Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
The mystery of the essence of God.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Point 2. The Essence of God Is Necessary to Understand the Theology of God’s Perfect Plan.
God is sovereign.
Sovereignty means that God is supreme in rule and has authority over all things.
God also is perfect righteousness.The righteousness of God is active.
As a primary motive, it incites all that He does; therefore He is righteous in His ways.
The righteousness of God is active and as a primary motive, it incites all that He does; therefore He is righteous in His ways.
EPH 1:4 He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.
Though He is infinitely holy, He nevertheless maintains a relation to fallen creatures; not by ignoring the depravity of man with an inactive detached-attitude, but by a love and faithful availability to man.
The righteousness of God alive in us is not manifested by forsaking sin or sinless perfection; God’s righteousness in us is manifested by our love, faithfulness, and character and integrity toward one another, including toward ourselves.
God’s righteousness is not maintained by a sustained effort on His part or preserved by separation from other beings.
The righteousness of God is intrinsic, uncreated, and untarnishable; and this is obviously observed in every divine attitude and action.
The righteousness of God embraces not only His devotion to that which is good and holy, but is also the very basis and force of His hatred of that which is evil.
There is “IN” divine righteousness the capacity for reaction toward others which is both positive and negative.
His righteousness is not a self-righteousness that marks and accuses or condemns others, but rather a righteousness that desires to help others with His grace and mercy.
Bearing one another’s burdens is a manifestation of the righteousness of God in us.
Forsaking and judging a person who is caught or trapped in a burden is a manifestation of self-righteousness which is disgusting to God, ISA 64:6.
The Son is said to be holy, harmless, undefiled and perfectly righteous, HEB 7:26, 1JO 2:1.
1JO 2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;
The very title of the Holy Spirit signifies that he possesses this divine attribute as well.
God is also just.
God’s holiness includes His justice as well as His righteousness.
As a part of God’s justice, God is fair.
It is impossible for God to be unfair.
2CH 19:7 “Now then let the fear of the Lord be upon you; be very careful what you do, for the Lord our God will have no part in unrighteousness, or partiality, or the taking of a bribe.”
ROM 2:11 For there is no partiality with God.
There are two ways in which God expresses His justice to believers:
1) To mature believers, God expresses His justice in blessing.
2) To carnal or apostate believers, through divine discipline, HEB 12:6 “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.”
Justice always administers what righteousness demands.
The justice of God imputes AOS to every member of the human race condemning them at birth.
PSA 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.
PSA 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb; These who speak lies go astray from birth.
The righteousness of God demands perfection, the omniscience of God provides the plan, the omnipotence of God condemns mankind at birth so that the justice of God could condemn man to qualify mankind for a Savior, because condemnation must precede salvation.
Sovereignty willed to create
Righteousness demands perfection
Omniscience produces the plan
Omnipotence creates mankind
Justice condemns mankind
Love provides salvation
Eternal Life is given
Omnipresence is with you always
Immutability is faithful
Veracity sets you free
Justice means that in vindicating any believer, God cannot compromise His attributes.
Because TLJC satisfied the justice of God the Father, God is now free to pardon and justify those who trust in His Son.
God is equally free to condemn those who reject His Son’s saving work on the cross,
JOH 3:18.
It was the WORK of TLJC on the cross that allowed the justice of God to release the one attribute that most individuals always focus in on, LOVE.
The fact that God’s justice is satisfied frees God to love us and bless us.
Justice is the source of Grace.
Justice is the believer’s point of contact with God.
Many people cannot conceive of God as any other than a God of love, but justice is as important and as observable as any other characteristic of God’s essence.
God the Father is said to be just, DEU 32:4.
God the Son is called the righteous Judge, 2TI 4:8.
God the Holy Spirit convicts the world of this justice,
JOH 16:8.
The integrity of God guarantees that His entire essence is completely involved in all He does or allows.
All divine attributes form one, consistent, indivisible whole which means His total person.
The love of God is not an isolated attribute.
PHI 1:9 In fact, I pray this, that your virtue-love may excel to the maximum still more and more by means of metabolized doctrine resulting in all spiritual discernment,
ROM 5:5 The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who was given to us.
1TH 4:9 Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are “taught” by God to love one another;
Because God is love or is agape, He uses agape love as His problem-solving device for the human race.
ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
God’s love was the problem-solving device for the total depravity of man.
God’s love motivated Him to send His only begotten Son to die for our sins.
On the cross, God’s love was set aside.
His justice and His righteousness judged His Son, whom He loved, for all of our sins.
If you are going to love God, you must love Him from your system of thinking or from the thoughts in your soul, not your emotions.
PSA 10:4 The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
MIC 4:12 “They do not know the thoughts of the Lord, And they do not understand His purpose;”
Love is a system of thought.
By thought I mean mentality.
And from mentality comes vocabulary.
And from vocabulary comes sentences.
From sentences comes concepts.
And from your concepts come your norms and standards.
You fall in love because you have a certain system of norms and standards.
Emotion is attraction and people under emotion say “I love you.”
To personally love God, the believer must be able to think God’s thoughts.
You must have these thoughts converted into divine energy through metabolized doctrine.
Motivation comes from doctrine within not inspiration from without.
Agape love is a problem-solving base for relationship with God (royal priesthood).
Agape love is a problem-solving base for relationship with mankind (royal ambassadorship).
God’s love cannot operate independently of His integrity, composed of perfect righteousness and absolute justice.
This marvelous principle of Bible doctrine demonstrates that the God of love and grace is neither sentimental nor partial nor indecisive toward anyone.
Grace is divine strength which expresses the love of God, but grace is also the uncompromising policy of the justice of God.
Grace does not mean that God overlooks sin but that God as the perfect Judge has solved the problem of sin.
All of God’s attributes always function together as a consistent, integrated, perfect whole.
Even when He deals with imperfect, sinful, fallen mankind and especially when He blesses us, He is not lowering Himself to our imperfect level thus destroying His own perfection.
The reason He can bless us is that one of His attributes stands guard, as it were, over all the rest.
The justice of God, the function of His integrity, is the guardian of God’s essence in all that He does toward imperfect creatures.
When one Member of the Trinity is concerned with Himself or with the other Members of the Godhead, there is no need for a guardian.
In Himself, God is free to regard His personality – the fact that He is a Person – as most important.
Related to man, however, there is almost unlimited opportunity for compromise.
ISA 5:16 But the Lord of hosts will be exalted in judgment, And the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.
1CH 16:14 He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth.
PSA 105:7 He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth.
The justice of God is the origin of everything we receive from Him, both blessing and cursing.
The reversionistic believer’s discipline comes from divine justice, but then, so does the mature believer’s blessing.