the price of their unbelief. And alas, it’s the same for the modern-day Darwinists, Naturalists, and Evolutionists. They insist on ignoring or attacking the revelation God has given them through the Scriptures. And they and their children and all those whom they teach continue to perish in their sins, as did their fellow unrepentant Ancient Egyptians.

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When you think about it, God also trumped Poseidon and Neptune when He drowned the whole Egyptian army in the Red Sea! But there remains hope in the One Living and True God for all those who will turn to Him for life. For He alone is the giver of life – He alone is Saviour.

Neither the sun, the moon, the stars, nor the water are the givers of life. Neither is the earth, the wind, or the fire the givers of life. And yet people in all times have looked upon these things as if they were gods. As Paul the Apostle says, “…[they] exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen” (Rom. 1:25; cf. Josh 34:2, 14-16).

Yes, we are to love and respect God’s creation. But we are not to worship it or any part or parts of it. We are to worship the One Living and True God alone.

One Object of Worship

Now, much of the “Greenie Movement” we see today is guilty of creature worship, which is to say that many of them are making gods out of the flora and fauna of the planet Earth. Indeed, many of them refer to Earth itself as ‘Gaia’.

Now, to be sure, not everything about the Greenie Movement is bad news. Christians should have a lot of time for people who care about and for God’s creation. However, we do part company when it comes to the question of ownership. Whose Earth is it? And who is the Creator and Sustainer of life on this planet? Well, it’s not Gaia, is it? To the Ancient Greeks and to many Greenies today, Gaia was and is the personification of what people refer to as “Mother Earth” and “Mother Nature”. Perhaps you think of these appellations are merely poetic? However, neither Earth nor Nature are our “Mother”. The Triune God alone is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:32).

Now then, modern Naturalism was the natural development of Deism. The Deistic view of God is that after He created the universe and set it everything in motion, He left His creation to evolve or develop on its own without His interaction or interference. The Deistic view of the earth is one that is detached from God. Hence the Deist started talking about nature apart from God. He would describe the mechanics of the earth, the seasons, the sun, rain, wind, the life and death of earthly creatures as “Mother Nature” caring for and nurturing her charge. “Mother Nature,” and “Mother Earth,” are personifications of the creation, especially the earth and the seen and usneen forces acting upon it.

The Modern Naturalist went the next step or even a few steps further than his father the Deist. Like the Deist the Naturalist doesn’t believe that God interacts with His creation. But more than that, He doesn't even acknowledge that God ever was the Creator! The Modern Naturalist believes only in blind chance, and blind forces, “the forces of nature”. Perhaps he is even loath to speak in terms of Mother Earth or Mother Nature lest he betray even a hint of the One Living and True God in his vocabulary.

The consistent Naturalist speaks only of Nature. To him Nature is cold and heartless. To him the universe is an environment of blind physical forces and genetic replication, without any rhyme or reason. There’s no such thing as absolute justice in the Naturalist’s universe. For he believes it has no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. He sees Creation – no he wouldn’t be caught dead calling it Creation – he believes that the universe is just a place of blind, pitiless indifference. The god of the Naturalist then, is simply Time and Chance. For he attributes being and existence to these, (hough he wouldn’t necessarily refer to “time and chance” as god).

The Naturalist and those like him are spoken of in Psalm 14, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one” (Psa. 14:1-3).

So, what do the Deists who believe in a god who is indifferent and uncaring toward his Creation, and their offspring, the Naturalists have in common? Well, they both believe that the universe and this earth is devoid of God.

And what do they have in common with those Greenies? Well, they all deny the existence of the One Living and True God. Therefore, they deny Him the worship He is due from them as creatures toward Him who is their Creator. And hasn’t God already demonstrated to those who worship Mother Earth that they are wrong? And hasn’t He demonstrated to those who deny that He acts upon, or interacts, or has ever interacted with His creation, that they are wrong? For didn’t God send a flood in Noah’s day upon every creature on earth with the breath of life in it – apart from those in the ark?

The One Living and True God drowned Mother Nature or Gaia, just as He did to the ancient Egyptian army under Pharaoh in the Red Sea. You bet that God interacts with His creation! And, as the Apostle says in Acts 17, “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).

Yes, it’s a good thing to love the earth and the flora and fauna on it. The Deists do; the Naturalists do; the Greenies do; and so do all consistent Christians. And doesn’t Scripture say, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16-17).

So, God then, loves His creation and He loves the creatures He has made. Otherwise, He wouldn’t have sent His Son to die in order to redeem it. But when it comes to every non-Christian, the words Jesus spoke to the woman at the well stand true, “You worship what you do not know … but the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:22-23).

Conclusion

We ought to thank God that He, by His grace, sought us to worship Him. For, were it not for His grace we too would be worshiping the non-gods of the non-Christians. We too would be worshiping the creation and not the Creator (Rom. 1:25).

So, pray for their conversion, pray that God would be merciful to them and grant them repentance. He was merciful to us! For, there is indeed coming a great Day of Judgment.

Listen to the words of His Prophet Jeremiah, “The LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth will tremble, and the nations will not abide His indignation. Thus you shall say to them: ‘The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth, and from under the heavens” (Jer. 10:10-11).

Pray therefore, that the people do not perish along with their gods. But rather that they repent and believe in the Gospel, and thus worship the One Living and True God.

WHAT IS GOD?

 

WHAT IS GOD?

Westminster Shorter Catechism 4

Quest. What is God?

Ans. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Introduction

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When my sister’s boy was only three, he was asking her what God looks like. She had been dropping him off at a local Church of Scotland Sunday School. I was pleased that my nephew wasn’t asking her if there was a god. He’d heard something about the living and true God and now he wanted to know what God looks like.

Well, what would you have told my wee three-and-a-half-year-old nephew? I quoted to my sister from the “Catechism for Young Children.” It asks the question my nephew was asking like this, Who is God? And answers, “God is a Spirit, and has not a body like men.” In the following we’re looking at the same question.

Westminster Shorter Catechism 4 begins the division of the Catechism that deals with What We Are To Believe concerning God. This runs all the way to Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 38, whereas WSC Q&As 39 to the end, i.e., 107, deal with What We Are To Do. So, here, we begin looking at what we are to believe concerning God, but in particular What God Is.

We see then that we’re dealing with something a wee bit deeper than the answer given in the Catechism for Young Children. However, Westminster Shorter Catechism 4 is not saying anything contrary to the Catechism for Young Children.

God is Spirit

              When that Catechism states: “God is a Spirit” it’s declaring that God has not a body like men. This is a direct quote from John 4:24. However, when you look at the original Koine Greek it doesn’t have the article. It simply says, “God is Spirit,” not “God is ‘A’ Spirit” as it says in the KJV. The NKJV has rectified this by leaving out the article in line with the original.

The reason I raise this is obvious. If you say that God is ‘A’ Spirit, are you not then opening the suggestion that He is just one of many spirits? To be sure, as we’ll see, there are many spirits. However, the Bible doesn’t teach that God is just one of a myriad of spirits. No, God is Spirit, is what the Bible teaches, which is to say that, though spirit-beings share a commonality with God on account of their “spiritness”, they are not God; for only God IS God.

God, then, is Spirit, but He is different to all other spirits in that He alone is God. The writer to the Hebrews describes God as “…the Father of spirits…” In other words, all other spirits have their beginning in Him. God is their Creator. Therefore, they are His creatures. Let's not lose sight of this Creator/creature important distinction.

Now then, sometimes when people talk about spirits they think of images like Casper the Friendly Ghost. They think of white bedsheets floating around saying, “boo!” But a spirit does not consist of any material substance, at least not as we understand it. In other words, a spirit doesn’t have a material body like yours and mine. Spirit is immaterial and is therefore also invisible to us. However, we would have to say that an ordinary spirit is somehow restricted by space and time.

We’re informed in the Book of Job that Satan was wandering to and fro on the earth, walking back and forth on it (Job 1:7). As you know, Satan is a spirit being, the head angel of all the fallen angels. Therefore, as a spirit he need not literally walk on the earth. But the point I make is that he is restricted to being in one place at one time, which is another way of saying that, unlike God who is infinite and omnipresent, the Devil, like the rest of us, is finite and therefore cannot be everywhere or even in two places at once.

God Is Infinite

Infinite means having no boundaries or limits; extending without end. This is most descriptive of God alone. Think about it, God, as Creator must be greater than His creation. As Creator He is distinct from His creation. Solomon, in his great prayer after he had built the Temple asked, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).

So, there’s the wisest man (apart from Jesus) who ever lived saying under inspiration of the Holy Spirit that God transcends His finite creation. Therefore, space, outer space must have an edge, a limit. Why? Because space is a creature, i.e. a creation of God. Though, to us, it may seem infinite, space is finite because God alone is infinite.

The Psalmist puts it like this in Psalm 139, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me” (Psalm 139:7-10).

So, not only is God Spirit, but He is also infinite. Therefore, Creator God, unlike created spirits, is not restricted by space and time, which is to say that He is not limited to one place at a time. God is present everywhere all at once, all of Him. This is called Omnipresence.

God is Omnipresent

Omnipresence is one of what the theologians call, the Incommunicable Attributes of God. When we say that God is infinite in being we’re not saying that He cannot be in one place at one time. Otherwise, what are you going to say about Jesus who is God in the flesh? Paul in Colossians 2:9 says, “For in Him [Jesus] dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

So, the strange thing about God is that all of Him can be everywhere at once while at the same time all of Him can be fully in one and the same place! What makes me say this? Well, Jesus Christ is a Man – body, soul and spirit. And as to His humanity, He is finite. Yet He went to heaven bodily. Therefore, Christ is wherever His body is because He is a man, and as a man He is bound by the limitations of His material body.

As a Man He is finite. However, as God, He is not restricted by His human body and is therefore infinite. As God He is in all places at once, yet as Man He is in one place only – yet He is fully God. Thus, and therefore, to talk of the ubiquity of Christ’s humanity is to talk nonsense. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

We’re looking at the nature of God at the moment, not Jesus Christ, the Godman. And we’ve seen that God is Spirit, and as Spirit He is infinite. But God also is eternal.

God Is Eternal

My nephew was also asking my sister Who made God? It’s true that since the fall, contrary to the 2^nd Commandment, Man has been forming or making God in his own image and likeness. But this is only because he is in rebellion to the God who created Man in His own image and likeness in the beginning.

The Scriptures reveal that God is eternal, which is to say that He has no beginning and no end. For example, Moses calls Him “The eternal God…” in Deuteronomy 33:27. And Isaiah calls Him “…the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity…” in Isaiah 57:15. And Moses wrote these words as recorded in Psalm 90, “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (Psalm 90:1-2).

So, the eternal God inhabits eternity from everlasting to everlasting! That’s what the Bible says about God. Therefore, if God doesn’t have a beginning, no one made Him. And it goes without saying that He didn’t create Himself – He just is. He is the eternal IS – the “I AM that I AM.”

Now, it is an obvious thing, wouldn’t you think, to ask Who made God? Mind you, it’s perhaps not the type of question one would expect from a three-year-old! However, when you look around at creation it’s not hard to see that things have beginnings. The day begins, the week begins, the month, the year, the decade, the century, the millennium all have a beginning. Animals, birds and fish hatch and are born, people are born. The TV program begins, the holiday begins, and the journey begins.

Oh, we could go on and on giving everyday examples of things beginning. But again, only God has no beginning, because only God is eternal. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). There was no beginning before “In the beginning.” There was only God – the eternal One.

Now, it’s perhaps true that there may be a shade of difference between “eternal” and “everlasting.” Something may be everlasting and not be eternal in the sense that something may have a beginning and then become everlasting, whereas that which is eternal does not have a beginning but is also everlasting. Again, think of the two natures of Christ, i.e., the human and the divine. “But when the fulness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman…” (Gal. 4:4), and “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14). The Son, a.k.a. the Word, is the eternal second Person in the Trinity, and is the Person who, in the fulness of the time became also a human being. Therefore, while His divine nature is eternal, His human nature is everlasting, in that it had a beginning. Thus, Jesus is one divine Person with two natures forever. Therefore, God alone is eternal. He is Spirit, infinite and eternal. But He is also unchangeable in His Being.

God is Unchangeable in His Being

Unchangeableness is one of those attributes of God for which we ought to be very thankful. Just think about it, what if God changed His mind about your election? What if He changed His mind about your redemption? What if He changed His mind about what is good and what is evil? What if He Himself changed from being good to being evil? Oh, we can be thankful that God is eternal. Why? because that means that He is eternally unchangeable!

Now, I know that this sounds like a redundant thing to say. But you need to see that God is not unchangeable for a time. No, He is unchangeable for eternity, from everlasting to everlasting!

So, if God is unchangeable this also must mean that God never had a beginning. Because, to have a beginning a thing must become something it wasn’t before it began. But let’s not go there! We’ve already established the eternality of God.

James in his Epistle says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:7).

Now, it’s true that the Bible in places uses language in which God appears to change His mind on certain things.  One might think of Genesis 6 where we’re told that the Lord saw the wickedness of man on the earth and was sorry. He was sorry He made man and so He sets out to destroy rebellious man in Noah’s flood.

Or what about Hezekiah? The Lord told Hezekiah that he was “history,” to use the vernacular. But Hezekiah pled his case before the Lord, so the Lord spared him instead of killing him. Then there are the Ninevites. They repented at Jonah’s preaching. So God, as it were, changed His mind about their threatened destruction for their wickedness.

Well, first off, God isn’t changing in His being when He rewards or punishes people’s behaviour. The Catechism is actually talking about the attributes of God, i.e., His very Being as being unchangeable. It’s not really dealing with the way God interacts with His creation and people.

However, it is a reasonable question to ask: Does God ever change His mind? And if He does, does this mean that He is not “unchangeable”? Well, let’s just say that because God is Spirit, and because He is infinite and eternal, He can never ever be taken by surprise., which is another way of saying that, not only is He Omnipresent, i.e., everywhere at once, He is also Omniscient, i.e., He knows all things. Therefore, nothing outside of Himself can influence Him to change His mind about anything.

God knows the end from the beginning. Therefore, He always knew He was going to send the global flood in Noah’s day. He always knew He was going to spare Hezekiah another fifteen years. He always knew the Ninevites were going to repent under Jonah’s preaching! So we see that God is also wisdom – He knows all things. Therefore, His wisdom is related to His infinitude.

God is Wisdom

“He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite” (Psalm 147:4-5). Some people tend to view the starry skies as infinite. If that’s really the case, then God can count to infinity. My little Scottish nephew was asking his mum which was the very last number. Well, only God knows the answer to that one! But, as we noted earlier, the starry firmament, i.e., outer space is finite, because space and time are creatures made by God who alone is truly infinite. This is how come the Psalmist can say of God, “His understanding is infinite,” which is another way of saying that the character of God is “wisdom.”

He is not just wise, He IS “wisdom.” But not only is God all-knowing, and all-present. He is also Omnipotent, i.e., all-mighty in power.

God is All-Powerful

God is the all-powerful One. After all He did create the heavens and the earth in six days out of nothing!  How many blazing stars are out there? Only God knows because God is the One who made them. Think about it, split one tiny atom and you generate enough power to light up or wipe out a whole city. How powerful then must God be to have created every single atom in the universe?

As it’s written in Daniel 4:25, “…He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’”

God's power is clearly seen in His acts of creation, providence, and redemption.

God is Holy, Just, Good, & True

And what about another character trait of God. What about holiness? His holiness is related to His power. For it says in Revelation 15:4, “Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before You, for Your judgments have been manifested.”

God is our Creator. He is our Redeemer. He alone is Omnipresent, Omniscient. He alone is Omnipotent, the Almighty. Therefore, as the Apostle asks, “Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name?”

To be holy is to be “set apart”. God, the Creator, is so “set apart” from all His creation. He alone is truly holy, i.e., set apart, transcendent. Therefore, holiness is also part of God’s character, as are justice, goodness and truth.

The LORD Himself passed before Moses and proclaimed these word recorded in Exodus 34:6-7, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.”

WSC books are aplenty!

So, we see justice in God’s character in that He doesn’t avoid punishing the guilty. But we also see His goodness in that He only does so to the third and fourth generation. He doesn’t punish to the fiftieth or the hundredth or the thousandth generation. Louis Berkhof says, “The goodness of God is that perfection of God which prompts Him to deal bountifully and kindly with all His creatures.”

We also see His goodness in the fact that He forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.  And we can be thankful for His other character trait i.e., truth. The revelation that God has given of Himself in Scripture is perfectly reliable, for He would be a cruel God indeed if He lied to us about His merciful and gracious longsuffering towards us.

For what terror there would be in the breasts of puny creatures such as you or me to know that we were going to face the judgment of a God such as we’ve seen described?! But His mercy endures forever.

Conclusion

We’ve seen something of the fact that: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.