God Cannot Be Separated From His Attributes
How The Westminster Shorter Catechism Changes Our Lives
God is love.
1 John 4:8
Q4: What is God?
A: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
God is His attributes. He is not made up of the perfect combination of the attributes. God is love, wisdom, sovereignty, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. God does not live up to higher standards; He is the standard. And if God is His attributes then He is also always all His attributes at once. He is loving wisdom, powerful holiness, sovereign justice, merciful goodness, and unchanging truth. Any combination of the attributes is true of God. It is one thing to see the holy love of God and another to see the loving holiness of God. Nevertheless, He is always who He is all the time.
When we separate God’s attributes from God we will always have wrong definitions and wrong standards. We need to remember that the attributes of wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are communicable attributes. This means that we image God by living according to these attributes. So, when we separate the attributes of God from God we will fail to image God as He is.
This is what we’re doing today in many ways. One of the corrections we need to have is that of not worshiping love in itself because love can never be separated from God. God is love. Love is not the idea of just making someone feel comfortable (see Gen. 32 when Jacob wrestles with the angel of the LORD). Love is not the idea of affirming everything (see Eph. 4:15 about “speaking the truth in love”). Love is not the idea of letting someone be whoever or whatever they want to be as long as it makes them feel good (see Phil. 1:6 where Paul says that God will not leave you the same but will finish the work He began in you). The love of God is God giving Himself to us in such a way that brings us to Himself even if it costs Him everything. The love of God’s people is when they give themselves to someone else for their greater good in a way that images God even if it costs them everything. Notice that in both of these definitions that presupposition of God. Inevitably, when we separate God from His attributes we lose what the attribute really is.
What does this mean in the end? It means that if we are to image God we must know who God is. If we want to love others then we must see God’s love. If we want to promote holiness then we need to fix our faith on God’s holiness. If we want to have wisdom then we must observe the wisdom of God. Most of all, all the attributes of God are revealed in Christ. Seeing Him is seeing God.