5 Things to Remember when You Study God’s Character
Dr. John Snyder is the pastor of Christ Church New Albany, director of Media Gratiae, host of The Whole Counsel podcast, and author of multiple multimedia Bible studies including the Behold Your God series, Living with the True God: Lessons from Judges, and Behold Your God: Seeking Him Early.
In our upcoming book, The Sermons of Behold Your God: The Weight of Majesty, Dr. John Snyder summarizes 5 five key realities to keep in mind as we study the character of God.
Goodness is a category that refers to God’s moral perfections. This is not limited to God’s benevolence or kindness, as we often use the word good, but includes the entire spectrum of His moral rightness.
First, order and connection are significant when it comes to the big truths of the Bible…Historically, theologians have divided the attributes of God into two categories. In everyday language, we call these categories the greatness of God and the goodness of God.
Because we tend to use these words with less precision in our daily conversations, I want to be very specific about how I am using them here. Greatness is a word that speaks of size, amount, or extent. So, when we speak of the greatness of God, we are considering a category in which the measure of God’s perfections, their boundless immensity, is being examined. Greatness deals with qualities like God’s self-existence, immutability, transcendence, infinity, eternity, all-power, all-knowledge, all-presence, and sovereignty.
Goodness is a category that refers to God’s moral perfections. This is not limited to God’s benevolence or kindness, as we often use the word good, but includes the entire spectrum of His moral rightness. The category of God’s goodness includes His love, benevolence, pity, patience, faithfulness, and truthfulness. It also includes His holiness, righteousness, justice, and wrath.
how God teaches you tomorrow will, in great measure, be based on how you respond to what He is teaching you today.
Second, when we come to the study of any of God’s attributes, it is helpful to begin with the overall testimony of Scripture. If we look at God’s omnipresence, we step back and ask, “What does the Bible as a whole say about God’s all-presence?” After looking at that (and it may help to consult a theology book, to sum up those verses), we move to some historical account in Scripture where God reveals Himself to be all-present. When we come to a passage where God shows us one of His attributes, there are two questions we always want to ask: What is God saying about Himself, and why does He say it here?
…Third, how God teaches you tomorrow will, in great measure, be based on how you respond to what He is teaching you today…In other words, if we do not take God’s truth seriously and apply it, then we must not be surprised if He grows silent toward us. However, if we believe and faithfully apply the truth, then God gives more truth.
Knowing God always has a cost.
Fourth, hard work must be united with dependence…we [should] let nothing deter us as we come to God’s Word. We crash against the Scriptures; we ransack every chapter of the Bible because we must have God. The hard work required will not prevent us from seeking Him. We are determined to contemplate the weight of His majesty. But as you labor, you must cultivate daily dependence on God Himself, the best of teachers. In other words, a prayer is always on your heart: “God, open my eyes; show me Yourself.”
Fifth, we must realize that there will be a cost. Knowing God always has a cost…You may think studying God’s character will enlarge your life, make it better and more prominent. But what if it takes you captive, and the things you’re seeing about God mean that you can never live the way you used to live? Knowing God is not a safe pastime! But if it’s the knowledge of the God of the Bible we’re pursuing, then like Paul, we would say it’s worth losing everything.