Is God a person?
God is often spoken of today as a force, an energy, or the spirit of the universe — something to be tapped rather than someone to be known. Scripture answers that question in a different key: the God it presents is living, He speaks, He wills, and He can be worshipped.
A Being Who Speaks and Is Sent
The Bible never argues for God's personhood abstractly. It simply shows Him acting in ways only a person can act, and one writer draws his conclusion from exactly that:
J. N. DarbyI speak of His personality because in Scripture I find a Being who comes and goes, is sent, speaks, and hears, and so I say, He is a Person.
But calling God a person carries a risk: we may quietly shrink Him to our size. The same writer keeps the word while refusing that shrinkage:
J. N. DarbyNow, I have no better word than "person" for one who is sent, who wills, who distributes, who sends, and so on. It cannot give me that limited idea of "person" which the word gives when applied to man (for there one existence excludes another); but I have no reason at all to force the limits of my way of being onto God's — rather the opposite.
Our Word, Not Scripture's Word
Commentators differ over how much weight the term itself should carry. Some point out that the vocabulary is borrowed, while the reality is everywhere in the text:
James McBroomThe word "Person" is not used in Scripture of any Being in the Godhead, but the pronouns "I," "Me," "He" and "Him" are used by and of our Lord in such a way that we can grasp (though never fully comprehend) Him, God become Man.
Not a Principle to Be Tapped
If God were only a force behind things, the whole life of faith would collapse into nonsense — you cannot love or answer to an "it":
William KellyThink again how such a system destroys all the highest relationships and duties of the Christian. It would be absurd to worship a principle: one can only worship a living, personal God. Our communion is with the Father and with His Son by the Holy Spirit. With an impersonal Being this cannot be, since it is folly to speak of mind, will, or love in that case.
The idea has a name, and one writer identifies plainly what it costs:
The Bible TreasuryThe Pantheist imagines God to be in everything, a sort of essence spread through all creation, with everything a part of God. That is, he denies the personality of God.
The Living God, Not a Dead Image
Israel's God was marked off from the carved gods of the nations by one thing: He was alive, and He noticed people:
An Outline of Sound WordsAfter the flood idolatry came into the world, and men worshipped gods of their own making, about whom the Psalmist wrote, "They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear... They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk" (Psalm 115:5-7). How very different from the idols of the nations was the living God, who said to Moses, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them" (Exodus 3:7-8). From the very beginning of human history, God has shown Himself interested in man's welfare, with special interest in those who trust Him.
Personal, But Without a Body
Jesus told the woman at the well that God is spirit. That statement rules out a physical shape without ruling out personhood:
William J Hocking"God is a spirit." He is the Being who is spirit in essence... It refers to His being, to the Person. He has no bodily shape. He is not confined to one place as we are. He is an omnipresent spirit, and so, though in heaven, He is here, and we, being spirit, are in His presence.
Made Known in the Son
Because God is spirit and unseen, no amount of human searching could produce a portrait of Him. One Person alone could give it:
An Outline of Sound WordsNone but the only-begotten Son could make God known. Moses had been allowed to see the glory of God from "a cleft of the rock," and to see His back (Exodus 33:18-23), but it still remained true that "No one has ever seen God." In the Son become man, God was made known in His nature, and in His attitude of grace towards men. Until the only-begotten Son came, God was really unknown to men as He truly is. No angel could make God known — only the Son who is "the image of the invisible God."
Summary
- Living. Unlike the idols with mouths that never speak, the God of Scripture sees affliction, hears crying, and comes down to deliver.
- Personal. He is spoken of as One who comes, is sent, speaks, and hears — and writers say they have no better word for such a One than "Person."
- Unlimited. The word must not be narrowed to human size; God's way of existing is not bound by the limits of ours.
- Spirit. Being a Person does not mean having a bodily shape; He is spirit in essence, and present everywhere, so we stand in His presence now.
- Revealed. No one has ever seen God; the Son alone has made Him known — which is why worship, love, and communion are possible at all, things no principle or force could ever receive.