How Is God Perfect in Nature?

How Perfect Are We Talking…

If you were with us last week, you know that during this month, we are talking all about God’s character by studying Theology Proper. And if any of that sounds strange to you, I would encourage you to go back and read our previous two blog posts as we break down exactly what that means and what our goal of this study is. For those of us that have been following along, however, we are going to dive into the perfect character of our God and put that very characteristic to the test by questioning God’s character. How exactly is God perfect in nature? Can this be explained? Is God the only perfect being? To answer these questions, and many like them, we are going to look at what many theologians call, God’s ‘communicable’ and ‘incommunicable’ attributes. The word ‘communicable’ simply means, “capable of being transmitted from person to person”. So by definition, God’s communicable attributes would be the attributes that we see God, and also mankind possessing, as we are made in His image. On the contrary, however, if we are studying how God is perfect, then we would therefore be studying His incommunicable attributes because as we all know, mankind is not perfect. To break this down even further, we are going to study God’s incommunicable attributes in Dr. Wayne Grudem’s 3 separate categories for this particular study. When looking at God’s perfect character, Dr. Grudem lists out our Lord’s mental attributes, moral attributes, and purpose attributes. Let’s take a look at each of these and see how these add up to a perfect creator. 

Mentally 

To start with, we’re going to look at God’s mental attributes. When looking at the mind of God, this is again something that we cannot understand unless God Himself wills us to understand it, and makes Himself knowable to us. Since God is perfect, that would mean He can think and know all things perfectly. This is where the attribute ‘omniscience’ comes from. The word ‘omniscient’ simply means “knowing everything”. If God is omniscient, then nothing escapes His knowledge, or as Dr. Grudem puts it, ‘God fully knows Himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.’ God knows all that has, is, and will ever be done or thought about. This is why the author in 1 John 3:20 notes, “…for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.”, and why Elihu in Job 37:16 says, “16 “Do you know about the layers of the thick clouds, The wonders of one perfect in knowledge?” God doesn’t just know a lot of things, He knows everything. He is perfect and omniscient in His mental attributes. But is mentality all that matters? If someone knows everything, does that alone make them perfect? Not quite. 

Morally

Let’s look next at God’s moral attributes. If someone is perfect in all of their moral characteristics, what fancy word do we call that? God has a word for that actually, it’s called, ‘good’. Whenever we see God describe something as ‘good’ in His word, it comes from the Hebrew word, ‘Tob’, which means ‘beautiful, right, and worthy’. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking of how you rarely use that word in its proper meaning, and from a biblical standpoint, you’d be correct. Again, this is an attribute that only applies to God because no one on earth is ‘right’ or ‘worthy’ with every single thought they’ve ever mustered up in their minds. This is why Paul reminds us in Romans 3:10 “There is none righteous, not even one;”. Dr. Grudem even notes that “The goodness of God means that God is the final standard of good and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval.” That’s some high praise! And every bit of it is justified. Need help understanding why? Look to the book of Psalms and count how many times the authors attribute goodness to God’s name. They aren’t doing so because they can’t think of a better word to use and are simply being lazy, they refer to God as ‘good’ because they know He is the only being whose thoughts are beautiful, right, and worthy. 

Purposefully

Finally, let’s take a look at God’s purposeful attributes. So we’ve seen already how God knows everything and how He thinks rightly about everything, but what about how He orders everything? How does God’s purpose for all things (good or evil) show us that He is perfect? This is where we come to God’s omnipotence. To be ‘omnipotent’ simply means to have “the quality of unlimited power.” Now you might be thinking, ‘Wait a minute, just because you’re powerful doesn’t mean you’re perfect, I know plenty of people with power who use their acts for evil!’ and you’d be correct. However, we are talking about God, not people, and if we look back at our last point and see that God is good, then we know that whatever God does in His infinite power, is beautiful, right, and worthy. Whatever God wills and purposes for our lives, we can know that God is still perfect and in control because there is nothing that He can’t do, even if we don’t understand why He won’t act in a particular way or fashion. Dr. Grudem again puts this in beautiful terms. He says, “God’s will is that attribute of God whereby He approves and determines to bring about every action necessary for the existence and activity of Himself and all creation.” Perhaps no one puts it better than Jesus Himself in Matthew 19:26 when He says, “26…“With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”, or the Psalmist in Psalm 147:5 when they mention, “5 Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.” 

Ultimately

No matter where we look in God’s word, we can see that all of His attributes are not just above the charts, they are the very definition of perfect. There is nothing that God does not know, there has never been a thought that our Lord has had that is not good, and there is nothing too difficult for Him or outside of His power. God is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful. He is the perfect creator and the only God worthy of our praise and worthy of our worship. The next time you pick up God’s word, I want to challenge you, reader, to see how perfect God is and what an honor and blessing it is that He made a way for you to not just be His child, but to be with Him forever in eternity because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Yes, we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and it may seem like it is impossible for our sins to ever be atoned for, but we don’t just serve a great God, we serve a perfect one.

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Sources

[1] “Access Your Bible from Anywhere.” BibleGateway.Com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., www.biblegateway.com/. Accessed 2023.

[2] Grudem, W. (1994). Systematic Theology : An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA79455700

[3] “The Strongest NASB Exhaustive Concordance.” Zondervan. Grand Rapids, MI 1995