Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2042. God’s love is not primarily a feeling, and it is not the vague affection our culture usually means when it uses the word. It is His settled, active commitment to the good of those He loves, a commitment proved beyond doubt at the cross. John states it as plainly as any verse in…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2041. God’s holiness is the attribute Scripture reaches for more often than any other to describe who He is, and it means two things held together, that God is entirely set apart from His creation in majesty, and that He is entirely set apart from sin in moral perfection. When Isaiah is given a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2040. Divine omnipresence means that God is fully and equally present everywhere at once, in every place, at every moment, without being spread thin, divided into portions, or contained by any location. David captures this with unmatched honesty in Psalm 139, asking “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2039. Divine omnipotence means that God is able to do all that He wills to do, without effort, without rival, and without any power outside Himself limiting what He can accomplish. When Job finally answers God out of the whirlwind, he says “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2038. When people ask me what divine omniscience means, I always start in the same place. It means that God knows everything there is to know, perfectly and all at once, without ever having to work anything out, look anything up, or wait for events to unfold before He understands them. There is no…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2032. Divine emotions is a phrase I use carefully, because Scripture clearly describes God loving, grieving, rejoicing and growing angry, yet these responses are not identical to the changeable, often involuntary feelings that sweep over us. Genesis 6:6 says God “was grieved… and it grieved him to his heart” over human wickedness before the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 2019. What does divine impassibility mean, and is it something the Bible actually teaches or something Greek philosophy smuggled into Christian theology? This is one of those Deep Dive questions where I want to slow down and take my time, because the traditional answer and the biblical data sit in real, sustained tension with…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2001. Theology Proper is the branch of systematic theology devoted entirely to the study of God Himself: His existence, His nature, His attributes, His works, and the relationships within the Godhead. It is called "proper" not because other branches of theology are somehow improper, but because it studies God as the direct subject rather…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2107. Eternity and everlastingness sound like two words for the same thing, and most of us use them interchangeably without a second thought. God lives for ever; God is eternal; surely that is one truth dressed in two coats? Not quite. The difference between eternity and everlastingness is one of the most clarifying distinctions…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 2106. Was there a “before” before creation? It sounds like a question a child might fire at you over breakfast, and like most children’s questions it turns out to be one of the deepest anyone can ask. If God made everything, what was happening before He made it? Where was God? What was He…