Becoming Rooted - Who is God?

Week 2 - Who is God?

Memorization Verse

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:1-2

We all have an opinion about God. Whether you think He doesn't exist, or that He just created the world and now just sits back and watches it, or maybe you think He is actually a She, or an It. Maybe for you God is a 911 service who is called upon in emergencies only. Or maybe you think he's vindictive or judgemental because of the stories of the old testament.

The problem with our opinions is "hiding" in plain sight. They're our opinions. They are mortal and flawed. God is immortal and perfect, and therefore our words - even though they're the basis of creation (John 1:1) - are insufficient and can never adequately capture God or His character.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1

What we think about God comes from our perspective, and if we try to take a look at it from His, maybe it'll be easier to understand slightly better what may have gone through His mind during history.
Imagine that you're immortal. Your house is perfect. You have the perfect children, who were made in your image. In this house you have a garden that you've worked hard on for a long time. In that garden there are luscious trees, bushes, flowers, animals, creeks, and so much more. As your kids grow you tell them that they are allowed to eat fruit from the trees in the garden, except for the one in the middle of the garden, because that will cause them to become mortal and die. One day a cunning immortal being who despises and is jealous of you and your creation comes to the garden and seduces your children to eat off of the tree you forbade them to.

While this is a simpler hypothetical than what is described in scripture, I believe that it puts God's perspective in a more relatable light than most people try to make the story of Genesis into. God had created a perfect world. In this world He put His children - who were made in His image and are His most prized posession - and they were to cultivate the land, enjoy its fruits and the animals who roam it. They had - quite literally - the perfect world in their hands. God had but a single request for them: do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you will certainly die. I think that this verse (Genesis 2:17) is worth going over.

but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.
Genesis 2:17

God could have easily put obstacles around the tree, or made it too tall for Adam and Eve to reach, or any other imaginable - or unimaginable - way to prevent them from eating the fruits of the tree. Yet he chose to trust them, and to give them a choice. When God said "for when you eat from it you will certainly die", I don't believe that He meant that the fruit was poisonous, or that it was spoiled, or anything like that. I believe that God was asking Adam and Eve to make a choice: live in this perfect world with me in harmony and eternal life, have everything that you'll ever need, be "naive" (in the child-like healthy way), and you won't NEED to know the difference between good and evil, because everything will be good. However, if you choose to ignore my 1 command - which isn't even necessary for your survival, but is pure temptation - you will have chosen sin over righteousness and you will live in a world where death exists as the punishment for sin.

Makes you think, doesn't it? Was God really as bad as modern society tries to make Him? And why does modern society try to tell us that God is so bad? You see, in the humans' world, there is always a motive, and I believe that the motive for the above questions is far darker and more sinister than people who don't believe in God and His Word think, but we'll talk about this in a later installment of this series.

So why should we give this any thought? Aren't humans just a simple coincidence of matter + time + chance? Not according to the bible. We were made in God's image, and we were made in perfect harmony with Him. We had the perfect world and yet we fell away from God due to the temptation of sin. Jesus Himself talked about humans in Matthew 6:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and you your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26

And king David wrote about his awe of God, His work, and the attention to mankind:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet...
Psalm 8:3-6

The great 19th century theologian and preacher, C.H. Spurgeon, wrote about God's divinity in his book "The Immutability of God":

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, "Behold I am wise." But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and out eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass's colt; and with solemn exclamation, "I am but of yesterday, and know nothing." No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than the thoughts of God...

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this naroow globe... The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ, and him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the golrious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.
C.H. Spurgeon, The Immutability of God

In these paragraphs Spurgeon points out the Trinity, another Truth about God that is almost too incomprehensible to us in our limited understanding. How can someone be 100% of 3 different things at the same time? This is the mystery of God, and it is so incredibly put in Spurgeon's words about how God's mysterious nature is both confounding to us, but also elevates and expands our way of thinking.

If you haven't given any of these issues a proper thought, I invite you to do so as you progress through reading this series. Take some time for yourself to contemplate about them, regardless of whether you believe in God or not, I believe that you'll benefit from thinking about them.