What is God?
Scripture answers the question "What is God?" through three foundational declarations about His nature: God is spirit, God is light, and God is love. These are not merely attributes among many -- they are statements about His very being. And the fullest revelation of who God is came not through abstract doctrine but through the Person of Christ, the eternal Word made flesh.
## God is Spirit
The Lord Jesus Himself declared: "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). This speaks to the very essence of God's being.
L.M. Grant writes:
L.M. GrantTo show the perfect suitableness of this, the Lord appeals to the fact that God is a Spirit. Since this is the essence of His being (not material at all), it surely follows that material forms of worship are nothing to Him: it is the spiritual reality that counts. Worship of the Father must be in spirit and in truth. Wonderful is the fact that the Son has revealed this.
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Samuel Ridout develops this further, distinguishing God from all created beings:
Samuel RidoutGod, a Spirit. Of the nature and attributes of God as thus revealed in the Trinity, the four Gospels furnish us with abundant material. "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24); "No man hath seen God at any time" (John 1:18). These and other scriptures declare the spirituality of God as contrasted with man His creature, or the universe His creation.
Ridout then unfolds the principal attributes revealed in the Gospels: His Infinity ("all things are possible unto Thee," Mark 14:36), His Omniscience ("Thy Father which seeth in secret," Matt. 6:4), His Eternity ("the glory that I had with Thee before the world was," John 17:5), and His Unchangeableness ("one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law," Matt. 5:18). And he is careful to show that the moral attributes are inseparable from the others:
Each attribute permeates and characterizes all the rest, so that our conception of God includes every attribute. We cannot think of Him as sacrificing one attribute for the exercise of another. His righteousness shines forth in His love, and His holiness is declared in His judgment, while His long-suffering and patience are manifested even in the final judgment of the ungodly.
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## God is Light
The Apostle John's first great revelation of God's nature is: "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). This speaks of absolute holiness -- perfect purity with no admixture of evil.
Hamilton Smith explains how this was revealed through Christ:
Hamilton SmithThe Apostles, as they looked upon Christ, saw the perfect revelation of all that God is. They saw the perfect purity of Christ, and they realised that God is light -- absolute holiness. They saw the perfect love of Christ, and they realised that God is love. These are the great truths that the Apostle presses in the course of the Epistle -- God is light and God is love (1 John 4:8). Life and light and love have been perfectly set forth in Christ.
He draws out a striking contrast with the Old Testament:
In the days of the Old Testament, God dwelt in thick darkness. Certain attributes of God were revealed, but His nature had not yet been declared. The full revelation of God awaited the coming of Christ. None but a divine Person could reveal a divine Person. Thus, when Christ became flesh, we read, "The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him" (John 1:18).
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William Kelly traces the practical implications of this truth:
William KellyThree things connect themselves with the message that God is light. (Vers. 5-7.)
1st, we walk in the light as He is in the light;
2nd, we have fellowship one with another;
3rd, we are cleansed from all (or, every) sin.
To walk in the light is another thing from walking according to the light. It is to walk in full day, in the clearness of the full revelation of what God is.
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## God is Love
The second foundational statement is: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). This is not merely that God acts lovingly, but that love is His very nature.
Hamilton Smith carefully distinguishes what this means:
Hamilton SmithGod is love, and God has acted in love toward us. Thus there is a twofold motive for loving one another. Firstly, the very nature of God is love, and, being born of God, we partake of His nature. By loving one another, we give a practical proof that we are born of God and know God. If we have no love for the brethren, it would prove that we are strangers to God.
He then shows how this love was manifested -- not left as an abstract truth:
We have not only a statement that God is love, however true, but we have the manifestation of God's love toward us. In our unregenerate days we were dead to God and in our sins. In order that we might live and have our sins forgiven, God manifested His love toward us by sending "His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him" and, further, He "sent His Son a propitiation for our sins."
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J.G. Bellett sums it up beautifully:
J.G. BellettBut "God is love" may account for it all. There the secret is told. If the manifestations are excellent and marvellous, the hidden springs which are opened in Himself give us to know it all.
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## The Names and Attributes of God
Morrish's Bible Dictionary provides a comprehensive survey of the names by which God has made Himself known: *El* ("the strong or mighty one"), *Elohim* (God the Creator, the supreme Deity), *Jehovah* (the name of relationship, derived from "to exist" -- "who is, who was, and is to come"), *Shaddai* ("the Almighty"), *Elyon* ("the Most High"), and *Adonai* ("Lord"). In the New Testament, the characteristic name becomes Father:
Morrish's Bible DictionaryThe characteristic name of God in the N.T. in relationship with His saints is that of FATHER: it was used anticipatively in the Lord's intercourse with His disciples, but made a reality after His resurrection, when He sent the message: "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." John 20:17.
The dictionary also lists fourteen principal attributes: eternity, invisibility, immortality, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, incorruptibility, immutability, wisdom, holiness, justice, grace and mercy, longsuffering, and faithfulness.
On the Trinity, Morrish writes:
The Father is God. The Lord Jesus is God. Isa. 9:6; Matt. 1:23; John 1:1; Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:6; Col. 2:9; 1 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 1:8. The Holy Spirit is God: "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Gen. 1:2. ... That there are three divine Persons (if we may so express it) is plain from scripture. ... There is but one God.
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## God Fully Revealed in Christ
The consistent testimony across all these writers is that God can only be fully known through the Person of His Son. J.N. Darby puts it with characteristic directness:
What God is is known in His being revealed in Man -- being a Man; for that was infinite love.
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And as the dictionary concludes:
God's eternal power and divinity may be known in creation, Rom. 1:20; but He has revealed Himself in the person of Christ, the Son, the eternal Word. God has been pleased also to reveal Himself in His written word. His purposes, His ways, and what He has done for sinful man, all demand universal reverence, adoration, and worship.
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So Scripture answers "What is God?" with three great declarations: God is spirit (John 4:24), telling us the essence of His being -- invisible, eternal, immaterial; God is light (1 John 1:5), declaring His absolute holiness and purity, in whom there is no darkness at all; and God is love (1 John 4:8), revealing the deepest character of His nature. These are not competing descriptions but one unified revelation: the God who is spirit is at the same time perfect in holiness and infinite in love. He exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- three divine Persons, yet one God. His attributes -- eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, faithfulness, grace -- all flow from this nature. And the supreme answer to the question came not in a formula but in a Person: the Son of God became man to make the Father known. As Hamilton Smith writes, "Life and light and love have been perfectly set forth in Christ."