Who do you believe God is? How have you fashioned Him in your imagination? Is he a big guy with a long white beard scowling down at all of us? You may see Him as just a big ball of light with little clarity. Perhaps you believe that all the universe is God, and God is the universe. If you believe a God exists, how would you describe Him?
I recently proposed this question to a Bible study I was teaching, and in preparation, I also challenged myself with the question. If an alien dropped out of the sky and asked you, “Who is this God everyone talks about?” What would you say? How would you answer?
Unfortunately, that answer could be just as varied as every human alive. I’m sure you’ll find groups of people who believe the same thing. Still, if you could survey every human being, the variety of answers would be staggering.
If there is a God, do you think He would find this reality frustrating? All these people He created run around believing different things about who He is. It might be similar to how celebrities feel when their fans meet them. Perhaps at first, they are awestruck, but after a while, they realize they’re nothing like their imagination had led them to believe.
Do you ever wish you could know?
Not just in a hypothetical sense, but actually knowing, for sure, who God is?
I believed for years that I knew who He was. I grew up in church and, for the most part, was given reliable information. But, I was always bothered by something: why were all these other people telling me about God? Why didn’t God just tell me Himself? Furthermore, if God really is God, and He desperately wants me to know that, why not just come down here and tell me?
I admit these are questions that this blog’s scope will not be able to fully flesh out, but these are some of the most important questions you will ever ask.
The two concerns I listed above (Why didn’t God tell me himself and why didn’t God show himself) were answered directly by Him and were staring me in the face almost my entire life.
I remember reading my Bible one evening a few years ago, and I placed my hands on the page. For some reason, right at that moment, God began to draw an invisible line from my hand back through antiquity. I began to think about the company that printed my Bible, the source material for that printing company, the translators who worked for decades through this particular version of the Bible, the original Greek or Hebrew scrolls that the Bible had been translated from, the scribes who spent hundreds of years meticulously copying and preserving those scrolls, and finally, the authors and editors who were inspired directly by God to write this all down – because God spoke it directly to their hearts.
Suddenly, God drew a line from my hand on a page straight to His heart.
The Bible is the most intentional book you will ever read. There is not one word that is not placed for a specific meaning and purpose. As I have deepened my understanding of the history and literary structure of the Bible over the last several years, this intentionality frequently takes my breath away.
God does not leave us in the dark. He wants you to know who He is. God wants you to know it so much that He orchestrated (over thousands of years) that words be written, preserved, and passed down so you can read them today. God is mysterious, but He has allowed many precious pieces of knowledge about Himself to be displayed for your benefit.
My second question, why didn’t He just come down and show Himself, was answered simply.
The answer is that He did.
He did come down and show Himself.
He did break into our world and show His glory.
And He did it so we could answer the question once and for all, “Who is God?”
Jesus Christ is described by the author of Hebrews as “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature, sustaining all things by His powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3a CSB) Jesus is not the image of God (as humans are described in Genesis 1). He is the exact expression of His nature. It’s hard for us to understand, but when you read the gospels and interact with Jesus’ miracles, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, you read an account of precisely what happened when God came to Earth.
Now, I believe in a God I have met myself. I met Him in the Word of God and I interact with Him daily through His wonderful Spirit. I no longer follow the God other people have told me about, I follow a God I have met myself.
So, I ask you, who do you think God is?
At the end of the day, these are hard questions, but they are worth pursuing. If you’re unsure you can trust the Bible, I would ask you to challenge it. Take every problematic question, doubt, or suspicion about the Word of God and boldly ask God to answer these questions. Do the research and find out for yourself what it really says.
Please, don’t take my word for it. I can only share what a life-changing book it has been for me, but to really take it all in, you must see it yourself.
