No One Greater: The Attributes of God
Where We’ve Been
In 2022, we spent a decent amount of “church energy” engaged in self-assessment. Where are we strong? Where are we weak? Where do we need to grow?
Our “You Are Here” series was focused squarely on this task, and the discoveries we made during that series (especially regarding our weakness in making disciples) informed our emphases during the summer and fall.
The Value (And Danger) of Self-Reflection
That was an important exercise, because there is a place for such self-reflection! There’s a time to look in the mirror and conduct a sober analysis of what we see. However, if we stay there forever, our religion will eventually amount to mere navel-gazing as we become so inwardly focused that we forget the One around whom our lives are meant to orbit.
Where We’re Headed Now
For that reason, we are going to spend the first 21 weeks of 2023 lifting our gaze upward from the mirror to the heavens. We are going to look together to the God who made us and who rescued us from our plight. And in doing so, we hope to reorient our lives around Him at the blazing center.
We’ve titled the series “No One Greater: The Attributes of God.” While each sermon in the series will focus on one scriptural passage, we’ll necessarily have to draw from various scriptures each week to paint a picture of one (or more) of God’s “attributes” (sometimes called “perfections”): the qualities that belong to God.
What Are God’s Attributes?
God’s attributes aren’t parts that make up a whole. They aren’t conflicting components of his nature (as though he’s “more mercy than justice” and so mercy triumphs over justice). Rather, they are properties of God that are fitting for us to acknowledge because God has identified himself as such in scripture. They are different aspects of who God is, all of which describe him truly but none of which describes Him fully on its own.
We each have “favorites” among God’s attributes. We gravitate toward certain aspects of who He is, while we are less interested in (or less aware of!) other aspects of who He is. By studying a wide range of God’s attributes, as we are this winter/spring, we hope that our picture of God is brought into clearer focus – that we add nuance to our overly simplistic conceptions of Him, that we correct our distortions of his nature – and that by doing so, we commune with Him more intimately.
Many of us who have looked into God’s attributes have found JI Packer’s comment to be true:
“What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment than anything else? Knowledge of God.”
And yet we never exhaust what can be known of God! We never reach the limits of intimate knowledge of Him. So there’s good reason to hope that even those of us who have studied his attributes will grow in our connection with Him through this exploration.
Our List
Here’s the list of the attributes we plan to cover:
1/15 - The Knowability and Incomprehensibility of God
1/22 - The Holiness of God
1/29 - The Goodness of God
2/5 - The Righteousness and Justice of God
2/12 - The Mercy, Grace, and Patience of God
2/19 - The Omniscience of God
2/26 - The Omnipresence of God
3/5 - The Enternality and Infinitude of God
3/12 - The Sovereignty of God
3/19 - The Omnipotence of God
3/26 - The Immutability of God
4/2 - The Transcendence and Immanence of God
4/7 (Good Friday) - The Impassibility of God
4/9 (Easter) - The Living God
4/16 - The Love of God
4/23 - The Jealousy of God
4/30 - The Beauty of God
5/7 - The Truthfulness and Faithfulness of God
5/14 - The Self-Existence and Self-Sufficiency of God
5/21 - The Wisdom of God
5/28 - The Unity and Simplicity of God, as Shown at the Cross
There’s some truth in how AW Tozer said it:
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.
We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God.
While we might agree with CS Lewis in his quibble that how God thinks of us is actually more important than how we think of Him, most of us can see how Tozer’s words have worked themselves out in our own lives. Don’t we all move toward our mental image of God?
In the first months of 2023, let’s move toward an image of God that better reflects who He really is.
Reading to Accompany This Series
JI Packer, Knowing God
AW Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy
Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God
Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God
Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God