God Is (eBook)

A Devotional Guide to the Attributes of God

Mark Jones (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
Crossway (Verlag)
978-1-4335-5565-7 (ISBN)

Infos

'This is Mark Jones at his best. In twenty-seven concise chapters, God Is invites, equips, edifies, comforts, and challenges God's people to know God better and love him more.' -Rosaria Butterfield, Former Professor of English, Syracuse University; author, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert God has revealed many things about himself in his Word. But God's manifold attributes shine most clearly in his Son, Jesus Christ, who came to reveal his Father. Through Christ's saving work on the cross, we are able to know and worship God rightly. This book aims to help us study and understand the attributes of God so that we delight in and love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Each chapter explains one attribute, shows how it is most clearly manifested in Christ, and provides practical application for the Christian life.

Mark Jones (PhD, Leiden Universiteit) serves as the pastor of Faith Vancouver Presbyterian Church (PCA) in British Columbia, Canada. He has authored many books, including Living for God and God Is, and speaks all over the world on Christology and the Christian life. Mark and his wife, Barbara, have four children.

Textauszug

Introduction

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

Jeremiah 9:23–24

Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord.

Hosea 6:3

Knowing God

What can we say about God? What must we say about God? These two questions are related but not identical. Even the Scriptures, the very words of God about himself, do not exhaust what can be said about him. Indeed, as finite (limited) creatures, we shall never be able to say everything about our infinite (unlimited) God even in our perfect eternal state in heaven. We study God not as he is in himself but as he is revealed in his Word. As James Henley Thornwell says,

God is at once known and unknown. In His transcendent Being, as absolute and infinite, though a necessary object of faith, He cannot be an object of thought. We cannot represent Him to the understanding, nor think Him as He is in Himself. But in and through the finite He has given manifestations of His incomprehensible reality, which, though not sufficient to satisfy the demands of speculation, are amply adequate for all the ends of religion.1

For us today, these “manifestations” are summed up in God’s Word, which dictates what we must say about him. We must affirm only what God has said about himself, which includes deducing truths about God by good and necessary consequence. In this life, we may not understand all that the Bible tells us about God, but we must aim to believe and communicate as much as we can about him. We must press on to know the Lord (Hos. 6:3), a difficult but rewarding task (Heb. 11:6). Worship without knowledge is idolatry.

All true theology depends on God. He is the principle on which our theology is constructed. As a personal, gracious God, he freely revealed himself to us. All other topics of theology (e.g., man, salvation, Christ) are held together by the doctrine of God. Hence, theology always remains to some degree the study of God.

The doctrine of God has fallen on hard times. Many are far more concerned about personal salvation than they are about God. Books on marriage abound, but books on the doctrine of God are few and far between. This is regrettable since nothing can ever really make sense to us in this life unless we have a good grasp of who God is.

To know God, we must love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind (Luke 10:27). Our knowledge of God can never be limited to that which is merely grasped cognitively or academically. This book aims to help you love God with your mind but also with a great deal of strength, so that you can say with purity of heart (Matt. 5:8; 1 Tim. 1:5), “I know God.” Eternal life is to know God (John 17:3). Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon on the immutability of God, says,

The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.2

Do you want your soul expanded? Listen to Spurgeon, who surely knew something about such expansion. But before you read on, note that he rightly connected the science of Christ with the knowledge of God as the way to make one spiritually healthy. The revelation of God shows Christ, who in turn discloses God. God created all things in order to glorify his Son (Col. 1:16), and the Son comes to reveal the Father (Matt. 11:25–27; John 17:5–6, 26). By the Spirit we enter this world of supernatural revelation, in which we can joyfully declare that through Christ we know God, which is eternal life.

Christ exists as the sacred repository of all truth. He manifests himself as the sum and center of God’s revelation. He mediates not only through his saving work for the church but also by communicating between God and fallen humanity. His great aim on earth was to reveal God the Father (Matt. 13:35; John 1:18). In fact, Christ had a unique ability and capacity to give us knowledge of God (Prov. 8:22; John 1:3–4; 3:13; Heb. 1:2). What Christ received from the Father in terms of knowledge and grace he bestows freely on his bride. He does not wish to keep us ignorant. He delights to know God, and he desires the same joy for us.

Aims of the Book

Many of the greatest theologians in the church have written extensively on God. When I think of Augustine, Anselm, Abelard, and Aquinas—the “A Team”—I think of men who wrote majestically about a majestic God. Many after them have also written on the attributes of God. From what I can tell, the treatments by able, solidly orthodox theologians number in the hundreds. Beginning in the early church to the present day, we have been gifted with many excellent treatises on God, as well as many memorable sayings about God that have become entrenched in the annals of church history, such as Anselm’s saying “We believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.”3

Most of these treatments on the doctrine of God, however, are found in the middle of even larger works on dogmatic or systematic theology. And many of the best expositions of God’s attributes come from the pens of men who wrote either in Latin or in an older English that at times makes for very difficult reading today.

In addition, the famous yet mammoth work The Existence and Attributes of God (1682) by the Puritan Stephen Charnock requires the sort of time and effort that very few have. As brilliant as the work remains, not only for its theological insight but also for its pastoral reflections, most people who honestly desire to know God better will never read his work from cover to cover.

As a result, my goal here is to provide a brief, simple, and clear book on the attributes of God that readers can (hopefully!) read from cover to cover. With a few exceptions, I avoid Latin, Greek, and Hebrew words or quotes as I diligently seek to make the doctrine of God simple (pardon the pun, and if you do not understand it, I hope you will by the end of the book).

Today, several theologians are defending various aspects of the doctrine of God in a way that continues the orthodox tradition handed down to us by the early church. Individuals such as Paul Helm, James Dolezal, Thomas Weinandy, and Stephen Duby, for example, are writing very good material on God’s attributes, and I have very much appreciated their work. At the same time, their books can be rather heavy for the layperson who has read little in the doctrine of God. Because few things are as difficult as making the doctrine of God accessible, those with the ability, time, and desire should aim to be always instructing the church in the deep truths of the Christian faith with brevity and clarity (so Calvin). That is what I have attempted to do in this book.

I am also aiming to do something a little different from most treatments of the attributes of God. Not all books adequately apply the attributes of God to the Christian life. Perhaps the most notable example of a practical treatment of the doctrine of God remains J. I. Packer’s monumental work Knowing God. His book has profoundly affected so many because it makes theology both easily accessible and eminently applicable. In this book I strive for such emphases and trust that the reader will find few things as practical for Christian living as studying God and his attributes. In each chapter I offer one or two selective (definitely not exhaustive!) points of practical application.

One further aspect of this study on the doctrine of God that I hope will distinguish it from others is its specific focus on Christ. Apart from Christ, the attributes of God remain meaningless to us. In Christ alone can we understand the true and living God, for Christ makes God’s attributes beautiful and accessible to us as he rescues us from spiritual darkness and terror of God. Any so-called supernatural revelation of God apart from Christ is a lie, and any study of God’s attributes is true only when it comes with a connection to his Son (Col. 1:16). We live and learn as Christians fixing our eyes on Jesus not just when we struggle with sin and temptation but also when we approach God in the Scriptures. To that end, no chapter on an attribute of God will omit reference to Christ, from whom alone comes an adequate understanding of such attributes.

In connection with this focus, the Puritan theologian Thomas Goodwin makes an important point:

There is a glorious image of all God’s attributes, which shines in the person of Christ . . . and in the works which Christ hath done for us, and in the fruits and benefits that redound thereby to us: or in the works of Christ . . . in us, now he is in heaven,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.6.2017
• Verlagsort: Wheaton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Schlagworte: Belief • Bible • Biblical • Bride of Christ • Christian • Christianity • christian living • Church • commandment • Communication • Communion • Covenant • Daily Life • Devotional • divine • divine nature • Faith • gods love • gods will • gods word • Gospel • Guidebook • Holy • Holy Spirit • Jesus Christ • John Calvin • love of God • nature of God • Obedience • Practical • relationship with God • Revelation • Salvation • Scripture • stephen charnock • Thomas Goodwin • Word of God • Worship
• ISBN-10: 1-4335-5565-4 / 1433555654
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-5565-7 / 9781433555657