Who is God?

The greatest word that can pass human lips is GOD—GOD from all eternity to all eternity, uncreated, self-sustained, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, THE MIGHTY CREATOR and SUSTAINER, the One in whom we live, and move, and have our being.

The plural word Elohim, is followed by a singular verb... We have here the first intimation of the Godhead as Trinity—Father, Son and Spirit, yet One God.

Its meaning is, He, that always was, that always is, that always will be, the Eternal.

There are two words applied to God, which reveal His nature—Love and Light—and only these two. They affirm what He is in nature—not any attribute... Attributes are relative; hence God, who is absolute, cannot be spoken of as being the attribute itself.

God suffices to Himself, and goodness makes Him infinitely happy in Himself.

God in Himself is absolutely Love and Light—the last expressing perfect purity (invisible in itself), and manifesting everything as it is before God.

The Bible only contains two subjects—what man is, and what God is... man is hate; and God, as set forth in Christ, is love.

When the word of God speaks of what He is absolutely in His nature, one word describes it, and that word is LOVE. Love is of God, and consequently the love that fills our hearts has come down into them, through the Lord Jesus Christ, from that blessed and sovereign source.

"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 that His death might become an *accomplished fact*. Grace reigns "through righteousness."

God has revealed Himself as love and as light. He is of course righteous and holy; but we never read that God is righteousness or holiness, whereas we do read that "God is love," and that "God is light."

Scripture reveals what God is in Himself, 'God is love' (used absolutely), 1 John 4:8; and 'God is light' (used relatively, in opposition to darkness), 1 John 1:5; and Christ is the expression of both in a Man.

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.

Love being essential to the Godhead, because "God is love," love has neither beginning nor ending. Because God is eternal, love is eternal. Before there was a creature to be loved, "God is love." But that love in the past eternity required an object. A love that is inert, dormant, a mere abstraction, has no affinity with the love of God. Love must love, and love another.

Where, then, before the foundation of the world, did love find its necessary and worthy object? The Uncreated Son Himself supplies the answer: "Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). Within the circle of the Godhead love was always all-pervading.

The Father is God. The Lord Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God... That there are three divine Persons is plain from scripture. The Father sent the Son, and He came to earth. The Father sent the Holy Spirit, and the Lord Jesus sent the Holy Spirit, and He came from heaven... There is but one God.

"Hear O Israel: the LORD [Jehovah, singular] our God [Elohim, plural] is one LORD [Jehovah, singular]." Here in this very majestic declaration of the Oneness of the Godhead, care is taken to state it consistently with the truth afterwards revealed concerning the Three Persons of the Godhead—Father, Son and Spirit. These Three Persons, of one Substance, completely united in thought, will, purpose, counsel, are not three Gods, but One God, not a tritheism, but a Holy Trinity.

In the New... He does not give a revelation, He is revealed. Hence, though of course the attributes remain true, it is not attributes which characterise it, but what He is—light and love... It is in the New Testament we find God revealed in Christ as light and love, and we, "light in the Lord," and partakers of the divine nature, have to walk in the light, and know, through the redemption that is in Christ, that perfect love that casts out fear.

It is to the cross we have to come for the perfect display of what God is. It was there in the death of His beloved Son that He told out all that He is, His righteousness against sin, His love in providing the sacrifice; yea, every divine attribute was displayed in the cross, and in all the perfection of their entire harmony because there every question of good and evil was for ever solved.