God

Is God real? Who is God and what is our relationship to him? Why does a good God allow bad things?

God’s existence is the first thing that Scripture proclaims: “In the beginning, God . . . .” God’s existence is the foundational fact upon which all other reality depends. This is so much the case that the Bible never tries to argue for or prove God’s existence; rather, Scripture simply proclaims it and judges any who reject this plain fact as fools.

If God Created Everything, Who Created God?

Atheists often ask this question to try to argue that the concept of God is absurd. However, every worldview has an uncaused cause. Proponents of the big bang have no cause for the beginning of the universe they claim resulted in everything we see today. The difference is our first cause is personal.

God Has Revealed Himself Through Scripture

Romans 1 proclaims that God’s existence and power can be inferred from creation. However, it is only through Scripture that we have propositional truth communicated about God. The Bible is a history book detailing how God created the earth and how God has acted in the world to bring about salvation through the Son, Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the Bible tells us how we should relate to God, and most importantly, how we can be saved through faith in Jesus.

The sum of your word is truth,
And every one of your righteous rules endures forever. (Psalm 119:160)

How Do We Know There Is a God?

Any answer to the question, “How do we know there is a God?” that does not start with God’s own statements regarding himself is self-refuting, inconsistent, and limited by human frailty, because a finite, limited man can never ultimately prove the existence of an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing God. Only an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being could prove the existence of the God described in the Bible.

There Is One Triune God

God by definition stands alone as the Creator and origin of everything else. Anything else that is worshipped is a false god.

For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. (Isaiah 46:9)

God eternally exists as one being in three persons who are coequal and coeternal: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These persons have distinct roles in creation and salvation.

God Is Good and Truthful

Many ancient religions attempted to placate gods who were seen as capricious or morally ambivalent. In contrast, God is not only completely good; he is the source of all goodness in the universe and the standard by which the goodness of all other things is judged. All moral laws flow out of his character.

One important implication is that God cannot lie: “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it” (Numbers 23:19). This means that we can completely trust his Word, the Bible, in whatever subject it speaks.

Ungodly People Deny the Obvious Truth of God

Scripture declares, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1, 53:1). King David had in mind not modern atheists but people who practically deny God by living as if he doesn’t exist.

Romans 1 depicts how sin progresses when people deny God: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:21–23).

Ungodly people also deny the Bible’s history. Peter wrote, “Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’ For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished” (2 Peter 3:3–6).

In response, Christians are exhorted to defend our faith.

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (Jude 1:3)

Our motivation for defending our faith should always be our desire to honor Christ:

But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. (1 Peter 3:15–16)

Theistic Evolution Denies Key Truths About God and the Gospel

Part of the way the Bible teaches us about who God is and what he is like is by telling us how he has acted in history. Theistic evolution reinterprets what God has done in creation and thus how we relate to God. A god who used evolution, however, is very different from the God who created a very good world by his word. In this system, God is not the omnipotent Lord of all things whose Word has to be taken seriously by all men, and he is integrated into the evolutionary philosophy. The only workspace allotted to him is that part which evolution cannot explain with the means at its disposal.

If evolution were true, then it absolutely would disprove the God described in Scripture. Rather than a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, holy, pure, just, merciful, true, and loving, as described in Scripture, you would have a god who is either incapable of or unwilling to reveal the truth about how and when he created.

While a person’s salvation depends only on faith in Jesus, evolutionary ideas oust God and dismiss his true Word. Therefore, old-earth creationists are being inconsistent in their biblical hermeneutic. They accept the NT miracles of Jesus and the apostles yet deny creation week miracles, as well as the worldwide flood and the exodus (and many others). They accept death before sin, contrary to what Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 tells us.

If God Is Good, Why Is There Death and Suffering?

God created a perfect world, but sin corrupted it. Now suffering, illness, and death are part of this cursed world. But this is not the end of the story.

God Has Revealed Himself in Jesus Christ

The second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, became man in the incarnation. He was born of the virgin Mary and had no human father. Through her, he is physically descended from Adam, and thus biologically related to every human who has lived, and qualified to be the last Adam and our Savior.

Is Jesus really God? In the Scriptures, he has the names of God, the attributes of God, and the authority of God. He does the works of God, and he is worshipped as God.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

God Delights to Save Sinners

Sin entered the world when our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned by disobeying God and eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Every human since (except Jesus alone) has inherited Adam’s sin nature and broken God’s law. We deserve to be judged for all the sins we’ve committed. If someone dies with their sins unpaid for, they will spend eternity in a place of eternal conscious torment called hell.

However, God did not abandon us but has provided a way to be saved. When Jesus became a man, he lived a perfect human life, gaining a human righteousness that could be credited to us when we trust in him. And because he died the death of a sinner even though he never sinned, his death can be credited to us to pay for our sins. Jesus rose from the dead, proving that God accepted his sacrifice and that he was victorious.

Our risen Savior now offers the free gift of eternal life to all who will put their faith and trust in him. All who truly believe in him, repent of their sin, and trust in his righteousness (rather than their own deeds) for their forgiveness are forgiven (justified), adopted into the family of God, given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and granted eternal life with their Creator.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (Romans 10:9–10)

Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out. (Acts 3:19)

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12)

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)