What is God?
The question "What is God?" is one Scripture answers not with a definition but with a handful of short, weighty statements about what He is in Himself — Spirit, light, love — and with the insistence that He is known only as He makes Himself known. Everything else, His power, wisdom and holiness, flows from what He is.
Spirit, Not Substance We Can Measure
Because God is Spirit, He has no shape, no size, nothing our senses can get hold of. One writer points out that this is not a limitation in Him but in us:
W. H. WestcottIt stands to reason that no one has seen God at any time. We can take account of a thing if it is a score of miles in length or breadth, and if it is a solid substance that can be weighed. But can we imprison the wind to measure its dimensions, or tell where the light ends? Heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. He is everywhere present throughout this vast universe, greater than all He has created, not subject to change or break-up. Where could we begin to take account of Him?
The word "spirit" here is not a comparison with angels or with the spirit in us. It marks out the kind of being God is:
C. CrainWhen our Lord tells the woman of Samaria that "God is spirit" (John 4:24), He is teaching her that while the substance of God is immaterial and invisible, it is of the nature of spirit... There can be no doubt that the spirit substance of angels is not identical with the spirit substance in God, which is uncreated, underived, existing from everlasting to everlasting.
(Note: some older translations read "God is a Spirit"; commentators build on both wordings.)
Light and Love: What He Is in Himself
Scripture never says God is power or wisdom, though He has both. Two statements alone describe His very being:
Julius A. Von Poseck"God is light" and "God is love." These two are His essential qualities — His very being. We know that power, dominion and authority, wisdom and riches belong to Him. But it is nowhere said in Scripture that "God is power," or that "God is wisdom." We know that God is holy, righteous, and just, and that He is good, gracious, and merciful. But these divine qualities are only the visible results of what God is in Himself, that is, "Light" and "Love."
Commentators differ slightly on how the two relate — some treat light and love as equally absolute, while others hold that love alone is used absolutely of God, since believers are also called light. What none of them allow is holding one truth at the expense of the other:
A. J. PollockOne would have thought it impossible to over-emphasize these wonderful words, "God is love." This is certainly true, if this grand truth is held in due proportion to other Scripture truths. But when emphasis on the truth "God is love" (1 John 4:8) is made to such an extent that it obscures the truth that "God is light" (1 John 1:5), there is something very fundamentally wrong.
One God, Three Persons
The Bible's answer also includes something we cannot take apart or explain:
A. J. PollockThe Father is God; the Son is God; the Spirit is God — the Spirit equal in nature and substance to the Father and the Son. If the three Persons of the Godhead are each of them God, it does not follow that there are three Gods. That would be impossible. There can be only one God, supreme and unique... the three Persons in the Godhead with one will, one purpose, each fully sharing every thought and desire and purpose in the minds of the others. We may not, indeed cannot, understand this.
Known Only Through the Son
No amount of study reaches God. He must come out to us, and He has done so in One who has always been in the closest possible nearness to Him:
Ernst-August BremickerWhat God is can only be fully revealed in the Son of the Father. In the Son, God opens His heart. No angel and no man could ever have done this... He alone knew God and therefore He alone could reveal Him as He is... The one who saw the Son of the Father with eyes of faith saw God in His very essence — God as He is.
Where Light and Love Meet
These are not abstract words. Each one led somewhere at the cross:
C. Knapp"God is light" (1 John 1:5). This is His character, which made the death of His Son a necessity. "God is love" (1 John 4:8). This is His nature, which led Him to give His Son so that His death might become an accomplished fact. Grace reigns "through righteousness."
That light also searches us now. It is not enough to admire the truth from a distance:
William J. HockingUnless your soul has been laid bare to the light of God, you cannot know true fellowship with Him. You may deceive yourself, but you cannot deceive God. He is light. He is holy. He is true. He knows every secret of your soul, and He wants you to look at them with Him in the shadowless light of His presence.
Worship That Matches His Nature
If God is Spirit, then the way we approach Him must fit what He is:
F. B. Hole"In spirit," for "Spirit" is what God Himself is. True worship, then, is not a matter of religious emotions stirred up by impressive ritual or beautiful music. "Spirit" is the highest part of man, and unless we worship in spirit we do not worship at all.
Summary
- Spirit — God is immaterial, invisible, uncreated, everywhere present, and greater than everything He made; He cannot be measured or pictured.
- Nature — Light and love are not things God has but what He is; holiness, mercy, wisdom and power are what that nature produces.
- One — Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each God, yet there is one God, one will, one purpose — a mystery revealed, not explained.
- Revealed — Since no one has seen God, only the Son could make Him known; to see Him by faith is to see God as He is.
- Proved — At the cross His light demanded the death of His Son and His love provided it; that same light now searches our hearts, and that same nature sets the terms of our worship.