When it comes to explaining what I believe, I often find it hard, not because I don’t know what to say, but because God has blessed me with so much and taught me so many things, that I simply don’t know where to start. However, as a created being, I think it is my privilege to speak of my Creator, our almighty Father in Heaven. If asked to describe God in one word I would choose love, as John describes in 1 John 4:8. More than being all-loving, God is all-powerful, all-just, and yes, all-wise, these are the four attributes of God. Each attribute balances the other, can you imagine an all-powerful God that is not all-loving, or an all-wise God that is not also all-just, that could lead to some interesting, and perhaps dangerous situations. But we can have peace knowing that God’s power is balanced with His love, His wisdom is balanced with justice, and so on and so forth.
The really amazing thing about these attributes of God, His character if you’d like to call it that, is that we can test to see if what we know as God’s Word, His Plan, and His purposes, are in harmony with these four attributes. If something does not align with God’s character, then we should carefully investigate our understanding until we find our error. If something does indeed align with God’s character, then we can rejoice, knowing that it is the Truth. Let’s look at an example of how we can apply this principle:
We all know the story of Adam and Eve, Adam was the first human created by God, he lived in the Garden of Eden with his wife Eve, also created by God from one of Adam’s ribs, therefore she was part of Adam. All was perfect until Eve was deceived by Satan, Adam ended up eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and Adam, Eve, and all their children, including us, would be “born in sin, shapen in iniquity” and eventually die, Psalm 51:5, Ezek 18:20.
Let us explore the accounts of Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3 to search for God’s four attributes. First, love, God created Adam and Eve as perfect human beings that had all their needs supplied in the Garden of Eden, and all they had to do was obey God, seems pretty loving to me. How about power? Well, God created the Heavens and the Earth, He created the Garden of Eden, He created Adam and Eve, all in perfection, seems pretty powerful to me. And how about justice? This is where things get interesting. In Gen 2:17, God instructs Adam that he could eat from any tree in the Garden, except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and if Adam did eat from that tree, he would die the same day. Now, we know from 2 Peter 3:8 that a day for God is as 1000 years, and after Adam ate the fruit, he lived to 960, within this 1000 year “day.” So God did indeed exercise justice when He kept His instruction to Adam.
But what about wisdom? God allowed Adam, the only perfect man on earth and eventually the biological father of all mankind, to sin and die, along with all of mankind… doesn’t seem very wise to me. Here we come to a very interesting thought, when God told Adam he would surely die, did Adam know what death was? There was sin, Lucifer had sinned and become Satan, the Adversary, but death had not yet occurred in all of God’s vast domain, no creature knew what death truly was, including Adam. How about you and me, would we make the same mistake as Adam, eat the fruit, even if we know we would give up perfect life for a life of sin and death? Certainly not! We know what it means to die, we know what sickness, pain, and suffering is, we know that sin is painful, and death only leads to the broken hearts, and tears of loved ones. And here lies the wisdom of God Almighty. In all His wisdom, He knew that the only way to ensure mankind would understand the true measure of sin and death, was to let them experience it first hand.
We know from 1 Corinthians 15:22 that, “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” God knew Adam would disobey because Adam didn’t understand the consequences of sin, and because of this all of mankind would sin and die as well. But God is wise, just, powerful, and loving. He sent His only begotten Son to this earth, as a perfect man, to pay the ransom price for Adam, a perfect life, to redeem mankind from the prison of death. You see, because Jesus, a perfect man, willingly gave up His life, all mankind will be resurrected from death, and will have the opportunity to be tested just as Adam was, but with one key difference, we know what it means to sin, and we know what it means to die. Therefore, mankind, in all their experience, is almost guaranteed to pass the test that Adam failed almost 7000 years ago. We will no longer be penalized for Adam’s sin, only if we choose to be unrighteous, but with what we have experienced with regard to sin and death, the choice between righteousness and evil, will be a very easy one to make. And because of that, mankind will finally be able to obey God perfectly, living in harmony with Him for eternity, all because of Jesus Christ, who gave Himself a ransom for all. Now if that isn’t wisdom, justice, power, and most importantly love, then I don’t know what is.
- A Follower of Christ