By Jason Smith

“‘To whom then will you liken Me that I would be his equal?’ says the Holy One” (Isaiah 40:25).

Theologian A. W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” That is a thought-provoking statement, isn’t it? There seems to be a whole world of ideas resting on Tozer’s conclusion. He went on to say, “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.” [1]

In other words, our view of God will always influence what we, His image-bearers, aspire to be — whether we are aware of it or not. How we answer the single question “What is God like?” tells us a great deal about ourselves. As many have put it, we become like what we worship.

So what is your view of God? Is He stern and demanding? Is He persistently jovial like Santa Claus? Is He loving? Is He distant? Is He everywhere but still hard to find? Is He even real? Is He disappointed all the time? Or what about this one: is He so incredibly compassionate that He is willing to suffer with you and even die for you? I wonder how you might answer any one of these questions. When you stop to think about it, to ask such questions is to put your finger on the most fundamental issue of life. What is God like? What could possibly be a more important question to consider? The purpose of the entire universe hinges on God’s existence, nature, and character.

In the Beginning

The Gospel of John begins with this astounding claim about Jesus of Nazareth: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1-3). Then John tells us that this Word who “was God” did something we struggle to even wrap our minds around. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (v. 14). The unseen Creator (v. 3) and Son of God (v. 14) made Himself visible to the world.

At this point, our minds, hungry for answers, begin to bump up against their limits. How does the infinite, all-powerful God of perfect majesty become a helpless and tiny human baby, completely dependent on His young mother? John does not say the Word ceased being the infinite God; instead, He added humanity to His divinity. In this way, the God of the universe made Himself approachable, tangible, and truly knowable. To the average Joe, this Word-made-flesh would have looked so ordinary. He did not hover above the ground everywhere He went. His face did not emit a paranormal glow. And He certainly wasn’t ensconced in an effervescent cloud everywhere He traveled. Instead, this God-man not only appeared every bit as human as you and me, He actually was.

In verse 17, John elaborates: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The great deliverer Moses revealed certain things about who God is, through the law. The law expressed God’s goodness, justice, and holiness. It also expressed His compassion. When Moses brazenly pled with God to show him His glory, God rejected his request — at least partially (Exodus 33:18-20). Essentially, God told him, “I can’t do that, Moses. You’d die if you came into contact with the fullness of My glory.”

Yahweh, Yahweh

Therefore, God revealed Himself to Moses in a different way, by pairing His eternal Name “Yahweh”[2] (which He first revealed to Moses back in Exodus 3) with a description of His character. God took Moses up onto a mountain and “covered” him with His hand while the full radiance of His divine being passed by. The quivering Moses would only be allowed to witness the tail end of God’s glory so that he could live another day. But in that mountaintop experience God Himself proclaimed to Moses — and, by extension, to us — what He is like.

“Yahweh, Yahweh, 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 fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).

Here, in the law (or Torah), God’s perfect character is revealed. Yahweh tells us He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, faithful, and forgiving. Yet, here is where we meet one of Scripture’s classic paradoxes. Right after saying He is both ready and eager to forgive sin, God tells us He “will by no means clear the guilty” (v. 7). How are we to make sense of this? Doesn’t a willingness to forgive imply a willingness to clear the guilty? No, and here we see the coming together of two fundamental truths about God. He is more gracious, loving, and forgiving than we could ever dare to imagine. However, He is simultaneously more just, holy, and pure than we ever thought possible. So where does this leave us? How do we solve this apparent enigma?

Scripture repeatedly affirms that we have a big problem, and that is our sin. The Bible tells us “there is no one who does not sin” (1 Kings 8:46). Although we are prone to think of ourselves as good people (Proverbs 20:6), God knows our hearts. And His verdict is clear: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). When we consider all this, there seems to be one disturbing conclusion: we are the guilty of Exodus 34:7. Therefore, we each have much at stake in understanding how God can be both forgiving and just.

Grace and Truth

Jumping back to the first chapter of John’s Gospel, let’s see that statement in verse 17 once again. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Now think about this. Grace and truth are really the twin concepts above that we are trying to reconcile. God is supremely gracious by nature and eager to forgive sin. On the other hand, if even a human judge decided to let a serial killer go free because he showed himself sufficiently sorry, you would not accept that. You would not call such a judge extraordinarily forgiving; you would call him corrupt. Why? Because to let the murderer go would be unjust.

Similarly, overlooking sin would be unjust because it would be treating the serious crime of rebellion against the King of Heaven as a minor infraction, which it is not. It would not be in keeping with the truth. John is telling us that grace and truth are fully realized, revealed, and reconciled in Jesus Christ alone. In a sense, the paradox of God’s statement about His own character in Exodus 34 has been hanging in tension all through Scripture — that is, until the arrival of Jesus.

In Jesus, God’s character is embodied and illuminated with vivid and vibrant colors in high definition. “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known” (John 1:18). In the original Greek, it actually says that Jesus has exegeted or fully explained God. That is, in Jesus we see what God is really like. That is why Jesus can later refer to Himself as “I Am” (Yahweh) (8:58) and even tell His disciples, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9).

Look at Jesus

But again, how can God both forgive sin and not overlook sin? How can grace and truth be reconciled? When Jesus first began His earthly ministry, John the Baptist heralded Him as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29). With that statement, John pointed ahead to the cross, where Jesus, like a sacrificial lamb, would lay down His life for the world. 700 years before Christ’s crucifixion, the prophet Isaiah wrote:

“But He was pierced for our transgressions;
He was crushed for our iniquities;
upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with His wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)

We can be forgiven of our sin, but only if we believe in the One who bore our sin for us and was punished in our stead. That is why God’s character is never more vividly portrayed for all the world to see than in the cross of Jesus Christ, where both His astounding love and His perfect justice are on full display. As the psalter so beautifully writes, “Lovingkindess and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psalm 85:10). Scripture says that when we place all our trust in Christ’s sacrificial death and victorious resurrection, we are forgiven, cleared of all guilt, and found righteous in Christ (Romans 10:9-10; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 2:16).

So how do we know what God is like? Look at Jesus. More specifically, look at Jesus on the cross. There, on Calvary, with hands outstretched to embrace a world that has rejected Him, we see what God is like.

Photo credit: Rose Barraza

[1] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (Zeeland, MI: Reformed Church Publications, 2017), 1.

[2] In most English translations, the Hebrew name of God, “Yahweh,” is translated simply as “the LORD” (all caps), but a closer translation is more like “I Am” or “He Is.” In other words, Yahweh is the self-existent, eternal, and personally present Creator.