TEEN TREE 
OF LIFE
THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE ESSENCE
Part 2
April 30, 2017
BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).
As we learned in last week’s Tree, God’s Justice always administers what righteousness demands. Justice means that in pardoning any believer, God cannot compromise His Attributes. Because the Lord Jesus Christ Satisfied the Justice of God the Father, God is now free to pardon and justify those who trust in His Son. It also means that God is equally free to condemn those who reject His Son’s Saving Work on The Cross.
It was the Work of The Lord Jesus Christ on The Cross that allowed the Justice of God to Love us. The fact that God’s Justice is satisfied, frees God to Love us and Bless us. Therefore, His Justice is the source of Grace! You wouldn’t have God’s Grace if it weren’t for His Justice because Justice is the believer’s point of contact with God. Many people cannot conceive that God is anything but a God of Love, but Justice is as important and as evident as any other characteristic of His Essence.
God the Father is said to be Just in DEU 32:4: “The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.” God the Son is called the righteous judge in 2TI 4:8 …in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing. God the Holy Spirit convicts the world of this justice as noted in JOH 16:8: And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment…
God is also Love as is taught in 1JO 4:8: The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Since God is Eternal and Immutable, His Love is Unchanging and Enduring (forever). The motive behind God’s Love is Grace! Remember, Grace is all that God is free to do for us without compromising His Divine Essence. The scriptures teach in ROM 8:38-39 that no matter how a believer fails, no matter what he does, God keeps on loving him: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. God’s Love always depends on His Character – never on man’s character! God’s Love has no strings attached to it! God the Father is Love as God’s Word clearly tells us.
God the Son is also perfect love; this type of love is described in JOH 15:13: Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. God the Holy Spirit produces this perfect love in us according to GAL 5:22: But the fruit of the Spirit is love…Also look at ROM 5:5: …and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Now, so far, we have established that God is Sovereign, Righteous, Just, and Loving. Additionally, God possesses Eternal Life as part of His Essence. He always was, always is, and always will be. There never was a time when God did not exist. God had neither a beginning nor does He have an end: Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God (PSA 90:1-2). This is very important to understand because technically speaking, there is a difference between eternal life and everlasting life. Eternal life is the life that only God possesses. Everlasting life is the life which, according to God’s Plan, members of the human race possess. Everlasting life has a beginning but no end. Eternal Life has no beginning and no end.
For both the believer and the unbeliever, eternity is everlasting. The unbeliever, who has failed to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, will suffer everlasting punishment and regret: “These [unbelievers] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”MAT 25:46. The believer, on the other hand, has the assurance of eternal life which is the life that God promised to give all those who believe upon His Son: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death.” (JOH 8:51)
The New Testament affirms that eternal life was with the Father: …and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us… (1JO 1:2) This same life is in His Son: And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. (1JO 5:11) This is why the Lord Jesus Christ is described as the Alpha and the Omega which translates as the beginning and the end. God the Holy Spirit gives eternal life and in fact, He is called The Eternal Spirit in HEB 9:14… how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Again, we see each Person of The Trinity possessing the same Divine Attributes of Divine Essence.
Where Deity is concerned, time is non-existent. God merely invented time for humanity to accommodate the finite mind of man. Time is actually the boundary lines and the race that man has been placed within. Whether you realize it or not, we are all slaves to time. Our lives, our jobs, our leisure are regulated by the clock. We think in terms of past, present, and future. We also think in terms of short or long periods of time, of years, months, days, hours, minutes, and even seconds. However, our own lives are likened to vapor trails in JAM 4:13-14. We are here today and gone tomorrow. However, the promise is that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
A sixth Divine Attribute is God’s Omniscience. Omni = “all” and science = “knowledge.” God is all knowing; God knows all things. Once the believer comes to understand that God is Omniscient, it is a very comforting. In JOB 37:16, God is described as “one perfect in knowledge.” David described His Omniscience in a fantastic way in PSA 139:1-6: O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it. This really says it all about God’s Omniscience and this verse explains why His Omniscience should be so comforting to us!
God’s knowledge is not based on time; it is not related to or limited by time. We can usually go back and evaluate things that have happened in the past, see our failures and hopefully learn from them. We can even speculate about the future and make some pretty accurate educated guesses. But none of us knows exactly what will happen tomorrow. We are limited by time. However, God is not limited, and therefore His knowledge is superimposed over time. We continue to learn as long as we live on this earth. God has never had to learn a thing. He has always known everything: every thought, every motive, every event and every action of every person who would ever live! And He knew everything for billions and billions of years. He knows the end from the beginning. He knows EVERYTHING!
Our Lord shared this principle with His disciples when He said in MAT 10:29-30, “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And, yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father’s knowledge, but the very hairs of your head are numbered.” And because He is omniscient, He knows what is best in every situation! We may not understand the adversities and the sufferings which come into our lives, yet in the end, if we are patient and trusting, we will discover that God knew all along exactly what we needed and what was best for us. The Lord Jesus Christ said to Peter one day in JOH 13:7: “What I’m doing you do not realize now, but you shall understand later on.” No one in the human race can ever really understand in depth the principle of omniscience; we can only touch the surface. The apostle Paul wrote in ROM 11:33: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable are His ways. However, it is God’s intention for every believer to come to understand everything in the Bible, and that is while we’re on earth. Anything which God did not intend for us to know was not included in the canon of scripture. Of course, you will not understand the doctrinal content of the Bible all at once, for knowledge is built on knowledge, but if you stay with it long enough it can be done! And it should be done!
{to be continued}