The Unique Attributes Of God

When I was thinking about where I would like to start this journey with you. I tried to take myself back to a time when I was having trouble getting motivated to read the Bible myself. Several years ago I was at a place where it just seemed really hard for me to get interested in it. I would read lots of other Christian books about the Bible, but when I opened the real thing it just felt uninteresting. I know that sounds horrible, but it's the truth. And I bet you've had times in your life when reading your Bible has felt like that too. Or maybe it's just me. Either way, I think for most of us at some time or another reading the Word can feel a bit tedious.

I tried following different Bible reading plans and devotionals to get me motivated or to keep me on track, but they didn't seem to hold my attention either. In fact it actually made things worse by making it sort of feel like homework or something. Now if Bible reading plans are your thing, forgive me, they just don't seem to do it for me. But what did get me interested was a classic book by A.W. Tozer titled "the Knowledge of the Holy." To say this book is good would be an understatement. To me, it is a must read for every Christian. In "The Knowledge Of The Holy", A.W. Tozer essentially lists and explains the core attributes and nature of God. Reading this book really drew me closer to God. Studying His nature and character, and learning about the eternal, divine attributes of our God and our relationship to Him just really inspired me to pursue a deeper relationship with the Father.

This led me to my Bible. I just picked it up and started reading books and sections of the Bible at random, searching the Scriptures for God's character, for His eternal attributes, and for His divine uniqueness. This really gave me a purpose in reading Scripture and introduced in me a sense of excitement and wonder as I embarked on this journey. Every time I would come across something in the text that jumped out at me as revealing something special and unique about God, I would stop and meditate on it. Maybe I'd underline it in my Bible and note which attribute or characteristic the passage revealed and I would often pray that the Holy Spirit would draw me closer to the LORD through it.

I think this is a great way to give your daily Bible time direction and purpose. That's why I want to start this blog out with a series on God's unique divine attributes and characteristics. We will be going through some of the concepts brought forward in A.W. Tozer's book as well as diving into some of the scripture that I found so helpful when I first went through the book and later searched out in my Bible. But before we dive right into each individual concept, we first need to know Who and what we are talking about and define some terms.

For starters it is of the utmost importance that we know the Who that we are trying to better understand. That of course would be our Creator, Yahweh God. Now maybe this is the first time you've seen the name Yahweh before, so let me pause and offer some background to this holy name. Yahweh is essentially the English representation of the Hebrew name for Israel's covenant God, YHWH, which has become known as the Tetragrammaton (based on the Greek for "four" and "letter"). But that's a bit technical for our purposes right now, and we will eventually get to explore some Hebrew and Greek in the future. We are introduced to the divine name YHWH when God first appears to Moses in the burning bush.

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you'." ~ Exodus 3:14 | ESV

So many of God's divine attributes are displayed in just this one statement and name. God's self-existence, His self-sufficiency, His eternalness, His transcendance. All of these and more are revealed in this holy name, YHWH, or Yahweh. We will discuss these topics in more detail in the upcoming weeks.

For now I just want to give us a baseline of what to expect while studying God's divine attributes in this way and why we should. For starters, on our journey as Christians, we should desire to come closer to our Heavenly Father with every passing day. And the best way to accomplish that is by interacting with His Word. Everything we need to know about God He left for us in His holy Scriptures. But the information inside will not transfer itself into our spirit through osmosis. We have to open the Bible and read it for ourselves and meditate on the inspired words inside. And when we begin to search out the scriptures and learn more of God's character, nature, and attributes, we can begin to piece together a more complete understanding of who God truly is. And by doing so grow our relationship with Him all the more.

But we must remember that last part. Because as we become entrenched in studying about God, we can fall into the intellectual trap of pursuing theological knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself, and we can forget our greater, much more important goal of growing in relationship with our God. We must not let the pursuit of knowledge allow us to become proud and arrogant. On the contrary! Our quest to become more acquainted with God's divine attributes should humble us mightily. As Paul so told the Corinthians, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God." (1 Cor 8:1-3, ESV). If our pursuit of knowledge does not result in love of God and love of others, then it is in vain. So, let us keep that goal close to our chest as we pursue deeper knowledge of our Creator.

Now going forward the terms attributes, nature, and character or characteristics are going to come up a lot. So I want to clarify what I mean by them. God's nature and attributes or characteristics are simply whatever God has revealed in His Word as being true of Himself. It is also important to point out that an attribute is not a part of God, rather, they are who God is. They are also not His personality or His emotions like how we might think of our own personalities. Our emotions change by the hour and our personalities ebb and flow as life goes on, but God never changes. In "The Knowledge Of The Holy", A.W. Tozer explains how God's attributes coexist.

Between His attributes no contradiction can exist. He need not suspend one to exercise another, for in Him all His attributes are one. All of God does all that God does; He does not divide Himself to perform a work, but works in the total unity of His being. ~ pg 37

So as we go on into our study of God's attributes let's keep these things in mind. We must maintain God's uniqueness from His creation. He is altogether distinct, there is none like Him. With that being said we must realize that our human language is going to fall short at times when trying to explain His attributes or describe His character. So we must do our best to be careful with our words and try to be as thoughtful and Biblically minded as possible when treading these waters. Of course we are not perfect but we will do our best!

Lastly, let's seek God together with the aim of getting to know our Creator better. Remember that while we may be venturing to learn more about God's attributes, HE is the ultimate subject of our study. J.I. Packer put it this way in his wonderful book titled "Knowing God."

How can we turn knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer to God. ~ pg. 23

I pray that you will be blessed by this study and through it you will come to know your God on a much deeper level. Next time we will dig into one of God's divine attributes and see where it takes us. Thank you for spending some time with me today. God bless, and be bold and unashamed this week!