God's Nature: Like Us

 

How many of you were excited when you saw that we would be doing a series on doctrine? To some people, doctrine sounds like a boring and impractical subject – the kind of thing that theologians sit around and debate academically. However, as Carl said at the beginning, it ought to be intensely practical and indeed vital to our Christian life: What do we actually believe and why? And what difference should it make to the way we live our lives day by day? How do we apply what the Bible teaches us? And how do we answer people who question our core beliefs?

So I actually love talking about doctrine. It can be a controversial subject, as you probably know. Devout and well-meaning believers have disagreed over several points of doctrine that are not clearly explained in the Bible. But these are not central to our understanding of who God is, what salvation means, and how we should live as followers of Jesus. We don’t need to be afraid of the areas where true Christians disagree. I really like the quote from Mark Twain: “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.” 

For some reason God has allowed some ambiguity on certain points, perhaps to keep us humble. Though the Bible was inspired by God, it was written by humans, and we are fallible humans reading it. No one can claim to understand all that God has revealed. We are constantly dependent on the Holy Spirit to bring the scriptures to life in our lives, applying the word to every situation that we find ourselves in. And we know that ultimately Jesus himself is the Word of God, as it says in John 1. All things were made through Him, as God spoke them into existence. Jesus is the “living word” by which we have been born again, as it says in 1 Peter 1:23.

So doctrine is an exciting subject because it refers to the process by which we make sense of and make practical what God has revealed to us. Actually, the only way we can know anything about God is through His revelation. By His nature, God is transcendent. What that means is that He exists outside of His creation, beyond the boundaries of the universe, quite apart from natural things. That’s why people who only believe in science have a hard time accepting the existence of God. God is not something or someone that you can put in a laboratory and study. You cannot apply the scientific method to God. There is certainly evidence that He exists, but that has to be accepted by faith. We cannot “prove” scientifically that He exists or that He does miracles or that He has given us eternal souls. And yet God is the only way that we can make sense of our lives, the only answer to the big “why” questions that science has no answer for. If we start with God, then everything else makes sense.

Last Sunday, John Bullard explained how God is different from us. He is “other.” He has attributes that we cannot fully understand or relate to because they are a part of His transcendence. For example, because we are locked into time we cannot fully comprehend what it means for God to be outside of time – for Him to already know everything that will happen in the future. Similarly, because we are weak and limited we cannot really relate to His perfect holiness, His perfect wisdom, His perfect love, and so on.

But God has to be transcendent. If he were imperfect or limited in some way, then He is really no different from us. People over the centuries have created all kinds of gods like that, gods that may have special powers but which cannot be trusted. These belief systems just end in despair, if you take them to their logical conclusion. Humans are at the mercy of whimsical gods or other forces in the universe and the best you can hope for is to appease them somehow. When people create gods, these are always unsatisfactory – limited and imperfect.

That is why I was tempted to change the title of this message. If we try to analyze how God is like us we might easily slip into thinking of ourselves as the standard. The moment we put God under our microscope we risk putting ourselves at a level equal or even above Him. God is not something or someone to be analyzed. It just doesn’t work that way. Imagine traveling to a foreign country, sitting on a street corner, and analyzing the people walking by. “Okay, they look a little bit like me, but their skin is a different color. Their clothes are completely different from mine, but they are chatting and laughing the way that I would.” Do you see how that kind of analysis makes me the standard? I am comparing them to me, and it is very difficult for me not to begin judging them in some way. We just can’t do that with a transcendent God.

The only thing that does make sense is to talk about how we are like God. Not how God is like us. We are like God – in some way, to some limited extent. What an amazing thing! How can this be?

We need to go back to the beginning. In Genesis 1, God spoke the universe into existence. His infinite power and wisdom were expressed in this creative word, forming elements and stars and planets and living things, the incredible complexity and beauty of creation. In verse 26 God declares his intention to create humans to rule over his creation, and in verse 27 he does it:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The reason we are like God is because God created us in his own image. Genesis 2 goes into more detail about how he did this:

…then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.—Genesis 2:7

Jonathan pointed out last week that we are unique part of God’s creation. Everything else He simply spoke into existence. The man, on the other hand, He formed out of dust, and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. In some mysterious way, we bear the image of God. His fingerprints are all over us. It’s an amazing thing to think about. It can be considered at so many different levels. How many of you have heard of the book by Philip Yancey and Paul Brand called “In His Image”? They look at how various systems in the human body mirror the functioning of the body of Christ. For example, blood nourishes and sustains and cleanses every cell in the body. What does that remind you of? The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. God is revealed in his creation in so many ways. Romans 1 reminds us that people ought to know what God is like:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. –Romans 1:20

But it is not just the way we were created and the way our physical bodies function that reflect the image of God. We have some of the attributes of God as well: creativity, love, mercy, wisdom, discernment, and understanding – many good and wonderful aspects of being a human being. These may be marred by sin and even twisted for selfish purposes at times, but they reflect who God is, even in people who reject Him or deny His existence. Original sin came into the world because Adam and Eve wanted to be even more like God than He intended. In Genesis 3 the serpent tempted them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”—Genesis 3:2-5

Up until that point, Adam and Eve had known only good. They were innocent. But perhaps they wondered what they were missing out on, like many young people today, experimenting with sex and drugs and other risky, sinful activity. God made us with the ability to choose – to choose Him and His ways or to choose to reject him. None of the animals had this ability. The ways in which we bear God’s image, sharing His attributes – those are the ways in which we are different from animals.

Ian came home from school the other day a bit disturbed about what had been presented in his psychology class. The topic was evolutionary psychology – how evolution has supposedly hardwired men to desire as many sex partners as possible to ensure the survival of their species and hardwired women to want close relationships to ensure the survival of their offspring. This is the best that science has to offer. Human beings are no more than sophisticated animals following their instincts.

But I reminded Ian that we are not animals. Although we might share some of their instincts, God has created us with the ability and even the desire to make moral choices. People who act like animals are ultimately unhappy and unfulfilled. Some evolutionary psychologists go to great lengths to explain how morals and religion evolved, as a benefit to the human race, but the arguments that I have seen seem very contrived and inadequate. People so often try to ignore the image of God, even when it is staring them right in the face. We are more than just a particular arrangement of molecules. Science will always struggle to define a soul.

People have an inherent desire for God, to know Him and understand why they are here. But if God is transcendent, completely “other,” how can we ever know Him? Fortunately God is also immanent. Immanence is the opposite of transcendence, and God is big enough to have both qualities. God is present with us. We can actually get to know the unknowable God. But we can’t initiate this. It can only happen because God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. He has broken into our time-bound, three-dimensional world and made a connection with us. We have already seen how God is revealed in His creation, if people are willing to consider it from that perspective. We have His revealed word in the Bible, written by people who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes God speaks to people through dreams and visions, even today. But the ultimate revelation, the one that stands at the center of history and that all of the Bible points to, is Jesus himself. This is the miracle of the incarnation, God taking on flesh, coming in the form of a man and living among us, dying for our sins, and defeating sin, death, and the Devil through the power of his resurrection.

I am not going to say much more about the incarnation, since there is a whole message coming up on that in December. But Jesus was called Immanuel because he is “God with us.” He stands at the focal point of God’s immanence. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. Going back to John 1:

“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”—John 1:18

Because we bear the image of God we have the ability to know God. And we have the opportunity to know God because of Jesus. Jesus himself explains in John 14 why this is important:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”—John 14:8-14

Jesus showed us as much about God’s nature as we are able to humanly grasp. In the incarnation, Jesus had given up the transcendent aspects of God’s nature: His independence, His immutability (Jesus did grow up as a man), His omnipresence, His omniscience. Jesus said for example that He didn’t know when He would return; only the Father knew that. Jesus was sinless – we can’t relate to that – but He was tempted in just the way we are. Jesus was “like us” as a human, but still fully God. “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me,” He said.

The Father was living in Him, doing His work. What was this work? Jesus had come not just to bring salvation through His sacrifice on the cross but also to establish the kingdom of God on earth. He was anointed to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. His working of miracles was the evidence of this anointing, also putting Satan on notice that his evil power was broken. And one of the most amazing things in this passage is Jesus’ promise that if we believe in Him we will do even greater things than He did. His influence as a man was limited, but His followers have taken His word and power to all corners of the globe, establishing His kingdom in every country. When Jesus went to the Father He sent the Holy Spirit to empower His followers to do these things. We access the power of Spirit through prayer, as we submit ourselves to God and seek His glory.

So why does it matter that we are like God and God is like us? Why is this doctrine of God’s immanence important? Well, the primary reason is what we have just been talking about. Jesus became like us to reveal God to us and set an example of how we are to live. We can know what love is, for example, because of Jesus, and as we receive His love we are able to love others. Jesus spoke the truth in a world filled with lies, and we carry His truth into situations that need it. Love, truth, and so on – with all these “communicable” attributes of God.

We can know God because we were created in the image of God. But Satan has blinded the hearts of unbelievers to this truth. The idea of believing in God is preposterous to some people. They are so convinced that science has all the answers that they refuse to consider that something could exist outside of science – despite the fact that true science should consider all possible explanations. You may not make much progress with such a person until the Holy Spirit touches his or her heart. Maybe all you can do is pray for them.

But deciding not to believe in God doesn’t make Him disappear, so there are probably more agnostics than atheists in the world. Agnostics are people who admit that God might exist, but they have decided that HHHe is irrelevant to them. They might have convinced themselves that they can get along just fine without God. They may need to see God in us to change their minds. Maybe we can love them in a time of crisis. Maybe we can lift up Jesus as an expression of God’s love and mercy to show them that God really does care for them and can make a difference in their lives – now and for eternity. People need to know that God is holy and infinite and perfect (in other words, transcendent) but also that He cares about each one of them as individuals and wants to save and help and bless them (in other words, immanent).

Another benefit of bearing the image of God is that it gives us intrinsic value. Human life is important. That is why Christians care about unborn babies, old people, the disabled, and everyone whom no one else cares about. If God doesn’t exist, why should I care about anyone who doesn’t benefit me in some way? God is the ultimate source of human dignity because we share His nature. God sees and cries for a child dying in the street, unloved and uncared for, and His nature in us makes us care, too.

Our connection to God gives us significance in the universe. You can find various animations online that will give you an idea of how huge the universe is. 

Here is a picture that gives a rough idea of the scale of the earth in the solar system, the solar system in the galaxy, the galaxy to the cluster, the cluster to the local supercluster, and so on. Our minds can hardly imagine the immense scale of the observable universe. To the atheist, this makes us as humans feel incredibly insignificant. The earth is like a microscopic speck in a huge, huge universe. But what does David say in Psalm 8?

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?  Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet”—Psalm 8:3-6

What is man that you take thought of him? If you bring God into the picture, the scale of the universe makes us feel incredibly important. The creator of all this knows me, cares for me, even sent His own son to die for my sins, so I could have a relationship with Him. We go from being completely insignificant to being crowned with glory and majesty. We have been made just a little lower than God himself? We are exalted and humbled at the same time.

I take comfort in the fact that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. I would value your prayers for me over the next 6+ weeks as I travel once again to South Asia. It is a tough time in many of the places that I will visit.