Is God dead?

We may shrink from saying baldly, “God died”. How can God die who has immortality and is the Source of life?15 The bare statement, “God died”, needs important qualification. Firstly, the One who died was God the Son, not the Father or the Holy Spirit. Secondly, He did not die as God, but in the Manhood He had taken. However, to qualify a statement is not to deny it. To say it was the Son of Man and not God who died, is to divide His Person and make Him two Persons. The fact is that God the Son became a Man for this very purpose, that He might die.16 He did not cease to be God when He died. The blood that He shed was human blood, but it was the blood that He had taken as His own.17 The Son of God shed His blood,18 and experienced death.19 He who is God laid down His life for us.20 It is the infinitude of His Person that produces the infinite atonement.

These passages and many more show the glory of the Cross, for although God cannot die, He has in wondrous grace taken His own way to come right down into death in its deepest and most solemn sense, even that of His own offended majesty and judgment against sin. It is here that the Incarnation fits in with divine precision. The Son, who is God, becomes Man to bear, on the one side the judgment due to man, and on the other, to give effect, on the part of God, to all the purposes of eternity.

The Living God. — To the living God He directed attention. That speaks of one, and only one, Divine Being. There are not two living Gods. Now their fathers had understood the significance of this designation, defining as it did their God, the Lord Jehovah, as wholly different from the idols of the heathen. Such had no life. "They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not; they have hands, but they handle not; feet have they, but they walk not; neither speak they through their throat" (Psalm 115:5-7). Scorn is thus heaped on the idols, on their makers, and on their worshippers. But the Lord, the God of Israel, as Jeremiah (10:10) writes, "is the true God; He is the living God, an everlasting King: at His wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide His indignation." To this One the Thessalonian saints had turned from idols, to serve Him, the living and true God (1 Thess. 1:9). He too was the desire of the saint in earlier days, as the psalmist expresses it, "My heart and my flesh cries out for the living God" (Psalm 84:2). And again: "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" (Psalm 42:2). Nothing short of being in the presence of the true God, who is the living God, could fulfil his desire. Idols could not satisfy him. Heathen mythology afforded no rest for the heart in its trouble. To see the living God he waited, and meanwhile gave expression to his longing wish.

The Greek word, athanasia, immortality, only occurs three times in the Scriptures. First, as to God Himself. He only has immortality, in the sense that it is inherent in Him, not bestowed, not acquired, but His, as in His own nature and being (1 Tim. 6:16). The other two cases (1 Cor. 15:53-54) have to say to the saints alive upon this earth when the Lord comes, as having mortal bodies, that are capable of death, and liable to death, yet if the Lord comes such will bypass death altogether, and mortality will put on immortality. Blessed triumph! Happy prospect! We wait for it with eager anticipation to be with the Lord, like Him, and for ever.

As to 1 Timothy 6:16, the answer is that this Scripture means that ONLY God has immortality INHERENTLY. That is immortality is not conferred, but is proper to God, who is from ever-lasting to ever-lasting the uncreated, without a beginning, and who is the “I AM THAT I AM” (Ex. 3:14)—the ever existent One from eternity to eternity.

8 I do not connect omnipresence and eternity as attributes with God, not because they may not, in an ordinary sense, be said to be so; and Scripture itself so speaks practically, and it always speaks practically, because truly; but that in our minds they are connected with time and space, which do not apply to God. There is no time when God is not; no place where His eye and hand, to use human language, are not. "I AM" is the proper expression of His existence. While time rolls on "I am" remains unchanged, and when time has rolled away "I am" subsists the same. It can hardly be called an attribute. This being understood, we may speak of eternal as a natural attribute of God.

True, God cannot be seen nor heard, yet “God is;” true, sin may be rife and rampant, yet “God is;” true, there may be no miraculous interposition, yet “God is;” true, “the foundations of the world may be out of course,” yet “God is;” true, evil men and seducers may wax worse and worse,” yet “God is.” “I am that I am … I AM, this is my name for ever and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Ex. 3:14-15). Faith believes this and acts on the strength of it. Infidelity sees fit to deny, and, in spite both of creation and revelation, boldly to say, “Who is God?” It may be remembered that when the Apostle Paul was in the city of Athens he beheld an altar with this inscription, “To the unknown God.” It might have comported with Athenian philosophy to ask, “Who is God?” But is Christian London to be placed on a par with heathen Athens, and must a similar declaration of this “unknown God” be made now? To the men of Athens Paul spoke of two things; first, man’s responsibility to God, “for in him we live, and move, and have our being; and, second, the appointment of a day of judgment.

Bearing this in mind, the terms of his announcement become all the more significant. It is not, as before noticed, "Thus says the Lord," but, "As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand." Ahab and his people might refuse the God of their fathers, and choose their own idols; but for faith, and hence for Elijah, Jehovah was still the Lord God of Israel. If the people believed not, God was still faithful, and Elijah reposed on the rock of God's unchanging love and covenant. There is however more: "As the Lord God of Israel lives." Dead idols had usurped His place, and Ahab and Israel were acting as if Jehovah were like to the gods they had made for themselves. In contrast with this, He was for Elijah the living God. And it is a grand thing for the soul when this simple truth has its true place and power.

The knowledge that there is a God is no personal revelation of God — no revelation at all. I conclude there must be. I am right. I conclude to immense power, and pretty surely to His unity, as the apostle says, His eternal power and Godhead — a solemn truth, from which many an enquiry may arise. Where is He? Who is He? Is He good? Does He think now at present of men? Does He govern all things? I have only a conclusion of my own mind that there must be a God of power who made the universe; not that there is. No conclusion gives this, because my conclusion is only the sequence of an idea. But am I in any relationship with Him? am I part of a system governed by general laws and no more? — for the absoluteness of these is insisted upon. If I am not a part of these general laws, what relationship have I with God? My new-school man tells me I have a conscience and reason, am free, and so forth; that is, I am not governed, like a planet, by general laws. Ah! ah! Then, in all that is really important — that is, what is moral — I am not a mere machine, under a general law; and you would persuade me God is, and cannot help Himself, nor act freely in respect of my freedom! I am free, and He is not. Then certainly I am God, not He. Now, general laws give me no revelation of God personally; and when I enter into detail, I am lost even as to my conclusions. My conscience tells me He must be good. But I look around and see misery, evil; men worshipping Jupiter, Venus, Pluto; men in every degradation that human nature is capable of; babes in torture, grown man in sin, oppression; and a groaning creation. Is that a general law? Where is the goodness? There is another world, you tell me. Perhaps; I hope so. Will the oppressor, the seducer, the corrupter, the tyrant be there? What proof have you? Your instinct tells you so. Is that all you have to comfort me? Has the instinct of men given them any clear idea of it? Had the heathen such? Are life and incorruptibility brought to light anywhere? In theory, a God of mere general laws is a dead God for me as to present moral relationship; and, when I turn to facts, I see it is false, or evil must be a general law too.

105 Psalm 53, as we know, convicts of entire sinfulness those who have the best advantages. But the secret of this course is old too, and on that a few words. AU the path of the wicked comes from this. For him God is not. Faith does not exist, and God is not seen. This is the secret of all error in practice and in human reasoning. The more we examine the whole course of human action, the faults of us Christians, the various wanderings of philosophy, the more we shall find that no God is at the root of all. Here it is the case that the conscience takes no notice of God. The heart has no desire after Him, and the will works as if there were none. Man says so in his heart. Why should he say it? Because his conscience tells him there is one. His will would not have one; and, as God is not seen in His working, will sees only what it will. God is set aside, and the whole conduct is under the will's influence, as if no God existed. He takes pains to prove there is not if he thinks, because he cannot get on if there is; but he lifts himself up, and, deceiving himself, comes in practical condition to will there should be none - and not to think, but to act as if he thought, and that in purpose as well as act, as if there were none. In a certain sense, he even thinks so; for, being entirely occupied with present things, and blind through his alienation from God, his moral feelings dead, judging from present things, he can draw conclusions, not believe that there is one, and, living in his own thoughts thus formed, live in the thought there is none - says so in his heart. If conscience awakes, he knows well there is; but he lives in his will and the thoughts of his will, and for him there is no God.