The Personality of God by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 16, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 19.

The Personality of God

By Editor

An esteemed correspondent writes us from a foreign field:

Will you give some of the Bible proofs on the personality and corporeal being of God? It is a live question in this country.

First of all let us not associate “corporeal being” with the gross, material corporeity of fallen humanity. God doubtless has many substances in the universe that we know not, and many unknown forms of substances that we partly know.

Neither let us regard the contempt with which modern, disguised pantheism speaks of “anthropomorphism” when Bible believers speak of the personality of the Deity, personality in the sense of having a local place, habitation, throne. The same class would take from us our Bible and Saviour.

On the person of the great, omnipotent, omniscient, infinite Creator and Ruler of the heavens and the earth, poor, finite, erring man should think and speak with bared feet and head and hushed voice. But there are some things that God has revealed in His Word; and what is revealed belongs to us and to our children forever. Deut. 29: 29.

1. The Bible clearly teaches that there is one God in three-fold manifestation, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Matt. 28: 19.

2. That God the Father is manifested to us by the Son. “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” Matt. 11: 27.

3. That the Holy Spirit is the divine power, energy, life, by which God’s works are accomplished, from the creation of worlds to the re-creation of sinful men or the conviction of the sinner, and that this Spirit makes everywhere present to the child of faith both the Father and the Son. Gen. 1: 2; Job 26: 13; John 3: 5; 16: 7, 8; 14: 23.

4. The Word clearly teaches that God the Father has “His throne in the heavens,” and that “His kingdom ruleth over all.” Ps. 103: 19. He, “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” is in some place as He is in no other place. There is a center to His empire which we can conceive. We can faintly imagine its infinite outspreadings, but we can clearly conceive of the great center. In fact we know of no manifestation of power or energy within our grasp of comprehension that does not have a center from which it pushes forth, disperses, diffuses, spreads abroad. This is taught repeatedly in the Word. Nowhere is the great God represented as being in all places in general and in no place in particular. The whole plan of His universe argues mightily that His throne is as central to His illimitable universe, which by Him has the potency of infinity, as is our sun to the solar system. The words of Jesus, the second person in the Godhead made flesh, indicate this: “came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” John 16: 28. “I go unto the Father.” John 14: 12, 28; 16: 16. In His prayer He said: “And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” John 17: 5. “These are in the world, and I come to Thee.” Verses 11, 13. After His resurrection He said to Mary: “Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father: but go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God.” John 20: 17. If the Father had no local habitation, the words were wholly misleading. But they were not. The Incarnate Truth did not deceive. See Luke 24: 50, 51.

And this is the teaching of Paul, who in speaking of Christ said: “Who being originally in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself. . . . Wherefore also God highly exalted Him.” Phil. 2: 6-9, R.V., margin. Jesus Christ was with the Father before the world was, existing in “the form of God.” He left that exalted position, became the chief of angels among angels, became the chief of men among men—wholly because of character and service; died for man; rose again; ascended to the right hand of God, the seat of power, the center of God’s kingdom. When we know that every middle step in this series of steps was concrete—the humiliation, the becoming flesh, the death, and the resurrection—should we make shadowy, vague, figurative the “being originally in the form of God” and the ascension to the right hand of God upon His throne? See Heb. 8: 1; Rev. 3: 21.

To this very point are the words of another New Testament writer: “By whom also [the Son] He [God] made the worlds; who [the Son] being the brightness of His [God’s] glory, and the express image of His [God’s] person.” Heb. 1: 2, 3. “The very image of His substance,” reads the A.R.V. “An exact representation of His very being,” reads Rotherham’s rendering. “The image of Himself,” is Murdock’s Syriac. “The express image of His substance,” reads Boothroyd, also Alford. So was Christ, the Son of God, before the world was.

5. That Creator “created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him.” Gen. 1: 27. On this word “image” in verses 26 and 27 “The Companion Bible,” a late work, now in process of issue by the Oxford University Press, says: “One Image . . . likeness. One thing, not two — ‘In the likeness of one image.’ . . . Refers only to outward form, not to attributes. . . . In any case the ‘image and likeness’ is physical, not moral. Man fell and is still a moral ruin, but some physical likeness to Elohim still remains. Compare Gen. 9: 6; 1 Cor. 11: 7; Jas. 3: 9. No indication that that similitude was ever lost. Gen. 5: 3.” On Gen. 3: 7: “Adam becomes ‘naked’ by losing something of Elohim’s glorious likeness.”

6. We do not feel like pressing the various visions given to the prophets. These are more or less symbolical, for the purpose of impressing us with some attribute of God or His interest in the affairs of men. For instance, we could not use Rev. 5: 1 as to the form of the Father any more than we could use verse 6 in the same vision as to the form of the Son. But that scripture and a multitude of others are clear evidence as to the great central King and throne of God’s government, the Father as truly a personality as the Son.

7. But is He not everywhere present? He is. From the Center of Infinite Power flow the great currents of power. Ps. 104: 30. From the great heart of God, in direct, sympathetic life-touch with His whole living universe throb the heart-beats of His love. Heb. 4: 15. From the perennially welling Fountain disperse the great streams of life to every soul. Ps. 36: 9. God is in touch with every creature in His vast empire by His Spirit. Acts 17: 27, 28. Living faith can reach up its antennae of prayer and connect by divine wireless with the throne of God; and the mighty current of life brings to the needy soul the divine Presence, the Father and Son. For it is by the Spirit that God is everywhere present. “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.” Read Ps. 139: 1-12.

The personality of the Holy Spirit is not a revelation of that Spirit, but it makes personally present to the child of faith the personality and power of Father and Son. John 14: 17, 23; 16: 13-15. Would we come in touch with its unperverted power to save?—Then submit to God’s law of righteousness, the channel through which life flows; for “in the way of righteousness is life;” “the Spirit is life because of righteousness;” “that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” Prov. 12: 28; Rom. 8: 10; 2 Cor. 4: 10.

This article could be greatly extended. For our correspondent and others who may be troubled we have noted these facts and scriptures as they have come to us. With them all is harmony and hope.