One time a lady said to me “the god I know wouldn’t send people to hell if they didn’t believe in Jesus” and I said “well that’s because the god you know doesn’t exist”. The truth is that there is only One true God and He is the God of the Bible. Other gods and beliefs are either man made lies of deception or demonic induced lies of deception, both equally worthless and deadly. In the case of the lady, she made up her own god in the image of what she wanted to believe. It made her feel good to ponder the god she made, since her god didn’t hold her accountable to live a perfect moral life. Yet, how foolish it is to create and worship a god that conforms to our image when we are created by the One and Only True God to be conformed into His image. In other words, we are the ones created by God with the intent that we will choose to be conformed into the image of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, in order that we will become the person God created us to be.
However, because we are born Spiritually disconnected from God (with a sin nature) we naturally misappropriate the use of our God given abilities for our own glory instead of God’s glory. Therefore, we must be “born again” by Christ Jesus in order to be Spiritually connected to God (reconciled to God) so we can be lead by the Holy Spirit of God, to do God’s will, which is to be conformed into the image of His Son and ultimately glorify God Himself! We must be born again in order to obtain the eternal good life that is found in Christ otherwise when we die physically, we will remain Spiritually disconnected from God and we be cast into the lake of fire to be tormented by our sin forever. Ultimately, the more a born again believer understands about God, the more that believer will understand who God created them to be. OK, so let’s get started.
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Here are the attributes of God that we do NOT share with Him and we never will:
I have tried to define the attributes that apply to God alone and those that we share with God and make us godlike because we are made in Him image. In some cases the attribute is distinctly something only God has and we can never have or even share a part of it. For instance, we can never be self-existence, since God created us but we do share His an eternal attribute, in that we are have an eternal soul and existence after we are created by God. We can receive and display God’s power through us but we are not all-powerful like God. We are not the source of power, this belongs to God alone but we can use His power to do His will. We can never be all-knowing but we can know some things. We are supposed to learn from God and be ever learning from God, yet God does not learn because He is all knowing. We can never be present everywhere at the same time but we are present somewhere at any one time. God doesn’t change but we can be changed into His unchangeable image. God is sovereign over all, but we can reign and rule with Him, this is His promise to those who believe. We are not three persons like God but we are one person made up of three parts; body, soul and spirit.
1) Self-existent – God is uncaused, uncreated and non-temporal (which means He has no beginning). He has always existed and He always exists and He always will exist. He is the Word, the Alpha and the Omega, the begging and the end and everything in between. Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM“; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.‘”
2) Omnipotent – God is all-powerful, all-mighty, infinite, unlimited in what He can do. He made the world and everything in it from nothing. He spoke and it came into existence. Genesis 1:3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God created life and sustains life. Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. God is able to do what we call “a miracle”, such as suddenly make a blind man see or send fire from heaven and totally consume a sacrifice offered to Him. Yet, really everything God does is a miracle, in that God created everything from nothing and He sustains everything by His power that we don’t understand. And the physical world, that we tend to take for granted as though it is sustained by the laws of nature that have no master, are in fact are controlled by God. God supplies the power and order that maintains and sustains the laws of nature, yet He is also is able to “change the laws of nature”, like the time God cause the Sun to stay in the sky for a 24 hour period so Israel could defeat it’s enemies (Joshua 10:13).
3) Omniscient – God is all-knowing. He knows everything. He is the real Mr. Peabody. God knows what is going to happen before it happens because He sees the end to the beginning. There is nothing new to God and nothing surprises Him, even when we do a crazy stunt that begins with “hey, watch this”. God’s ability to “know all” that is going to happen is NOT because He predetermines “all” that is going to happen. God did predetermined a way for His Son, Jesus Christ to be born and provide salvation for man but God does not predetermine who is going to be saved. Each man has free choice to accept or reject the offer of salvation and eternal life in Jesus Christ. Even if all men were to reject Christ, He still would have come to earth and died on the cross for each man’s sin. “Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’ Isaiah 46:9-10
4) Omnipresent – God is all-present, everywhere at the same time. God is outside of the time constraint that we live in, therefore He is always ready waiting to fellowship with us when we turn to Him and He always has time to listen to our prayers and concerns. Psalm 139:1-2 “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar.” Psalm 139:7-10 “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me” . And better yet. for the believer, God is always with us because He lives in the believer’s heart. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.
5) Immutable – God is unchangeable. He does not change for the better and He does not change for the worse, God does not change. He is perfect and there is no change that will make Him better. God has always been perfect and He will always be perfect. What God says is true, it has always been true and it will always be true. Numbers 23:19 “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” God does not lie or change His mind. You can trust what He says will come to pass. This is why you need to read God’s word, not just to know what you should do or what you should not do but to take hold of His promises for what He will do.
Three Things God Can’t Do
- He cannot lie.
- He cannot learn.
- He cannot force you to love Him.
Four Things God Doesn’t Know
- He doesn’t know a sin He doesn’t hate.
- He doesn’t know a sinner He doesn’t love.
- He doesn’t know an alternate path to His Throne but through His son.
- He doesn’t know a better time to accept Him than now!
6) Sovereign – God is Lord of all. Psalm 24:1 “The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains, The world, and those who dwell in it..” God has made everything for His pleasure and He has the power and authority to do whatever He pleases. God has a plan and His will, will be done. Even the sin and rebellion of Satan, the Fallen Angels and man is “allowed’ by God’s Sovereign will. God allows sin to persist and have it’s way “for a time” but every sin will be accounted for and paid for, either by the blood of Jesus for those who put their trust in Him or paid for the blood of the unbeliever who will not only die physically but will also die Spiritually, eternally separated from God and tormented in the lake of fire. And before Satan, the fallen angels and the unbelievers are cast into the lake of fire, every one of them will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, not in repentance for what they have done but in acknowledgement that God has the right to judge them because by their free will they reject Him and do not want God to rule and reign over their life. In contrast, every believer will also bow their knee and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord but they will do it with joy and thanksgiving because they are free from the sin that enslaved them and they are free to love their creator, the King of Kings who rules and reigns in their heart, to give them peace, love and joy! Philippians 2:10-11 “so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” And although God is all powerful and able to do anything He wants to do, He does not do that which is illogical, such as create a stone so big He can’t lift it. And God does not do that which conflicts with His other attributes or His word. For instance, God does not force a person to love Him and believe in His Son, Jesus Christ and He does not send a person to eternal suffering in the lake of fire, if that person believes in His Son, Jesus Christ.
7) Three persons – God is really a “God-head”, three persons in One, the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God is not three personalities but three persons that have the same personality, essence and attributes described above but they perform different functions within the God-head. Genesis 1:26 “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Some have likened the God-head to a government, where God the Father is the “Legislative Branch”, creating the rules of righteousness, and God the Son is the “Executive Branch”, proclaiming and establishing the rules of righteousness and God the Holy Spirit is the “Judicial Branch”, convicting and enforcing the rules of righteousness. Or some have likened God the Father as the “Lover” and God the Son as the “Beloved” and God the Holy Spirit as “love itself”. As with Intelligence, there must first be the “idea” of what to creation, which comes from God and then there must be the manifestation of the idea which comes from the Son and there must be the power to manifest the idea and sustain the idea, which comes from the Holy Spirit. All three elements are necessary for life, without an idea for life, there is no life, without a manifestation of the idea, there is no life and without power to manifest and sustain the idea, there is no life. There is no perfect analogy to explain the Trinity but the best one I have heard is from Norman Gisler who said the God-head is like an equal-lateral triangle. It has three equal angles, yet three “distinct” angles that make “One” triangle.
Here are the attributes of God that we DO share with Him:
Though we share the following attributes with God, we do not however enjoy the full blessing from having these attributes in us at this present time. We are born as an unbelievers, our Spiritual self is disconnected from God, which causes us to misappropriate the use of our Godly attributes. Instead of judging with righteous judgement, we judge by appearance. This is called missing the mark, or sin. We sin because we are sinner, rebels who want our own way. We are disconnected from God at birth because Adam and Eve sinned first in the garden of Eden and that problem and penalty of their sin is passed down to the whole human race. It is not our fault that we are born sinners Spiritually disconnected from God. The fault is that we don’t acknowledge our sinfulness, that we are rebels to the authority of our Creator and we have a broken connection to God. Now if your TV suddenly lost the connection to the TV station you would instantly know it. But because we are born with a broken connection to God, it is more difficult for us to detect the disconnect problem. This is not an excuse, it’s plenty obvious enough, but not as obvious as it was for Adam and Eve who immediately recognized they were naked before God after they sinned. In our Spiritually disconnected state from God we are still able to recognize the awesomeness of Creation, the decay that is acting upon it and the cause of this decay, which is sin.
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20
Man is therefore without excuse for failing to acknowledge God and repent from sin so he can be reconciled with God. When we become a born again believer in Jesus Christ, we reconnect our Spiritual self to God. This awakens our Spiritual self and we start to become very aware of the sin we practiced and the sin all around us. There are many cases where some nagging sin in a life is immediately cured, like a withered hand is cured, when a person becomes a believer. This is the miracle work that God does for a believer when they are saved, however, not every area of your life will be suddenly cured of sin. Your old sin self will still be present in you trying to tempt you to sin but your new Spiritual self is connected to God and able to be called on to defeat your old sin self. You become a battleground inside, the more you die to the old sin self and feed upon the new Christ Spiritual self, the holier and happy you become.
The point I am trying to make is that depending on whether you are an unbeliever, a born again believer on earth or if you are believer that has gone to Heaven, then you will have different amounts of God’s Spirit abiding within you. The unbeliever has “none”, the believer on earth has “some” and the believer in heaven as “fun”. But though as believers in Heaven we will have the fullness of God’s presence and holiness within us, we will not have the fullness of God’s knowledge, power and ability. God will always have the right to rule and reign over us because we are “created” and He is the “Creator”. Even His eternal attribute is beyond ours, in that He existed before time and our eternal existence is sustained in Him. God’s eternal existence is not dependent on anything else. Yes, it’s mind blowing, beyond our comprehension … or He wouldn’t be God!
1) Eternal – We are created with an eternal soul, having a beginning (temporal) when we were conceived in the womb but having no end, Matthew 25:46 “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” God is eternal having no beginning (non-temporal) and having no end (see attribute 1 above) . Frankly though even our beginning is a mystery, not our birth date but the date when we were born in the mind of God. For God knew us before we were conceived in the womb. Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
2) Moral – We are created as moral beings, knowing right from wrong. God means for us to do what is morally right and be holy like Him. However, we can not achieve holiness apart from God, we must be born again by the Spirit of God to have His power to overcome our sin nature and practice the holiness of God.
3) Sense of Humor – We are created with a sense of humor like God. Most people don’t think of God laughs in heaven but for Him to use the weakness of men to show his strength display God’s sense of humor to the world. And have you ever looked at a giraffe and wondered if that made God chuckle. Psalm 59:8 “But You, O LORD, laugh at them; You scoff at all the nations.“
4) Loving – We are created to love and be loved but in our sinful condition we try to obtain love and give love that satisfies our sinful desires. We are created by God to find satisfaction and joy by giving love to other, however before we can give love we must first receive the love of Christ, who sacrificed His life in love for us.
5) Creative – We are created to be creative, to solve problem, and help others in order to demonstrate the love of God that is found in Christ Jesus.
6) Wise – We are created to learn and be more like God who is all knowing. We will never be all knowing but we are to be all learning, always learning from our Heavenly Father. We are created to reason and judge and reign and rule with Christ.
7) A body – We are created with the body that God has chosen for Himself for all eternity, i.e. His Son, Jesus Christ. And one day believers will have a new resurrected body, like the body that Jesus had after He was resurrected from the grave. A body that looks similar to our earthly body but it does not ever decay or grow old. Our resurrected body will not need to eat or drink but we can enjoy the pleasure of eating and drinking through it. It will not grow tired but we can enjoy the pleasure of sleeping through it. It will not need to walk in order to travel through space but we can enjoy the pleasure of walking on earth and in the new Jerusalem. It will not need to talk to communicate with others but we can enjoy the pleasure of talking and singing and praising God. I think in our resurrected body we will be able to recognize and be reunited with our family and friends. Plus we will enjoy fellowship with believers from the past, maybe we will even have the ability to enjoy playing a round of golf with Moses and Elijah on the new earth. And I think we will be able to enjoy all the plants and animals on the new earth that we enjoy now, plus some that we have never seen like Dinosaurs and Dragons. I even think that on the new earth we will recognize and be reunited with family pet animal that we know and love now.
These are attributes of man that we do NOT share with God:
1) Free Will – We are created with free will to either choose Jesus as our Savior or die in our sin. If we choose by grace through faith to believe in Jesus, then as a believer we have the free will to choose to trust and obey God’s will by grace through faith or decide to live according to our sin nature (a most unpleasant experience for the believer). For the believer in heaven, we will still have a free will but since we no longer have a sin nature we will only desire to choose God’s will. For the unbeliever burning in the lake of fire, he will continue to have a free will but since his heart is hardened beyond forgiveness he will only choose to sin and curse God, even as he declares that Jesus Christ is Lord. God does not have a free will or need a free will. He has no one greater than Himself to choose from. God “perfect or sovereign will” governs and fulfills all other wills. Read this article about God’s “predestined will” to provide a Savior for man and read this article about God’s “preferred will” to desire salvation for man and provide guidance for man and God’s “permissive will” which allows men and Angels to disobey God.
2) Time – We are created in time for time but God is outside of time. We enjoy God’s new mercies every morning but God is the supplier of each new morning and the mercies therein.
3) Worship – We are created by God to praise and worship Him but God has no one greater than Himself to worship.
4) Sin nature – We are are sinners because we are born Spiritually disconnected from God. This is a condition we inherited from our parents, Adam and Eve. Sin is a decision of the free will of a created beings that is contrary to the will of it’s Creator. God hates sin and He cannot sin. God is not the author of sin because sin is not a created thing but it is the decision of a created being to destroy what God has created.
