Meeting someone, spending time with him, and witnessing his life in action are all ways to get to know someone. With God, it’s the same. Because the stories in the Bible depict what God accomplished and values, they help us understand God better. You can encounter God not only via the Bible but also through prayer and worship, so what you know about Him is not merely intellectual understanding but rather a firsthand encounter. He guides you through life when you give Him your all. You relate to Him every day as your heavenly Father because you are His child. That’s the best approach to understand God’s nature.
God is spirit
According to the Bible, God is spirit (John 4:24). As a result, getting to know God is harder than getting to know someone else. After realizing this, God decided to take a drastic stand and become a man! According to Colossians 2:9, “the whole fullness of God dwells bodily” in Jesus Christ. Therefore, if we are still unsure about God’s nature, we can consider the life of Jesus. We can know God’s nature when we understand how Jesus is.
What then does the Bible say about God’s nature?
1. God is trustworthy
We don’t need to worry that God will change tomorrow if we learn to know who He is. According to Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” God [always fulfills His word]. Always.
2. God is love
According to 1 John 4:8, God is love. Jesus was rather explicit about that. He had affection for those rejected by society. He gave kids a hug. He asked the tax collectors who despised Him to come along. God cared more about spreading His love to prostitutes than He did about maintaining His reputation. And in this, Jesus perfectly embodies the love of His Father. God, after all, sent His one and only Son into the world so that everyone who believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).
3. God is righteous
Deuteronomy 32:4 states, “A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.” He detests injustice and lies and loves the truth and justice. Jesus exemplifies this flawless holiness when He asks, “Which one of you convicts me of sin?” (John 8:46).
4. God is holy
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the earth is full of His glory,” declares Isaiah 6:3. God is holy because of his glory, which separates him from sin. God and sin are incompatible. Sin is everything that is ugly, and God is all that is lovely. Jesus is referred to as “the Holy One of God” because He possesses the same holiness (John 6:69).
5. God is merciful
There is one very striking passage in which the Lord declares His own character. The Lord appears to Moses on the mountain, and the next thing we read in Exodus 34:6-7 is: “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’” Here we see all the aspects of God character that were mentioned above. But what is most stressed is God’s mercy in forgiving sinners. That is fulfilled in Jesus. In His mercy, God sent Jesus to die for our sins. If we believe in Jesus, God adopts us as His children.
We have a lifetime to learn more and more about God’s nature now that we are children of God. Truthfulness, affection, morality, purity, and kindness, however, unquestionably constitute the essence of God.
