A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” He then says,
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.
As we start to develop in our minds true Christian confession (What Christians Believe), we must start first with God. Right away, some might object and ask, "Why not start with the Bible?” We start with God first because we, as Christians, are NOT people of the Book, as other religions think of us. Instead, we are people of the Word - we serve a risen Savior who is at the right hand of the Father. Remember, there is no knowledge of God apart from Christ, and there is no knowledge of Christ apart from the Bible.
What we know of God moves from one direction - either from below, where we read our knowledge back into God, or allow God to speak to us from above. One way is idolatry - where “God” becomes an echo chamber of our voice. The other way starts with God first, listens to God speak, and responds to his reality. When we listen first, we begin to think God’s thoughts after him. The other way reads our thoughts into him.
With God, listening is more important than speaking.
In our knowing God, we also don’t want to make it seem like God is contingent, that he in some way needs us, or could not exist without us. Christians don’t believe in a god like this. We believe that God exists before us and, through love and grace, invites us to share fellowship with him forever.
To ensure that these ideas are not our own, we turn to a key passage in the book of Isaiah, chapter 45. Isaiah's text reveals truths about God that come through salvation.
Don’t overlook this fact - we cannot know God apart from salvation, or to say it another way, we cannot know God except through a cross. The same is true even when we consider Isaiah.
I am the Lord, and there is no other. (45:5)
First, we confess: He is Self-Existing.
My children ask me, “Where does God come from?” The answer I give usually frustrates them. I say, “He has always existed.” They usually follow that question with, “Who made God?” The answer I give them is equally frustrating. I say, “No one made God, he has always existed.” Those questions are important; we never outgrow them. We get tired of answering them. We accept the answers, but we don’t fully understand there was never a time when he was not.
When we ask those questions, we admit, whether or not we know it, that we are creatures - created beings. For example, specific categories have been given to order our thinking. It isn't easy to imagine anything that has always existed. The giant sequoias we visit in California have a start date, even if the start date is thousands of years ago. The rocks from the Grand Canyon can be dated. Even if someone says they date back billions of years, we can categorically think in those terms. But to say the rock always existed, or there was never a time when there was no giant sequoia, is unimaginable. We don’t speak such truths about anything other than God.
Tozer says,
Man is a created being, a derived and contingent self, who of himself possesses nothing but is dependent each moment for his existence upon the One who created him after His own likeness. The fact of God is necessary to the fact of man. Think God away, and man has no ground for existence.”
There is no other,besides me there is no God. (Isaiah 45:6)
Second, we confess: He is Unique.
In what ways is God unique? Since he is self-existing, what is essential to his existence? In other words, what is God like? If we are to discover an answer to the question of God's uniqueness, we must listen to the text. For example, in Isaiah's "Book of Comfort" (chapters 40-55), we learn from chapter 42 comfort comes from the servant of the Lord. This servant is made clear in other portions of Isaiah, especially in a passage like Isaiah 53 where we learn the servant is the one through whom salvation comes. Isaiah 42 tells the same story.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations. (42:1, ESV)
A bedrock claim to Chrisitan confession about God's uniqueness is: God is Trinity. God as Trinity comes to us from crucial texts. For example, sticking within our parameters of Isaiah 40-55, we come to Isaiah 48:16, where the Servant of Salvation says, And now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit. Jesus solidifies these truths by saying If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. (Jn. 14:9).
A confession of the Trinity is a confession of the uniqueness of God. Whenever I try to explain the Trinity, I am always comforted because I know there is no way anyone would have come up with this on their own. The truths are too rich, and the best explication always falls short.
God is Father God is Son God is Spirit
That - Father, Spirit, Son - is what it means to be God. The Father didn’t create the Son; the Spirit is not the Son, and so on with each person. God is Father, Spirit, Son - One God who exists in three persons. There is no other God other than this God.
Some say, "I just don’t understand all that." To which all honest and humble Christians say, don't let that stop you from joining the rest of us. We might not understand it, but that does not mean there is no understanding, or it is nonsense or unbelievable. But I believe it. Why? Because it is the truth given from above.
Our next truth gives us comfort.
I equip you though you don't know me. (Isaiah 45:5)
Third, we confess: He Does Not Depend on Our Knowledge of Him.
Our belief or unbelief doesn’t change one thing about him because he is not a God of our imagination; he exists and influences in ways that we can understand. Our limits do not limit him! Aren’t you glad?
We could say so much more here, but we will move to the next confession. Perhaps the sweetest truth about God, a truth that invites our consideration. Isaiah 45:6:
That people may know...
Fourth, we confess: He Desires to be Known.
If this was not true, if God did not desire to be known, we could not know him. Remember, he is unique. We cannot deduce God. If we could, he would not be unique. We can only know God through God. There are some things we can learn from God, such as there must be order in the universe, God is creative, we might say there must be a God, but we cannot know God unless HE HIMSELF makes Himself known.
We believe in a personal God. Yes, he is other than us. Yes, there are some things that we will NEVER fully know, but we can know him because he desires for us to know him more than we desire to know him.
The lack of the knowledge of him is the reason for every problem in the world. Some forces will have us believe the opposite. They desire theology to be out of the headlines thinking, similar to Karl Marx, that every problem in the world can be traced back to religion. Christian confession says the issues in the world are due to a lack of knowledge of God.
How does God make himself known? He makes himself known through the Word. Who is the Word? The Son - Jesus Christ. But we will save this truth for later.
One final truth before we leave this passage. A challenging but necessary truth to learn. Listen to the contours of verses 6 and 7.
that people may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is none besides me;
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness;
I make well-being and create calamity;
I am the LORD, who does all these things.
Finally, we confess: He Rules Over All.
Our mids might have been at ease before verse 7 confronts our senses. To help our minds grasp these truths, consider the opposite. As one commentator reminds us, “The alternative to this view is that things happen in the world of nature or history that have their origin in some being or force other than God, things that he is powerless to prevent.” If he is limited, we must look “beyond him for whatever is the final word.”
We don’t look beyond him; we look to him. Remember, the only way we come to know him is through salvation. Through salvation, we see that he takes the most unspeakable calamity as his own - our sinfulness - and overcomes chaos with his cross.
Chrysostom says,
This [his ruling over all] affords us the greatest view of his providence. For the physician is not only to be commended when he leads forth the patient into gardens and meadows, nor even not baths and pools of water, nor yet when he sets before him a well-furnished table, but when he orders him to remain without food when he oppresses him with hunger and lays him low with thirst, confines him to his bed, making his house a prison, depriving him of the very light and shadowing his room on all sides with curtains. When he cuts, cauterizes, and brings his bitter medicine, he is equally a physician.
Indeed through the cross, we can say, he doeth all things well. He makes all things beautiful in its time.
When Christians say There is a God, we are saying more than these five truths but not less.
Quotes from Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy; Oswalt, New International Commentary on the Old Testament; and The Ancient Chrisitan Commentary Series. I trust my iconoclast friends will not think ill of my selection of an image at the top of this post 😉.