Part 1: Who is God?

Welcome to God's attributes, a course about the greatest subject of all: God Himself. An attribute is simply a quality, something that is true of a person. So in these seven studies we are asking: what is God like? And we begin with the first thing of all. God is real, and He has made Himself known.

Who is God? What is He like? How can we know Him? People have tried to answer these questions throughout history. And if we mean by God a being who is higher than we are in intelligence, in power and in goodness, then a great many people believe in a God of one sort or another.

Many worship a god they describe as pure, and wise, and knowing all things. And many believe passionately that they have the right idea about God, and that they are doing the right things to know Him and to please Him.

But here is the difficulty. Different religions make different claims, and they contradict one another. They cannot all be right. And believing something passionately does not make it true. A person can be sincere, and sincerely wrong.

So how do we know who is right? Who has found the true God, and has the authority to say so? Where can we turn for help?

First, a word about where we start. In this course we will take it for granted that God does exist. We will see what He is like as we go on, but we will not try to prove that He is there. Why not? Because the evidence is all around us.

Look at the multitude of plants and creatures on this planet. Look up, at the workings of our solar system and the universe beyond it. Everywhere there is clear evidence of intelligent design. And where there is design, there is a designer. No one who finds a watch lying on a beach supposes that the wind and the waves put it together.

Great efforts have been made to explain how the world came into being without a powerful and loving Creator. But all of them collapse at the same point: the question of ultimate origins. Where did the building blocks of life come from in the first place? Serious inquiry into the origins of the universe forces us to reckon with an ultimate Creator.

The Bible says exactly this. Look up Romans chapter one, verse twenty.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1:20, BSB)

Notice what Paul says. There are things about God that our eyes cannot see. Paul calls them His invisible qualities, and he names two: His eternal power, and His divine nature. Yet these have been clearly seen, ever since the world was made. How? From His workmanship, from what He has made. When you look at a painting, you learn something about the painter, though the painter is not in the room.

And notice how the verse ends: so that men are without excuse. That is a solemn word. No one will be able to say to God: I had no way of knowing that You were there. The world He made tells us, every day.

So creation truly reveals God. It shows His eternal power and His divine nature, so clearly that no one has an excuse.

But God wants us to know Him far more fully than that. He wants us to know who He is, what He requires of us, and how we may come to Him. So He has not only shown Himself in what He has made. He has spoken.

And amid all the confusing and conflicting ideas about God, we need a final authority: something to tell us whether our thinking about Him is right, something we can appeal to for what we say about Him. A builder checks his wall against a plumb line. What can we check our ideas of God against?

Many people look at the world of religion, and despair. It is so perplexing, with so many different claims and ideas. Perhaps you have felt that yourself.

God has given us what we need. There is a book unlike any other. That book is the Bible.

Below this video, you'll find the passages from this part.

Then mark this part as complete and continue with part two: God makes Himself known in the Bible.