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The Truth About God
By William R. Cunningham
January 7, 2006
Introduction
Is God really like what we think he’s like? Do the things you hear from church pulpits and the like coincide with the picture that the Bible paints of God? With all of the faith teaching and the like we are easily likely to perceive God to be what he is not and therefore expect him to do things that he never agreed to do or said that he would do. Many of us simply have the wrong idea about God simply because we don’t really know him.
What if your ideal God is not the one that is revealed to us in the Bible? Would you love him? What if God was not some great big “grand daddy” in the sky giving us toys whenever we want and as often as he can? Well, I’ve got some news for you folks! God is not like that. That’s actually good news depending on your point of view. If you want the truth that it is good news, but if you would rather live in your fantasy then it is probably bad news.
I want tot discuss the truth about God in this lesson. We are going to discuss the basics of what God is like from the perspective of his relationship with us and our relationship with him. We are going to discuss the concept of love as it relates to God’s love for us and our love for God.
Hopefully you will see God as he really is after reading this lesson. I pray that you would come to know more of the truth about God and leave your fantasies about him behind so that you could truthfully interact with him and experience his love in a great way.
Who Is God?
The first question we need to answer is, “Who is God?” Only when we know who God really is can we really interact with him in truth. After this we need to know what God is like, but first let’s tackle the question of who he is.
God is our heavenly Father (Isaiah 53:16, Matthew 6:9, 11:17) who loves us (John 3:16) and provides for us. The Bible says that God is love (1 John 4:7-8, 4:16). God is the creator of all the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1, Psalm 102:25, Isaiah 20:23).
This is good, but what does it really mean to me? For example, I said above that God loves us. Someone could look me in the face and say, “So what! What does that mean in my life?” Perhaps this person just lost their job or had a very terrible accident and is wondering where God was in all of it. The bottom line is that we need to have an accurate picture of God so that we don’t blame him for things or expect things that are never promised to us.
Let’s go back to that word, love. I think that one word that describes God in regards to his relationship with us is the word “love.” God is love and he loves us. This makes sense when we consider the fact that God is our heavenly father and it seems reasonable that the father would love the children.
Now the Bible is the revelation of God to us. Without the Bible we would know very little about God and his relationship to humans. We would know much about his creative abilities, his organization, and power (See Romans 1:20). However, we would know very little about his love for us because we would have no source for that kind of information. However, the Bible declares that God loves us and that he cares about the individual and I therefore can know about God’s love for me and the human race.
We learn in Sunday school and church that God loves us. However, when we think of love we may come to the conclusion that God either does not love us or that we are so bad that God cannot love us. This conclusion comes because there is so much suffering in the world and we would reason that if God loves us then he would rid the world of suffering. Since suffering does exist and relatively good or righteous people suffer undeservingly then we may wrongly conclude that God either does not love us as we were told, we are really too bad to realize his love, or God is not powerful enough to stop the pain.
This is why I said earlier that we need to know the truth about God because false accusations about God originate from ignorance.
What is Love?
We tend to assume that what we call love is the love that God has for us. When we humans say that we love someone then we are typically referring to some type of heightened affection. For example, if a man told a woman that he loves her, but none of his actions support that statement (based on what she considers love) then she would conclude that he does not really love her (or she may come to understand that what he calls love is not the same thing as what she calls love).
Therefore, it is imperative that we understand what God means when he says that he loves us and what it means to love God. So let’s look at the concept of love from God’s perspective and from ours and match these with reality.
Consider the following passage of scripture.
Matthew 22:37-39 (NKJV) 37 Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There are two words in the New Testament that are translated to the English word “love” and we need to understand the differences in order to understand the love God has for us and the love that we should have for God.
- The Greek word agapao is used in the biblical scripture shown above. The word agapao means to have a high regard or a high esteem for someone. This type of love originates from a decision though it could also originate from experience with the one loved. However, in this context the word “love” denotes a high regard that we should have for God, which implies that it is something that is dependant on our will and decision. We can choose to love God as well as each others.
- Another Greek word that is translated to the English word “love” is the word “phileo,” which means to have ardent affection and feeling towards.
The distinction between these two words is very important for us to understand the love God has for us and the love we should have for him and each other. Agapao denotes love that we purpose to have for God. It isn’t dependant on feelings or emotions. It is something that we just purpose to do. We should therefore love God by an act of our own will and not because he did something for us or made us feel good. We love God because we should.
Even though the love we should have for God is not based on emotion or affection, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a reason for loving him. We should not think of God as a tyrant king who demands our love. On the contrary there are many reasons that we should love God, but the most prominent is the fact that he loves us even though that love is not always evident (because we don’t understand it).
God’s Love For Us
God holds us in high regard or high esteem. God thinks very highly of us and has demonstrated this love for us by giving his only begotten son that through him we could have eternal life with God. Imagine that. We could live with God for all eternity and the only thing that we have to do is believe in his son Jesus Christ.
The significance of this is in the fact that we are all on a crash course so to speak, to hell. The Bible declares that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and we have no way of avoiding that death, i.e., total separation from God. The only thing that we have to look forward to for eternity is nothing. There is no hope and no good expectations without being reconciled to God.
However, God reached out to us to save us even while we were still sinning (See Romans 5:8). Why would God do this for a race of people who abandoned him? Why would God care to save us when we have shown that we’d rather live without him? Even today we see how the world is progressively taking God out of the picture so to speak. Why should God care? Why does God care? He cares because he loves us. He chose to love us since we surely did not deserve it and surely cannot earn it. God loves us because he wants to. He loves us because he does.
God’s love for us is based on his choice and not merit. There is no reason whatsoever why God should love us. We have done nothing to deserve God’s love and yet he still loves us. We need to understand this love of God else we will misunderstand his relationship to us and we will surely misinterpret reality based on our own fantasies or ideals about life itself.
Our Love For God
We saw earlier that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, i.e., with our entire being. We also saw that this love is a high regard and not affection as when a man loves a woman or the love between two friends. This love or esteem is purposed not earned.
We should have a high esteem for God because he has a high esteem for us. We may not know the implications of the high regard he has for us, but the Bible assures us that eternity holds all of the implications that we need when we wonder why we should love God.
Our love for God therefore should not be based on situations, which unfortunately is how many religious teachings represent God and love. Our love for God is a decision similar to the love a husband has for a wife. We are committed to God to love him no matter what. Let’s look at that as an illustration here.
A husband and wife make vows to each other to love until death separates them. The love here is a commitment of high regard similar to God’s commitment and high regard towards us. The husband and wife will hold each other in high esteem regardless of the situations that arise in their lives and regardless of the emotions that they may feel for each other. Even if the affection that they once had for each other dies, the commitment that they have for each other could very well re-ignite the fire of affection.
So is our love towards God. It is not based on how we feel about God, but rather is a commitment that we have to hold God in high esteem. We love God no matter what. We love God when things go well in our lives and we love God when things go awry. We love God when we are in good health and when we are ill. We love God when we are enjoying ourselves and when there is much pain. We persist to love God in the same way Job persisted in his dedication to God in that he would not give up on him.
So to love God is a commitment not based on emotions, situations, or life experiences. These things may affect how we feel about God, but our commitment to God should not be based on whether we feel blessed by him or not. We should not say that we love God because he has given us a new car. Soon that car will deteriorate or we may have an accident in it causing great pain. What then? If your love is based on God’s blessing of that object and that object causes you pain then will you still feel blessed by God and loved by God? Our love for God is based on a commitment and this commitment is driven by simply who God is.
Life and the Love of God
So if God holds me in high regard then why do I experience so much pain? Why do I have to experience any sickness, hurts, and other sufferings? Why can’t I become a Christian and live happily ever after? These and similar questions are common among human beings let alone Christians. It is a derivation of the problem of pain, which is, “If God was all powerful and if he loves us then why is there so much evil in the world where people suffer?” Another common version of this question is, “why do bad things happen to good people?” I must say that these are good questions.
One could justifiably say that no one is good and no one deserves anything from God. However, does a mother who struggles to pay the rent and raise her child deserve a tornado that destroys her house and kills her children? Does a person who works hard at an honest living and tries his best to do the right thing deserve to be laid off and lose everything?
We could justify a criminal suffering hard times because we could reason that he got what was coming to him. However, when someone that we would consider to be a relatively good person falls on hard times then we have problems with that situation or else we try to explain it some way. Why doesn’t God come to her aid? Why didn’t God miraculously stop that tornado from destroying that mother’s home or at least miraculously strengthen the house so it was not destroyed by the tornado?
The fact is that these types of miracles do not happen. We find that the righteous and the unrighteous get sick. We find that the unrighteous and the righteous suffer. Jesus even told us that it would be like this (Matthew 5:45) so why do we expect anything else? The Bible does not reveal to us that God will stop the pain and suffering in our lives. The Bible does not declare that God will miraculously stop all harm from coming your way. We do not see God operating like that in the Bible and yet the Bible is full of scriptures that declare the love of God towards humans.
For one thing we see that God sent Jesus Christ as a demonstration of his love for us and so that we would have eternal life (See John 3:16). So it is evident from the revelation that we have from God that life and love do not work the way that we expect it to work or the way that we were told. God loves us even though we suffer pain. God loves us even though we get sick, have accidents, or suffer any number of problems that life has to offer. However, I should point out that we should not neglect to remember the good times in our lives. It is easy to focus on the bad, but we should remember that not all of life is a bad trip. Even on a bad ride there may be good moments, i.e., something to enjoy and perhaps be thankful for.
Now there are many explanations as to w`hy there is so much suffering in the world and there are even religions that incorporate reasons for the way things are into their foundation. The truth is that we really don’t know. However, we definitely know that the Bible didn’t say that life would be easy. The Bible doesn’t tell us that God’s love for us will wipe away all problems in this life. We try to make sense of everything by trying to find a reason for why things happen. However, as Harold Kushner pointed out in his book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” sometimes things happen for no reason at all (See Ecclesiastes 9:11-13).
Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 (NKJV) 11 I returned and saw under the sun that— The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man also does not know his time: Like fish taken in a cruel net, Like birds caught in a snare, So the sons of men are snared in an evil time, When it falls suddenly upon them.
We have an ideal of life that if we are good then good things will happen and if we are bad then bad things will happen. We have an ideal that we get what we deserve. Therefore, if some calamity befalls someone then we immediately attempt to determine the reason why it happened. We may say that the person has a secret sin, he or she did not listen to God to avoid the calamity, or that God was trying to teach him or her something.
However, the Bible doesn’t paint a picture of the world like that. We see in the Bible that things happen to people even though they did not deserve them or that there was no apparent reason for it those things happen. We see that people suffer for doing the right thing. People die for standing up for what is right. We even see that in life today. There are many people that were persecuted and even murdered for fighting for the right thing.
Therefore, our ideals about God cannot be accurate if indeed we think that God’s love means that all harm will bypass us now. There is absolutely no reason that we should believe that or expect that. However, the Bible does tell us that God will always be with us and that he will never leave us. Some Christian martyrs died while singing hymns to God or worshipping God. They did not consider their fate to be punishment from God or the results of some secret sins. They just reckoned it as something that happens in a cruel world to even good people.
Final Words
Here are some things that we need to realize if we are going to truly understand the love that God has for us and that we may truly love God without any inhibitions. These will help us to know who God really is and what he is really like.
- God holds us in high esteem
- We should hold God in high esteem
- The world is a very bad place
- There are good things and bad things that happen to people
- Sometimes things happen for no reason at all
- God is always with us helping us to get through the issues of life
- God’s love is not necessarily seen in the issues that we have in life. God’s love is seen through Jesus Christ and it is on him we should focus
That last point is most interesting to me. We saw earlier that God demonstrated his love towards us by giving us Jesus Christ that we might have eternal life. If we were to focus our relationship with God on Jesus Christ then we could better experience his love because it would not be based on what happens to us in our lives (good or bad). We would get to the father truly through Jesus Christ and not through life experiences.
Many times people’s perspective of God comes from their life experiences. If they are having a good life then God is good (or they forget all about God). If they are having hard times then they think badly about God (or they may draw nearer to God for help). Let’s stop basing our relationship with God on life experiences or our ideals about life and God. Instead, let’s realize that God does love us, i.e., has a high regard for us, and begin to esteem him highly as we come to realize the significance of Jesus Christ and as we realize the eternal nature of life itself. Amen