Confessing His Perfections

This week in our Gathering, we will read the introduction to the second article of our Confession of Faith, the article on “God”: “There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being” (Baptist Faith & Message 2000, II).

I love the doctrine of the Trinity. “Worship is to be given to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to Him alone” (1689 Baptist Confession, 22.2). This belief, firmly rooted in the whole revelation of the Bible, has set orthodox Christianity apart from other religions (and false christianities) for 2,000 years. Yes, it is beyond our full comprehension, but what kind of God would He be if we could comprehend His Being in its fullness (especially since we are wholly incapable of fully comprehending our own being!)? Grow in scriptural meditation on the Trinity, worshiping Him and praying to Him as one God in three Persons! This has always been Who He is, and will always be Who He is, to His unending and infinite glory! Let no one steal this wonder revealed to us in the Scripture and confessed by the true Church for two millennia! It is the reality by which we are brought into the Church (Matthew 28:19) and by which we bless each other in the fellowship of the Church (2 Corinthians 13:12-14). "This doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion" (1689 Baptist Confession, 2.3).

“The Lord our God is...without...parts” (1689 Baptist Confession, 2.1). This is called the doctrine of the simplicity of God. It is an old doctrine, neglected by most of us and even argued against by many popular theologians today, but I believe it is supremely valuable to us. It says that all of the adjectives (“perfections”) we ascribe to God are inseparably bound to Who He is. He isn’t just “holy.” He totally, completely, and perfectly is “holiness.” He doesn’t just “love,” but is “love.” What He is, He always has been and always will be. He is absolute and exclusive Source of all of these “perfections.” Whatever we see of these perfections in Creation or in ourselves is but a graciously-given reflection of His own glory. The opposite of God’s simplicity is that there is an eternally-existing “perfection” out there somewhere that God partakes in just as we potentially could (He drinks from the same well we do as opposed from being the Well). This basically makes these “perfections” outside of God and, in a sense, another god apart from Him. This, to me, is unacceptable and irreconcilable to the Scripture. He is simple – the absolute and utterly exclusive Source of His “perfections.”

It’s interesting to me that there is one adjective missing in this paragraph: good. God’s goodness is mentioned later (“Election...is the glorious display of God's sovereign goodness,” V). Don’t miss His goodness! It is foundational to one of the most basic confessions of the Old Testament (1 Chronicles 16:34; 2 Chronicles 7:3; Ezra 3:11; Psalm 106:1; 107:1; 118:1,29; 136:1).