The Characteristics of God: Who Is God in the Bible?
What is God really like, and how can we know? If I choose only the qualities I find comforting, I’ll end up imagining a god who suits my plans. We need to listen to what the living God says about Himself in Scripture. His revelation changes how we worship and understand the gospel, and it shows us why we need to repent.
The One God Revealed in Three Persons
We need to begin with what God has revealed about Himself. Scripture does not present the LORD as one tribal deity among many equally valid gods. The LORD alone made heaven and earth, and all of it remains under His authority. He judges evil and faithfully saves sinners without failing to keep His promises. As God, He calls His people to worship Him in truth.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!
The Bible plainly teaches that there is one God, yet it identifies the Father as God and the Son as fully divine. It also speaks of the Holy Spirit as God. We need to hold those statements together: the three Persons are distinct, and they share the one divine essence.
That means we do not worship three gods, and we cannot treat Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as temporary masks worn by one Person at different times. The one God eternally exists in three co-equal and co-eternal Persons. When I study the Trinity, I need to let each of these biblical truths stand instead of using one to explain away another.
Each divine Person fully possesses every attribute of God. The Son is not less divine than the Father, and the Holy Spirit is a divine Person rather than an impersonal force. We see the Trinity at work in the gospel as the Father sends the Son to accomplish redemption. The Holy Spirit then indwells and seals everyone who believes.
We cannot assign love to one Person and justice to another as though God’s characteristics could be divided among them. His love and every use of His power are holy. When He judges, He does so with perfect wisdom, and when He shows mercy, He never departs from truth. His knowledge of us is complete and personal, not a cold collection of facts. He fills heaven and earth with His presence while remaining distinct from what He made. His sovereign rule does not make Him the author of sin or remove our responsibility for it.
Jesus Christ gives us the clearest revelation of this one God. The eternal Son became fully man without ceasing to be fully God, and His coming revealed the Father’s character rather than a different one. The Spirit was not separated from that work. In the salvation Christ provides, we see God’s holy love and justice together with His wisdom and faithfulness. These attributes belong to the one triune Lord and never conflict in anything He does.
The Name, Holiness, and Faithfulness of God
When Moses asked what he should tell Israel, God identified Himself as I AM. In Scripture, God’s name reveals who He is and carries His authority. It is also connected with His presence and saving power, so Moses was being given more than a name to repeat.
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”
God also gave the covenant name LORD, identifying Himself as the God who had made promises to Abraham and continued them through Isaac and Jacob. The words “I AM” help us understand His self-existence: He needs nothing from creation in order to exist or live. Nor does creation supply any of His knowledge or power. His covenant promises rest on who He is, and He remains faithful to them.
Moses could go to Israel on the authority of that name and with the assurance of God’s presence, rather than confidence in his own ability. God had seen the people’s affliction and heard their cries without forgetting His covenant. What gives me confidence here is that the LORD’s saving action rested on His own character. He would remain faithful even when circumstances made His promise seem impossible.
Exodus 34 shows how His name reveals His character. Israel had worshiped the golden calf soon after the covenant was confirmed. Moses interceded, and the first stone tablets were broken. When he returned to the mountain with new tablets, the LORD proclaimed His name and revealed how mercy and justice belong together in Him.
And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth,
The LORD describes Himself as merciful and gracious, patient with sinners and abundant in goodness and truth. His fuller declaration includes forgiveness without giving up righteous judgment. I cannot take the mercy that comforts me and set aside the justice that confronts sin. People often select what they prefer about God, but Scripture keeps these qualities together. His mercy does not require Him to be untrue, and His justice never makes Him cruel.
God is holy, meaning that He is set apart from creation and morally pure in Himself. There is no evil in His character, and He needs no correction from anything outside Himself. No human standard stands above Him. His holiness helps me understand why His judgments are always righteous and why sin is so serious. Every command He gives and all true worship must agree with who He is.
And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!”
God’s holiness does not mean He is cold or distant. His mercy and nearness express His complete purity and truth, just as His love always agrees with truth rather than approving darkness out of sentiment. The companion study on the word holy follows this connection through worship and sin to the cross and the believer’s life.
A holy God could not save us by treating sin as harmless, which helps us understand why the cross was necessary. He dealt with sin through the blood of Christ. The love that provided salvation did not soften His holiness; it was holy love expressed in saving sinners.
Perfect Knowledge, Sovereign Wisdom, and All Power
Psalm 147 joins God’s greatness to His power and understanding. We gain knowledge gradually and sometimes forget details we once knew. We can misunderstand another person’s motives, and new information may force us to change our plans. God never faces these limitations.
Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite.
The Hebrew word translated “understanding” can refer to insight, discernment, or wisdom. Those meanings help us see that God knows all things truly and wisely, rather than simply holding a collection of facts. His understanding is unlimited. He never has to guess or discover something He did not know.
Because God already knows every detail and motive, He never has to repair a plan made with incomplete information. I don’t take that to mean He deals with us mechanically. He is the living God who understands His creatures completely, and His judgment of every situation has perfect insight.
Proverbs says that God’s eyes are in every place, watching the evil and the good. He sees what we do publicly as well as what we hide. That leaves the hypocrite unable to conceal sin, but it also means a faithful person’s unnoticed obedience is never wasted before Him. I can take comfort in His attention without forgetting that the same God sees what I need to confess.
In Isaiah 46, idols have to be carried, while the living God carries His people. He knows the end from the beginning and can declare what will happen because His counsel stands.
Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, “My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’
God’s foreknowledge does not cancel human responsibility. Scripture teaches His perfect knowledge and sovereign counsel while still commanding people to repent and believe. Those who hear His Word must respond, and they will give an account for that response. God is never surprised by evil, but He is never its author. He can overrule what people intend for harm while holding them responsible for the wickedness they freely choose.
God’s knowledge is always joined to wisdom. He knows what agrees with His holy purpose and chooses accordingly, so all His choices are right and good. A person can know a fact and still act foolishly, but God never mishandles what He knows. His judgments are never shallow, and His timing is never clumsy.
When I cannot understand what God is doing, I need to remember how little of the situation I can see. Fear may cloud even that limited view. God sees the end from the beginning and understands how every part fits His holy counsel. Trusting Him does not require us to pretend pain is easy or that we have no questions. We can bring those questions to Him because His understanding is complete.
Omnipotence means that God has all power to accomplish everything He purposes in agreement with His nature. It does not mean He can lie or sin. He cannot deny Himself, and His power cannot make a contradiction true. These are not weaknesses. They reveal the perfection of a God whose power always works with holiness and wisdom.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The universe depends on God for its existence, because He created it rather than receiving His existence from it. Space and time exist by His will, as do matter and life. Every power a creature has continues to depend on Him. That helps me put what frightens us in perspective without pretending it is unreal. Neither nations nor storms outrank their Creator. Sickness and death remain under His authority too, and spiritual enemies cannot act beyond His rule.
“Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.
Jeremiah spoke these words while Jerusalem was under Babylonian siege and its fall looked certain. God had told him to buy a field as a sign that houses, fields, and vineyards would again be possessed in the land. Jeremiah confessed God’s creative power while trying to understand that command in the middle of disaster. The verse is not a slogan promising every outcome we desire.
God’s power assures us that no obstacle can prevent Him from accomplishing His holy will. It does not promise that He will do everything I ask at the time I want it. That power also makes salvation possible when human effort cannot help. Jesus was speaking about salvation when He said that what is impossible with men is possible with God. No sinner can save himself, but God can give new life through Jesus Christ.
Present Everywhere and Unchanging in Character
To say God is omnipresent means that He is present everywhere as God. We must distinguish that from pantheism, the belief that everything is God, which Scripture does not teach. He remains creation’s Lord, distinct from what He made. Creation can neither contain Him nor offer us somewhere to hide from Him.
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
David names the highest and lowest places to show that no one can escape God’s presence. A believer in a hospital room is not beyond His reach, and neither is someone at work or alone in an apartment. He is as near in a quiet kitchen as anywhere else. I find comfort in that, but I also have to take its warning seriously. Closing a door cannot put my sin outside His presence or make it safe.
“Am I a God near at hand,” says the LORD, “And not a God afar off? Can anyone hide himself in secret places, So I shall not see him?” says the LORD; “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD.
Through Christ, God’s nearness becomes even more personal to the believer. Jesus promised to remain with His disciples to the end of the age. When I pray, I am not trying to bring a faraway God closer. I am speaking with the One who is already near.
God is not only near; His character will always be what it is now. That is what immutability means. He has always been perfect, so He does not need to mature or improve, and He will never decay or become less holy. He neither learns what He once lacked nor forgets what He knows. We can rely on His promises because His truth does not shift and His covenant faithfulness cannot weaken.
“For I am the LORD, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
Yet Scripture describes this unchanging God grieving over sin and responding to people. He judges evil and still shows compassion. At times He relents from an announced disaster when people repent. I don’t see those responses as evidence that He has become a different God. They show Him dealing genuinely with people whose lives and circumstances change.
The God who opposes stubborn evil is also merciful toward sinners who turn from it. He has not changed from bad to good or discovered compassion He lacked before. His response fits the holy and merciful character He has always had, even as the people and circumstances before Him change.
I can pray knowing that goodness already belongs to God and that He faithfully attends to His people. I don’t have to persuade Him to become good. Confession follows the same understanding: I am not supplying information He lacks, but responding honestly to the truth He has shown me.
Wise and True, Just and Merciful
At the end of Romans 11, Paul responds to God’s wisdom with worship. He has followed God’s dealings with Israel and the nations, warning Gentile believers against pride while looking ahead to God’s covenant faithfulness. He cannot trace every part of redemption’s history, but he can bow before the wisdom of the God who governs it.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
Paul’s worship does not tell me to stop thinking. It tells me to think humbly under Scripture’s authority, accepting what God has revealed while recognizing that some things remain within His own counsel. We don’t have to call hard questions easy. Faith trusts Him where His wisdom reaches beyond what we can understand.
Unlike us, God cannot lie, and He never misleads His people. People may flatter and exaggerate, and a promise may be forgotten or deliberately broken. The Lord’s words do not have those weaknesses, because truth belongs to His nature. That gives us a reason to trust Scripture and rely on what He has promised.
God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
Because God is true and just, He never calls evil good or clears someone’s guilt by pretending no wrong occurred. His love agrees with that same holiness and truth. It cannot be reduced to approval of whatever sinners want. At the cross, we see love giving sacrificially to save them.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The word propitiation tells us that sin is dealt with before God. In providing His Son, God expressed His love without bypassing His holiness. His mercy and grace agree with that righteous character: His compassion never rests on a lie, and the favor He gives undeserving people never turns evil into good.
Mercy and grace describe closely related qualities of God, but they help us understand His kindness in different ways. Mercy is His compassion toward people in misery and guilt, while grace is His favor toward those who could never earn it. Neither requires Him to ignore justice. He can forgive truthfully because His salvation deals with sin instead of pretending it never existed.
We need to keep these distinctions in view as we read about God. His love does not compete with holiness or require Him to soften it, and His inability to sin or lie shows perfection rather than a shortage of power. Being present throughout creation does not make creation divine. Nor does His sovereign rule remove the responsibility of those He calls to repent and believe. These truths belong together because none of God’s characteristics contradicts another.
The Cross Reveals God Most Clearly
Romans 3 has already shown that everyone has sinned. The law exposes that guilt, but obeying it cannot turn a guilty person into someone who has never sinned. No one will be justified by the deeds of the law. Paul then announces God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ, directing us to the cross and resurrection for the clearest understanding of God’s character in the gospel.
whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
I notice that Paul keeps God’s justice and His justification of the believer together. God judges sin instead of dismissing guilt as harmless, yet He declares righteous the person who has faith in Jesus. His love provides mercy through His Son’s sacrifice without setting holiness aside. The saving plan shows His wisdom, the resurrection shows His power, and every part of the gospel confirms His faithfulness.
Jesus is not a created helper sent by a distant deity. He is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man. In His innocent body, He physically bore the real punishment wicked men inflicted upon Him for our sins and shed real blood. He truly died and was buried before rising bodily from the dead. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus, and the Holy Spirit was not divided from the Father or Son. The one triune God accomplished salvation in perfect holiness and love.
God’s holiness shows us why we need to repent, and His saving grace invites us to believe. These are truths we must respond to, not only doctrines we can define. Christ died for the whole world, and God’s genuine offer of salvation can be resisted or finally rejected. God calls every person to respond now by trusting Jesus Christ.
Knowing God this way should move us first to worship Him as Lord rather than treat Him as an accessory to our plans. If He knows everything, I cannot hide from Him, and His presence means secrecy cannot make sin safe. His power also exposes the foolishness of living as though I were sufficient on my own. I need to come to Him as He is, because His unchanging character will not bend to my preferences.
His love also gives us no reason to boast about ourselves. Salvation did not begin with our worth or effort, for God gave His Son while we were sinners. Faith receives what grace provides. We can come into His presence without claiming that obedience earned us a place there, and the grace that saves us also teaches us to take holiness seriously.
Everyone who truly believes is born again. The Holy Spirit indwells that believer and seals him for the promised inheritance. He is eternally secure because Christ saves completely, but that security never gives permission for lawlessness. A believer who understands God’s character can trust Him enough to confess sin honestly. Obedience then becomes part of worship rather than an attempt to earn salvation.
When I bring a situation to the Father in prayer, He already knows every detail. His sovereign rule does not keep Him from caring for His children. We are speaking to the Almighty, whose power is holy and whose wisdom is perfect, so we are not asking a weak helper to do more than he can. And because the Lord is near, our words are not lost in empty space.
My Final Thoughts
I cannot choose one characteristic of God and use it to silence the rest. The one triune Lord loves with perfect holiness and always uses His power wisely, with justice and mercy never separated. Everything He says is faithful. We see these qualities together most clearly in Jesus Christ, who shed His blood and died before rising bodily so sinners may be saved through faith. Knowing who God is should lead us to stop hiding from Him and come to Him in prayer. We can worship with trust because we are responding to the God who has revealed Himself, rather than one we have imagined.