by Earl L. Martin CONTENTS Chapter 1. Concerning God and His Revelation of Himself Chapter 2. Concerning Man and His Predicament Chapter 3. Concerning Christ and His Redemptive Work Chapter 4. Concerning Christian Experience and Life Chapter 5. Concerning the Church and Its Mission Chapter 6. Concerning the Assured Hope for the Future Chapter 1 Concerning God and His Revelation of Himself… “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb. 11:6). God is. “In the beginning God” (Gen. 1:1). This the Bible proclaims in the very first verse. This and more we truly believe; this and more we joyfully proclaim. God is that supreme eternal Being upon whom all else that is absolutely depends. He is the Being who alone truly is—totally and eternally underived. He is the One without whom nothing else would be, even as someone has put it: “God minus the world equals God; the world minus God equals nothing.” He is the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The Bible assumes it. Reason demands it. Faith affirms it. Experience proves it. Life demonstrates it. Love shouts it aloud. God “is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” God is a God who takes a present personal interest in all that concerns us. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is a God who knows, feels, speaks, listens, loves, and acts; One whom we can know, talk to, listen to, love, worship, serve, obey, and proclaim to the world. The idea of God and the truth about God are the greatest thoughts of which we are capable. Knowing that this is true, and knowing that all the issues of a man’s life are bound up in his concepts of God, we need to consider the words of J. H. Jowett, “The most tremendous thing you can give to others is their idea about God. If you give them a wrong idea, you may blight their lives, but if you give them a right one they may just leap into love at first sight and enjoy Him and what is right to the end of their days.” Furthermore, this we believe and this we proclaim, that God has made and still makes himself known to men. He has revealed himself in many ways. It is his very nature to disclose and manifest himself. It is to this revelation of himself as recorded in the Bible that we shall go for the main materials of our study. In this first chapter we shall consider: (1) Why we believe God is; (2) What is God like?; (3) The works of God. Why We Believe God is… “God is.” This truth was introduced in the first paragraph and acceptance of it is the irreducible minimum if man is to find God. The Bible does not attempt to prove the existence of God; it begins by assuming the fact. Reason does not prove God, but there are reasons for believing in God. An Intuitive Idea… Man is a believing being. Belief in a higher power or person is intuitive—one of those basic facts of existence. Belief in a power beyond and not of ourselves is basic in human thought. We do not originate the idea of God; we just come upon it. It is there; we cannot in reality and in fact get away from it. The idea of God is a part of the basic equipment of the race. Man has a capacity for belief in God. This basic belief in a higher power is, in fact, an expression of man’s whole nature, which can be but imperfectly rationalized and expressed. Belief arises from the fact that man was made “in the image of God,” and God is within as well as without. We come upon Him everywhere, and especially do we meet him within—in consciousness. God Has Revealed Himself… There is within man that which makes him capable of receiving a revelation of God, of knowing God. It is in the very nature of God to make himself known to man whom he has created with the capacity to know him. God has made himself known to man in the processes of nature, of history, and of experience. This self-disclosure of God is a part of our social inheritance as well as of our personal experience. God Left Not Himself Without Witness… Life brings to us many evidences that God is. There is much in the world, in history, and in life, which may seem to deny God, but “nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). Again Romans 1:20 reminds us, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” And if they were without excuse, how much more we, living as we do in this dispensation of light. The universe witnesses to Him. Everywhere in nature you will find God. Look at the world, with its law and order, and you will have to admit that there is power and purposeful activity, which means intelligence and a purposive being. The universe cannot be the result of chance or blind force or chemical action and interaction. This universe did not cause itself. No other answer to what would otherwise be an unsolvable riddle can be found than that in the first verse of the first chapter of the Book of Beginnings, “In the beginning God” (Gen. 1:1). In systematic theology this appeal to order in the universe is called the cosmological argument for the existence of God, or the argument from the cause of the cosmos or universe. Design and orderly purpose witness to Him. We see everything in the world moving in orderly fashion. God was not only in the beginning its Creator, but his hand continues to be seen. The mountains still stand, the valleys are not filled up, rivers still run to the sea. The heavens have not fallen; there is still blue in the sky and warmth in the sun. The sun still comes up every morning at its appointed time, never a split second late. Season still follows season with resistless regularity. “Surely God is in this place,” and we proclaim it, for “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). Jesus made large use of this revelation of God in nature, seeing him in the “lilies of the field” and in everything, everywhere. Spiritual ideals and values witness to Him. In spite of the evil and hate in the world, these are not ultimate. Sometimes it seems the world is in moral and spiritual chaos. But the laws operating in the moral and spiritual realm are as immutable and dependable as are those which operate in the material universe. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” is even truer in morals than it is in agriculture. Holiness or right is still stronger than sin or wrong. Truth will outlive error. Goodness will triumph over evil. Love will be marching on and winning long after the forces of hate have spent themselves and gone back to the pit whence they came. God will save if you will have it so, but the same God will bring judgment on hate and every evil passion. Put more simply, this means that we have a witness to God in these values and forces, moral and spiritual, and we cannot see them operate without proclaiming that “God is.” History witnesses to Him. God’s work in the world of men gives testimony to the fact that he is. History is the story of his work with man. The Bible is a special part of that history. But it is not all the story, for all history is His story. God is and always has been at work in the human process and is working out his purpose in the race which he created. This does not mean that all that has happened has been according to his will, but that he has made even that which is contrary to his purpose somehow work toward his ultimate purpose. God may be thwarted but he cannot ultimately be defeated. Sometimes within the stream of human life and history, and sometimes seeming to cut across the stream, but always in the stream, God is at work. History is the record of a struggle, but God is in the struggle, and he is always fighting on the side of right, and in the end he will win. Our fellow men witness to Him. History is simply the lengthened shadow of men. God has always worked with men, and the record of that work is history. God works in the lives of men today, changing, transforming, lifting life, giving it direction and meaning, and as fast as this happens it becomes history. Your own life witnesses to Him. Your intelligence, your judgment, your will, your emotions, your conscience, your moral and spiritual nature, all witness to Him. And more than all that, you may know him by faith in personal experience. Your whole being longs for God; your heart hungers for him; your spirit thirsts for him; your soul pants for him as the hart pants for the water brook. You can find him, and when you find him you will know him and never let him go. Jesus Christ supremely witnesses to Him. Jesus came into the world to reveal God to us even as he said “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). “God with us” (Matt. 1:23) the angel said his name would be. “God was manifest in the flesh” (I Tim. 3:16), declared the great Apostle. Jesus is the supreme manifestation of God in human history. He was God’s “deed,” God’s “act,” in time and history. Except for the fact of God, Jesus is the world’s unaccountable man. The writer of the letter to the Hebrew Christians makes this most clear, and Goodspeed in his translation has made it most emphatic: “It was little by little and in different ways that God spoke in old times to our forefathers through the prophets, but in these latter days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he had destined to possess everything, and through whom he had made the world. He is the reflection of God’s glory, and the representation of his being” (Heb. 1:1–3). We cannot account for this matchless One except on the basis of God. This we most surely believe, and this we most urgently proclaim. The Bible as the Record of God’s Revelation… We have noted God’s general revelation of himself to man in nature. The Bible is a record begun in the very dawn of human history as God manifested himself and his will in nature, in history, and to the minds and hearts of men, even by supernatural intervention in the lives and in the stream of history. This revelation reaches its climax in Jesus Christ. But back of his coming was a long series of events which forms the history of the chosen people of the Old Testament, following which is the record of events concerning the church, along with the story of Christ in the New Testament. All of this the Bible sets forth as being of supreme significance, and we accept the Bible, therefore, as “God’s self-revelation par excellence. Concerning this record of God’s revelation of himself, there are a number of points that you may want to consider in passing. Revelation is progressive. God has revealed himself as man has been prepared to receive His revelations. That man knows so little about God, even today, is due not to any limitations in God but in man. The Old Testament shows us God preparing Israel as his servant and advancing His own purpose in the face of every obstacle until its triumphant culmination is reached in Jesus Christ. Again it must be emphasized that Christ stands at the center of this unveiling of God. When we put Christ at the center, the meaning of the Bible becomes clear. Thus we read the Bible as a record of God’s workings, each stage of the process determined not by the character of God, which is always the same, but by the capacity of man’s mind to understand the character of God. The Bible was written by inspiration. Revelation is God’s impartation of the truth concerning himself; illumination is the divine quickening of man’s being, so as to enable him to apprehend the truth which God revealed; inspiration is the quickening of man’s functions, enabling him to communicate this truth. We speak of the Bible as being the “inspired” Word of God; so speaks the Bible itself. As we read these inspired writings, God gives illumination to our minds, and we comprehend, and the knowledge of God comes to us; hence the Bible is a revelation of God to mankind. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” (II Tim. 3:16). To link inspiration with revelation and illumination, we must quote the rest of Paul’s statement: “And is profitable for doctrine, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Inspiration, in the Greek, literally means “God-breathed.” Man, “inbreathed” by the Divine Spirit, wrote what God had revealed, even as “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (II Pet. 1:21). In the Bible there comes to us a revelation which makes the Bible a unique book; it is the only one of its kind; there is none other like it. It brings to us a revelation of God like that which God gave to Paul: “By revelation he made known unto me the mystery … which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of man, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:3–5). This “mystery” is made clear in “the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 3:15). Thus we take the Bible “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God” (I Thess. 2:13); and thus we boldly proclaim that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). In and through the Bible we find God. In and through the Bible we find ourselves. It brings us face to face with the truth as it is in Jesus. The scope of the Bible’s authority exactly coincides with the scope of the Bible’s purpose, which is the redemption of man. What Is God Like? We approach the answer to this question “What is God like?” recognizing the limitations of human knowledge and the difficulty of discussing the Divine Being in terms of human words and human thought. The recognition of these limitations should deter us from dogmatism, and yet it should not keep us from affirming and proclaiming what we believe. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever” (Deut. 29:29). And the things which belong to us, we positively affirm and boldly declare. Defining God… Since God is limitless it is evident that there can be no full definition of him. Yet we can put into words our limited knowledge of him, and try to say what both our head and our heart tell us is true. We can make great affirmations and great declarations upon the basis of God’s revelations of himself in his self-disclosures to man. The word God means different things to different people, but we are here concerned with the Christian concept of God based upon what the Bible says about him. Christian thinkers have phrased definitions such as this: “There is but one living and true God, who is a Spirit, everlasting, of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. In this unity of the Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and authority, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” The so-called Apostle’s Creed puts it, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” The Christian faith is that there is an infinite Person whom men ought to worship, who holds such relations to men that He is best described as Father; who is beyond the world and yet within it; and who reveals himself in nature, in the experiences of men, and supremely in Jesus Christ. Most definitions are too formal and cold to satisfy the Christian who wants to proclaim Him to others in some such declaration as “God is the loving heavenly Father whom Jesus revealed and of whom he taught”; or even more simply, “God is our Father.” The Attributes of God… By the attributes of God we mean those characteristics which we ascribe to him to indicate what he is in the essence of his being as he has revealed himself to men. Essence is precisely what a thing or person is. We cannot say what God is in the very essence of his Being, except in terms of unity, trinity, spirit, etc. But God has made known many of his characteristics in his dealings with man and in his messages to mankind. No effort at comprehensiveness will be made here. God is one. He is a single and unitary being—the only one of his kind; he is one in the wholeness and harmony of his being. “The Lord he is God; there is none else beside him” (Deut. 4:35). “There is one God” (I Tim. 2:5). To a world of gods many and lords many, we want to cry, “Hear, O World, ‘The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might’ ” (Deut. 6:4–5). God is a personal Spirit. “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24). He is “the Father of spirits” (Heb. 12:9). By this we understand at least that he is not a material being. By personal we mean a being capable of self-consciousness and self-decision, or a being who is capable of functioning intelligently, emotionally, and volitionally—a being who thinks, feels, and wills. Personality does not necessarily involve physical being, therefore, we speak of God as a personal Spirit. God is eternal. God is the eternally self-existent one. God is not a being of time, hence we speak of him as infinite, as over against man who is a time creature, or finite. He is the “high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity” (Isa. 57:15), and we proclaim, “From everlasting to everlasting, thou are God” (Ps. 90:2). God is invisible. “No man hath seen God at any time” (John 1:18). Of course he was manifested in Jesus as this same verse goes on to say. God is almighty. Another way of saying this is to say he is omnipotent, or all-powerful. “I am the almighty God” (Gen. 17:1). “The Lord God omnipotent reigneth” (Rev. 19:6). “With God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). “There is nothing too hard for thee” (Jer. 32:17). God can do all things that are the objects of power. His power is always a personal power, not blind force. He can do all that he needs to do for the accomplishment of his purpose which is sovereign and spiritual. He can do all things that are in harmony with the law of his being—all that his love and wisdom call him to do. God is omniscient. He knows all and sees all. Nothing is hidden from him. “Great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147:5). “Your Father knoweth” is the way Jesus stated it. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13). God is omnipresent. We believe that space is no hindrance to God, for God is Spirit, everywhere present to know and to do according to his will. I can never be beyond his reach. “I only know I cannot drift beyond his love and care,” for he has promised, “Lo, I am with you alway.” We can rest on that. That we can proclaim. We can and must tell men that they cannot escape God. “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into the heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me” (Ps. 139:7–10). God is unchangeable. We sometimes say he is immutable. This does not mean that God is a static and not an active, dynamic Being, but that he is unchangeable in his nature, in his purposes, and motives for action. His power does not fluctuate. “I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal. 3:6). He is “the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jas. 1:17). He is not a being of moods or whims, nor is he subject to caprice. I can depend on him to act always in harmony with his nature, or character. God is holy. He himself declares it, “I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). Seraphim declare it: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:3). The emphasis of the whole Bible is upon the fact of the moral supremacy and moral majesty of God—the God of ineffable light and effulgent glory. He is a being of absolute moral perfection, just and perfect in all his ways. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). Light is a symbol of purity. God is just. “Just and right is he” (Deut. 32:4). “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne” (Ps. 89:14). “Just and true are thy ways” (Rev. 15:3). God is light and God is love, but also “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). He will be absolutely fair to all. His judgments are never arbitrary, for sin brings its own judgment and its own condemnation. God is merciful. This attribute of God is not set over against justice, but is used to ascribe to God a love for the unworthy. If you want to read twenty-six statements of this fact of Divine revelation, read the endings of the twenty-six verses of Psalm 136. It is this mercy which leads to forgiveness. “The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exod. 34:6–7). God is love. Love is the dynamic of God’s being—of all his attributes. “God is love” (I John 4:8, 16). Love is God’s abiding attitude toward men. It is God’s essential nature to love. It is love’s essential nature to give: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Was ever such love as that! God is our Father. Could we conclude this section on what God is like better than by saying that he is “our Father”? This also is a summarization of all the moral characteristics of God. Holy love is the supreme characteristic of this Father. This idea was not altogether foreign to Old Testament thought. Isaiah spoke of it in 63:16, “Doubtless thou art our Father.” Malachi has a passage, “Have we not all one Father?” (2:10). However, it remained for Jesus and the New Testament to give the idea full meaning. First of all God is “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:6). He is the “Father of light” (Jas. 1:17). He is the “Father of spirits” (Heb. 12:9). Most of all he is “our Father” who, “of his own will begat … us with the word of truth” (Jas. 1:18) through Christ, for “as many as received him, to them gave he power to become sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12–13). This ties in with the attribute of love, for “behold what love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” (I John 3:1). Therefore, “we cry, Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). God as Trinity… The doctrine of the Trinity, namely, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons of one essence is not merely the outcome of men’s speculation. The doctrine grew out of the necessity of giving a rational explanation of the Christian experience of God in Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit. Such Bible statements as the baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19: “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”; and the apostolic benediction in II Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all,” are one basis of the doctrinal concept of one God but three persons. Divine attributes ascribed to one are ascribed to the other persons of the Godhead. The concept of God as a trinity came as a result of the activity of God and not as a baffling philosophical puzzle. It is not a mathematical formula but a religious one. The early Christians, with a background of belief in one God, came to experience and think of Jesus as God, for God made himself known to them in Jesus. Before Jesus went away he had promised to send the Holy Spirit. Then the Spirit came and the disciples experienced him as the indwelling personal presence of God. So, as Christians, we are in fellowship with God in Christ, and we do the Father’s will in the companionship of the Son and in the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. This we believe, and this we proclaim. The Works of God… We will here consider what we believe and what we proclaim concerning the mighty works of God our Father, including his creative activity, his providential work, both in nature and in history. His work in redemption will be reserved for another chapter. In Creation… God not only is, but he is the cause and preserver of all that is. We are concerned with the creative work of God not only because the record of it is the only satisfactory account of the origin of things and of man but also because it helps us to understand the nature of God, gives spiritual insight into the universe in which we live and proclaims the proper relation between God and mankind. God’s redemptive activity, as recorded in the Bible, was possible only on the basis of the fact that he created man. When we say that God is the Creator we mean that “God is the maker of heaven and earth, and all that dwell therein.” “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1). “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (1:26). This shows God not only as the Primal Cause, but as the personal Creator of man as a person. That God is Creator is the basis for the New Testament teaching concerning God’s new creation. God is our Creator; herein is our hope. Something went wrong after God had made man in his own image. Came the fall. Came God’s redemptive, re-creative activity. Now “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (II Cor. 5:17). The divine image may be restored when we “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. 4:24). In Natural Providence… The concept of Divine Providence is not so much a doctrine as a way of thinking about God. It is our way of saying that the God who created pervades and sustains that which he created. It is our way of saying that the laws of nature are the laws of God. These laws are not the working of blind force but of personal power. “With all due allowance for the inherent forces in nature, yet it may be held in a very real sense that God clothes the grass of the field and feeds the fowls of the air. His directing agency permeates all his works” (Byrum, in Christian Theology). It is belief in the continuing activity of God which enables us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” This we believe, and this we proclaim: This supreme God works through the ordinary processes of nature, and when necessary for the accomplishment of his purposes he works in extraordinary ways, which we call supernatural or miraculous. Whether natural or supernatural, it is all the working of God. In History… It is the Christian faith that we serve a God who is able to make “all things work together for good to those who love God,” to use the words of Paul’s exultant affirmation. God has a purpose for the race he created. His purpose is redemptive. He will accomplish that purpose. He is now accomplishing it. In the end he will be victorious. He will accomplish it in spite of all that would hinder. God’s purpose may be hindered, but it can never be defeated. God is at work to save the world, but if the world will not be saved, then he is at work to judge the world. History gives abundant proof of the reality of the moral order. And where in all history shall we look for sterner proof of this truth than in the life—and—death struggle that grips the nations today? The chaos, the tyranny, the despair, the folly of greed and war—surely our day should need no other or better proof of what happens when God is left out. It is a stern reminder that we live in a world where wrong will not work. For nation, for community, for individual, “the wages of sin is death.” Summary: God is the supreme giver of life. Upon him all the issues of life depend. He is not a problem to be solved but a Person to be loved and served. He is an object, not merely for discussion and debate, but for devotion. All of this means that it is important to us what we believe about God. All this means that it is important to others what we proclaim about God. Our faith is faith in a living God, in whom, and in whom alone, are hope, security, and salvation now and forever. Our faith is in God, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “our Father.” Possibly the highest thought we can have concerning God is that he is a Christlike God. For here we are affirming not merely theism, but Christian theism. Take any of the evidences of God’s existence, any analysis of his attributes, any listing of his works in creation and history, and think of them in the light of the nature, character, and works of Christ, and you will be helped to see God in his true meaning. Can we not conclude this chapter with a declaration? This we believe, this we proclaim: God is over all—the Father whom we utterly trust, and to whom we give our lives in devotion; God is through all—through Jesus Christ supremely, and through everyone who opens his life to Him through Jesus; God is in all—the directing, empowering, sanctifying Spirit, making the Father and the Son real to us, reproducing in us the life of God, calling and sending us out to declare to all “the unsearchable riches” in that family of God which is his church; “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” This material has a copyright. For further information, contact us at: "omifren@zoominternet.net" NOTE: ALSO AVAILABLE IN BOOK FORM FROM: Reformation Publishers 222 University Drive P.O. Box 276 Prestonsburg, KY 41653-0276 Reformation Publishers Orders... 1-800-765-2464 Information... 1-606-886-7222 Fax... 1-606-886-8222 Email... rpublisher@aol.com