What is God?

 God is one soul, infinite, eternal and unchangeable.  Wisdom, power, holiness, righteousness, sweetness, and truth exist in His being.

1, God is the Spirit.  Those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).

2.  Before the creation of the universe, before the creation of the mountains, from time immemorial to eternity, you are God (Psalm 90: 2).

3.  I am the Lord, I do not change (Malachi 3: 6).

 4, God said to Mashi, “I am who I am (Exodus 3:14).  Great is our Lord God ... infinite, infinite His wisdom (Psalm 147: 5).  Day and night he continues to utter, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty, .... (Revelation 4: 8).  Lord, who does not fear you?  Because you alone are holy (Revelation 15: 4).  I am loving and compassionate, ... my infinite love, my unwavering sincerity.  ... The retribution of the sins of the unrighteous continues to the third and fourth men (Exodus 34: 6-7).

Jesus said, "God is Spirit" (John 4:24).  This part of the Q&A gives a definition of the nature of that soul.  God is the soul that has certain qualities (or attributes).  These qualities set him apart from all other beings.  In other words, it would not be fair to speak of "God's Spirit."  Because God is not the only spirit.  The Bible says that angels are serving spirits.  Angels are sent to serve those who will be saved (Hebrews 1:14).  If we just say, God is a soul, then we will fail to distinguish between God and other spirits.  (This may be a kind of pantheism that teaches that every soul is a part or manifestation of God!) But when we say that God is one soul, we clearly say that He is different from other beings.

The word "soul" means

 But what is one soul?  The Bible says, “Who among men knows the things concerning man?  Only the inner soul of man knows (1 Cor. 2:11).  To think, to know, is a work of the human soul.  And the human soul can be compared to God, because man was created in the image of God.  The human soul is immaterial: it cannot be seen, it cannot be felt;  Cannot be weighed or measured.  We can say that the "human spirit" is akin to human thinking.  But when we say all this, we still have to admit that it is very difficult to give a proper definition of the soul.  When we ask, what is the soul, we have to admit that we cannot fully answer this question.  There is an element of mystery here that we cannot transcend. But the important thing is that when we acknowledge that God is one soul, we deny that there is a material element in God.  The question and answer for children is: God does not have a body according to man.  God is invisible.  No one has ever seen God, and no one can ever see God with the eyes of the world (John 1:18; 1 John 4:12; etc.).  Attempting to make God visible by any kind of figure or image is a sin (against the second commandment) - Exodus 20: 4.  The prophet Isaiah asks: “To whom can God be compared?  What similarities can be explained to him?  ”(40:18).  In answer to this question, he said, “Look up, to the sky!  Who created this constellation?  The Creator is that God, ... (40:26).

If so, only indirectly can we talk about "seeing" him.  We can see Him only if we learn to see Him in the "reflection" of His created object. Figure 4.1 We will try to explain this fact figuratively.  In the first part, showing a boy (let's say his name is Mukul), he looks at his reflection in the mirror.  We can clearly see that two things are true. (1) First, we see that Mukul and his reflection are completely different, because one is real or alive, and the other is not. (2) Second, we see that they are exactly the same., Because in detail, the image is the image of Mukul only.

An analogy

 When we compare God with God's created people, they are much the same.  We see two similar things.  (1) First, we see that God is completely different from man.  (2) Second, yet we will see that man was created in the exact image of God.  The thing we want to learn in this part of our study is: the "question-and-answer" through this question what subject teaches us about God.  By not drawing a picture of God - (since this is not correct), we have shown this in the second part.  Now you see that God has certain attributes that He does not want to "share" with man.  God is infinite, but man is infinite.  God is eternal, but man is not eternal.  God is not changeable, but man is changeable.  We call these qualities impossible to communicate, because they belong only to God.  These he does not give to man;  He left it to himself.  (It is like Mukul that he cannot make its image in the mirror its own healthy flesh.) But we also see that God has certain qualities that He shares with man.  Because God gave man (before the fall) entity, wisdom, might, and so on.  We call all these qualities the virtues of communication.  Because God gives people those qualities so that they can be like God.  (Some of these are like this, Mukul mirrors his reflection with the same color of hair, eyes, the same smile, etc.)

But now we will discuss one of the most difficult - and most important - issues.  We need to realize that there is a difference between God and His image (man), even if we talk about the impossible qualities of God.  (Mukul and his image in the mirror.) Mukul and his image - both have smiles on their faces.  Is this the same kind of smile?  No!  If we think about it, we will understand that the smiles of the two are not the same.  Because Mukul's smile is a real smile, and the smile of the image is just a reflection of a smile.  Mukul's smile is greater.  Because it is real.  The same is true of God's attributes (wisdom, strength, holiness, etc.).  These qualities of God are much higher than those of man.  In other words, God's wisdom is always infinite, eternal, and unchanging.  His power is infinite, infinite and beyond change.  However, human wisdom, or human power, is always finite, temporarily changeable (in other words, the hair and eyes of Mukul are always real, and the hair and eyes of his image are always unreal.)

Anthropomorphism

 Two questions arise when mastering the ‘question and answer’ lesson.  We will now briefly discuss them.  (1) First, if God is a spirit, how does the Bible comment on him as having a physical body?  We find in the Bible phrases such as “the hand of God” (Joshua 4:24), “the eye of God” (1 Kings 15: 5).  As we read in Exodus 24:10, “Moses and the others” had a vision of the God of Israel.  At his feet was a rock of sapphires in the clear blue of the sky.  Undoubtedly, in some places in the Scriptures, God is revealed in a human way, which we could not understand in any other way.  But many of these verses concerning the nature of God are shown in human form, and what the people saw is a true description of Him.  But we know the reason.  Just as angels (who were spirits) could appear in human form, so Christ also appeared in the history of the Old Testament (see Genesis 18: 1-5, 16-25, etc.).  Calvin called it, God - as a human being "as a prelude to His future revelation." Our Lord, of course, is God, but now He has arms, legs, etc. (because He possesses a truly human nature).  

(2) Second, if God is immutable, how does the Bible describe him as being changed?  In Genesis 6: 6, we read: “The LORD reproved mankind in the earth, and was troubled.  When a person repents, his mood changes.  But if God is immutable, how can he repent?  The answer is that when Scripture makes such a statement about God, it always tells us first that man has indeed changed.  Man changes his attitude toward God or his relationship with God.  From this change in man himself comes a change in God's dealings with man.  But in fact there has been no change in God, there has been change in man.  God is holy at all times.  But when man sins against God, he faces the holy wrath of God, which God always does against sin.  God cannot change - because He cannot deny Himself (see 2 Timothy 2:13).  In other words, God is always determined by what he does by his own perfect nature.  So when a good creation turns into evil, God naturally feels distress.  He cannot do anything for his own immutable holiness.