God So Loved The World

"God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son. Anyone who believes in him will not die but will have eternal life.

John 3:16 (NIrV)

This week, we'll be doing a phrase-by-phrase study of John 3:16. It's a favorite verse of my younger son's and since older brother is out of town, we're tailoring our family devotion time to younger son.

Today, we're looking at the first phrase "For God so loved the world..."

• For is the Greek word γάρ which implies that what immediately follows is giving a reason. Thus, God loving the world is the reason for what we'll be studying the rest of the week.
• God is the Greek word θεός which means a deity. Here of course it is referring to the one true God. This is the root word from which we derive the word theology for the study of God.
• so is the Greek word houtō which means in this way. This may be referring back to the previous part of chapter 3 where Jesus says He will be lifted up and verse 15 tells us "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life"
• loved is from the Greek word ἀγαπάω which means love. This kind of love is a moral love and denotes longing after rather than just having affection for. We commonly hear this described as unconditional love. Here we can think of it as being an active love wanting the object of the love to be drawn near.
• the world comes from the Greek word κόσμος (kosmos) meaning the world. The word implies an orderly arrangement that God is tending and caring for.
• Taking this all together, God loving, longing for, and wanting to be with, those that He had created and was taking care of, is the reason for...

We'll study what He did because of this love as we work through the week.

Becoming a theologian: God's independence

Now that we've taken a quick look at five of God's incommunicable attributes, I want to start taking a closer look at each of them to make sure we really understand them. The first one we come to is independence.

Per dictionary.com, indepence is roughly defined as "being independent." Independent is defined as "not influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion, conduct, etc.; thinking or acting for oneself:" The key phrases I see here (as it relates to God) are not... controlled by others and acting for oneself.

²⁴"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. ²⁵And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

Acts 17:24-25

• From this passage, how can we see that God is not controlled by others?
• He is Lord of heaven and earth
• He is not served by human hands
• From this passage, how can we see that God is acting on His own?
• He made the world and everything in it
• He gives all men life and breath and everything

God said to Moses, "I am who I am"...

Exodus 3:14a

• In this passage God is telling Moses who to say is sending him to Pharaoah. This is where God tells Moses his name: YHWH.
• From His name, we can see that God is. There is no cause suggested for God. Nothing created God. He just is.
• In this verse, do we see God as being controlled by anything? No
• In this verse, do we see evidence of God acting on His own? Yes, if He just is, he must be acting on His own
• Can you agree, based on these two passages (and there are others like them) that God is independent

Becoming a theologian: Incommunicable Attributes

Today as we continue our quest in becoming theologians, we want to start looking at God's incommunicable attributes. Both of these are words are ones we don't use very often, so, like we often do, let's turn to dictionary.com for definitions:

attribute means "something attributed as belonging to a person, thing, group, etc.; a quality, character, characteristic, or property"

incommunicable means "incapable of being communicated, imparted, shared, etc."

Based on these definitions, I want to define God's incommunicable attributes as being qualties or characteristics of God's that belong only to God and are not and cannot be found in others. The incommunicable attributes that we are going to look at are (with definitions from Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology:

1. Independence - God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glorify Him and bring Him joy.
2. Unchangeableness - God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet god does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.
3. Eternity - God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time
4. Omnipresence - God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with his whole being, yet God acts differently in different places.
5. Unity - God is not divided into parts, yet we see different attributes of God emphasized at different times.

As we usually do, we're going to look at the Bible to learn a bit more about these attributes. But this time, I want to read some verses and see if you can figure out which of these attributes they relate to.

⁶ And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, ⁷ maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation."

Exodus 34:6-7

• What attribute does this refer to? Unity

"But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

1 Kings 8:27

• What attribute does this refer to? Omnipresence

For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night

Psalm 90:4

• What attribute does this refer to? Eternity

But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

Psalm 102:27

• What attribute does this refer to? Unchangeableness and Eternity

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalm 139:7-10

• What attribute does this refer to? Omnipresence

How great is God beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.

Job 36:26

• What attribute does this refer to? Eternity

Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

Job 41:11

• What attribute does this refer to? Independence

"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"

John 8:58

• What attribute does this refer to? Eternity

"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

John 17:24

• What attribute does this refer to? Independence

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

James 1:17

• What attribute does this refer to? Unchangeableness

Becoming a theologian: Can we know God?

Yesterday we discussed whether God exists. We answered, "Yes!" Perhaps the next question - certainly an important one since we are defining theology as knowing God and knowing about God - is "Can we know God?"

We can know God because He makes it possible for us to know Him.

"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Matthew 11:27

• So, who can know God?
• Jesus (the Son)
• and those that Jesus chooses to reveal God to
• Jesus also helps us to know about God.

No one has ever seen God. But God, the one and only Son, is at the Father's side. He has shown us what God is like.

John 1:18 (NIrV)

Though we can know God, we can't understand him completely

• We are finite, which means that we can be measured. Whether we want to measure our height, weight, or age, we can be measured. God, however is infiite, which means that He can't be measured. He has no beginning or end.

Lord, you are great. You are really worthy of praise. No one can completely understand how great you are.

Psalm 145:3 (NIrV)

• Consider for a moment, Star Wars. Certainly, you boys know a lot about Star Wars.
• Do you think that you know everything there is to know about Star Wars?
• What planet is Han Solo from? Corellia (I had to look that up
• But Star Wars - even with the six live action movies, the Clone Wars movie and TV, video games, and books - is finite. If we could devote all of our time to studying Star Wars (and before you ask no, you may not) we might eventually know all there is to know about Star Wars.
• Even though you've seen each of the Star Wars movies a whole lot of times, don't you still want to watch them again and again?
• When we consider again that God is infinite, can we ever expect that we could know all there is to know about God?
• Even though we can't know all there is to know about God, we should still strive to know as much about God as we possibly can.

We can know God and that is a good thing

This is what the LORD says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the LORD.

Jeremiah 9:23-24

• God Himself says that we CAN know Him.
• Knowing God is something that we can boast about. What is boasting?
• If God says we can boast about knowing Him, do you think it is good to know God?
• Do you want to know God better?

Becoming a theologian: Does God exist?

As we continue our quest to become a theologian, where we are studying to know about God and to know God, we must first ask ourselves a simple question: Does God exist?

The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

Psalm 14:1a

Fools deny the existence of God. The Bible tells us that people who don't believe that there is a God are actively denying the evidence that there is a God. But, how can we know that there is a God?

All creation testifies to the existence of God

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 men are without excuse.

Romans 1:20

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 19:1

• What about the world around you makes you think of the existence of God?
• Do you ever look up at the stars or the moon and praise God?

We were created to know God

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...

Genesis 1:26a

• The Hebrew word for image is tselem which means an image kind of like a picture of something. In some usage it means a shadow of something.
• If you see a shadow of a person coming from beind us, do you expect that if you turn around you'll see a person?
• Do you believe in God?
• Do you think you believe in God because God created you to know Him?