It’s funny how our perspective on things changes with age, maturity, and wisdom. If you’re anything like me, you probably could come up with several examples of things you don’t see the same way now as you did when you were a child.
For example, when I was a young boy playing Little League baseball, I thought sports was just something that adults got to do for fun. I had no concept of the business side of professional sports and how money, not fun, was the main motivator for many in the game. I also used to think highly of all the honorable people in elected office who were doing it out of a great sense of duty and patriotism. Little did I know as a kid how much the allure of power drove some into office and corrupted them to the core.
Let’s take it closer to home. How about the perspective we used to have about our parents? How many of us used to secretly think that our parents were just mean people when they enforced the rules and instilled discipline when we broke them? Honestly, how many of us thought that our parents were nothing more than fun killers? And on top of that, how often did we consider them to be completely unreasonable and uncaring people who only pretended to love us? Let’s face it, they just weren’t fair!
Then the years went by and we grew up. We became parents ourselves and we began to see our parents in an entirely different light. It’s then that we began to understand that everything they did was motivated by something other than the ugly things we attributed to them when we were young, immature, and foolish.
If that’s how our perspective can change regarding our parents, who else could we have possibly misunderstood? Who else have we seen in a certain light and could be completely wrong about? And what effect has that misunderstanding had? That’s what we’re going to explore over the next several articles.
And that brings us to the trillion dollar question that needs to be answered: Who is God? It’s an extremely critical question. Our answer to it reveals everything we think about Him. Who we think He is has huge ramifications on how we think He sees us and responds to us. And what we believe He thinks of us affects the relationship we have with Him in every way.
I maintain that many American Christians have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to who God is. From pulpits across this nation, we’ve been been taught an image of a God that just doesn’t square with whom the Bible reveals Him to be. We need to divorce ourselves of our preconceived ideas, no matter what their origin, so that we can begin to see the true nature of our Father.
So who do you think God is? Is He a jealous God whose rage burns whenever your heart turns to someone or something other than Him? Is He a harsh judge who is gleefully waiting to convict you of all your wrongdoing? Is He a disappointed God who is ready to pour out His wrath upon all humanity for every sin we’ve ever committed? Is He the good silver-haired grandfather in the sky who is full of wisdom? Is He the loving dad you’ve always wished you had? Is He the stern taskmaster, ready to whip you for every offense? Is He the perfectionist you could never possibly hope to please? Is He the abusive father who took out all His anger on HIs innocent son so that you could have a chance to be saved? Or is He a mysterious, invisible, distant Spirit that you could never really get to know and have a personal relationship with?
There are so many different views out there about who God is. They can’t all be right. And yet these different images of God have been painted by many people over the centuries. Who’s right? What can we rely on? How can we determine the truth? And who can we trust to reveal the true nature of God?
There actually is a book and a person we can turn to for the answer to our trillion dollar question. The book is, of course, the Bible. The person – well, let’s allow him to speak for himself.
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? (John 14:8-10)
Jesus makes it perfectly clear. If you know him, you know the Father. The Son and the Father are one. That is also why Jesus declared later in John’s gospel, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3) There can be no mistake. Knowing Jesus is the same as knowing God, and that is the key to eternal life.
Paul knew this to be true as well, and he put it this way. “The Son is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15) Perhaps you’ve thought to yourself, “How can I ever get to know God? How can I ever know someone I can’t even see?” Paul’s answer: Get to know Jesus. He is the image of God. Who he is is who the Father is.
The writer of Hebrews gives us even more insight. He writes, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” (Hebrews 1:3) Think of that – “the exact representation of his being.” So again we see that if we get to know Jesus, we can have confidence that we know God. They are one and same. What we see in Jesus is exactly who his Father is.
So that’s the direction we’re heading. We are going to discover who God really is through examining Jesus Christ. Once we see Jesus’ true nature, we will know the nature of God. Then we will be able to answer the question that started us on this journey – Who is God?
Essential Grace 