The Essence of God
Romans 9:1-5
RO128-02

The world as we know it with all of its life forms is the creation of the only true, eternal, and living God. The world in which we live is indeed not the product of twenty billion years of blind chance evolving eternal matter into what we see today. The Creator of the universe, our wonderful God, has the right to do as He pleases with what He has made.

And this is the point of the ninth chapter of the book of Romans: the sovereignty of a wonderful God. Paul compares the absolute sovereignty of God in creation to that of a potter who is making various vessels. No creature has the right or the qualifications to challenge the Creator on His dealings with creation.

This morning, we pick up our study in Romans 9:23. Paul has declared to us that God chooses to show His wrath and to demonstrate His power in the way He deals with those that He leaves in their condemned condition, which He calls here, "vessels of wrath." And these vessels of wrath have only one destiny, and that is destruction in the lake of fire. And there's no turning around once they have passed the point of physical death.

So, in verse 23, Paul turns around and says, "But there's another side of this picture." God's sovereignty does something else. It not only leaves people to their just desserts, but it also does what they do not deserve: He rescues them out of it. So, he begins verse 23 with the word "and." This is the Greek word "kai." This indicates another divine objective in dealing with sinners. "And that." The word "that" is the Greek word "hina," which indicates to us the purpose of God. God's purpose also with lost sinners is to make something known. The word is "gnorizo." "Gnorizo" means, "to reveal something."

He is determined through lost sinners to reveal something else about Himself besides what we've already seen, and that is what Paul calls, "the riches." This is the Greek word for "wealth:" "ploutos." And it is the wealth of his "doxa," His glory. The word "doxa" connotes something which is impressive about a person that sets him apart from all others, so that he is then in a position of great influence and of great honor. The word "glory" refers to the perfections of God's character. Or more specifically, when the Bible speaks about the "glory of God," it's talking about His essence. It's talking about what God Himself is like. His character is a rich expression of absolute perfection. The riches of God's glory refers to the wealth of His attributes, which sets Him apart from all others in the universe. God's rich glory was revealed in the Old Testament by the external display of a brilliant light. The rabbis called it the Shekinah glory, which means, "the dwelling in glory light." The Bible calls God simply, "the King of Glory," in Psalm 24.

God Is Sovereign

First of all, we would list that God is sovereign. God is sovereign. That means that God has absolute authority over everything, that He is free to do as He pleases within the limits of His own holiness. So, God is absolute in control. Now, people do not treat God as a sovereign authority. They are quite ready to make all kinds of declarations about what they think God should think, what they think God should do, how they think God should act. But God says, "You can't do that. I am the King, and you don't tell the King what to do."

Psalm 115:3, "But our God is in the heavens: and He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased." God does what He pleases, and nobody will stop Him. Ephesians 1:5, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." Here is another statement about the fact that some of the vessels of humanity are going to be vessels not of wrath, but as we shall see, vessels of mercy. And who decides that? God says, "I do." But on what basis? "On My good pleasure and by the authority of My will."

1 Timothy 6:15 adds this, "Which in his times He shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords." So, indeed, our God is sovereign. And He is totally free to act as He chooses within the limits of His own holiness. He is completely independent of any other will in the universe, and He does not consult with anybody else for permission to act. That is what it means to be sovereign. Now, that is a glorious person. God follows His own judgment and His own good pleasure.

He is sovereign, obviously, because He created everything, and so He owns everything, and He can use it as He chooses. God's sovereign authority is reflected in the human realm by the fact that He provides volition for which He holds us accountable. God's sovereign authority is reflected in the structure of society by the fact that He makes the husband the authority in the home, that He makes the parents the authority over the children, that He establishes governments to be properly constituted for the blessing of people, that He provides law enforcement officers to maintain moral order, that He provides military power to prevent external aggression, and that all the institutions of society have structures - in business, in education. In every way, there are structures of authority that people live under. All this is a reflection of God as the highest authority of all - He who is the ultimate and final authority.

So, God is free (because He is sovereign) to choose to redeem some human beings from the slave market of sin and to bring them into eternal life in His heaven. And God's sovereignty is expressed in making some of us vessels of mercy where once we were vessels of His wrath.

God's sovereignty to us is expressed in the word of scripture, in doctrine, which brings blessing for obedience and judgment for violations. He can do that because He's sovereign. He sets the ground rules, and He says, "When you are compatible to it, I will bless you. And when you're not compatible to My ground rules, then I will not bless you." That is easy for us to say, "Sure, God's in charge. Who's going to question that? He is the supreme Potentate."

But it is amazing how even we Christians can get very sloppy in our lives about recognizing that whatever comes into our lives, whatever we are dealing with, whatever circumstances we are in, there is an ultimate, sovereign God who is in charge, and He's calling the plays. And our business as human beings and as Christians is to seek out how we may be compatible with His will, with His sovereignty. Then, we are in a position of maximum blessing.

God is Righteousness

So, when we say that God is righteous, we're saying that He can do no wrong. Now, you don't always think that. You think God has made some mistakes in your life. You think that God has not given you the best deal, and by implication, He has not done right by you. But the Bible says God can never do anything but that which is right.

James 1:18 says, "Let no man say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted of God:' for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man." Because what God does is always absolutely right, and He does not lead others to do anything less than that. You see, human righteousness is relative. Human righteousness is one sin nature comparing itself with another sin nature to determine who is worse. That's all it is. That's relative human righteousness. But God is an infinitely perfect person by nature. God's absolute righteousness is the standard of comparison for all moral beings that He has created.

Our society can say, "Oh yes, there are moral standards, and people have believed those for centuries. But we live in an enlightened age, and we know that these standards are not absolute like that. We know that human beings have volition, so they make choices and to be responsible." God says He is the standard of absolute righteous by which all human conduct is compared. And I don't care how far society drifts off into its immorality; God is going to match it up against Himself. And people are going to find out that they are not dealing with some tottering, old grandfather who compromises His righteousness in order to adjust Himself to human demands.

God is Justice

2 Chronicles 19:7 adds this, "Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of bribes." Why not? Because God is just. You can't bribe him. Ah, how many Christians, how many people of the world think they can do something evil and then they think they can bribe God by doing something for the church, by doing something for God's work with the hope that God will thereby give them a sympathetic ear to overcome something that they have done that is evil.

But God is absolutely fair. His justice applies the penalty for sin, which is demanded by His own righteousness. I can assure you that God will never get sentimental and look the other way just to let somebody into his heaven whose sin has not been properly paid for and that payment properly received. God is not sentimental like parents are who look the other way when their children do evil.

God's justice also to it that those who have secured salvation through Jesus Christ and those who deserve temporal blessings for a godly life that they will receive it. God's justice sees to it that the blessings that your lifestyle merit will also come to you. God's perfect justice applies divine discipline to the Christian who is in revisionism. This is one of the terrible things about the justice of God. When you fall away from the Word of God, and then you follow way consequently from the will of God, then you are in a status of backslidden reversionism. You may count on the fact that because God is fair, he is going to punish that. He is going to bring temporal punishment, but that's only the little part. The worst part is when you stand at the judgment seat of Christ and you see the eternal punishment that comes because you lived in revisionism. It is God's justice that brings that down. It would be very unfair, indeed, for God to punish the sins of people who are not in the family of God and for not to punish the sins of Christians who are in the family of God who should know better.

So, God's justice sees to it that you get the blessings you deserve and seeds to it that you get the divine discipline that you've brought down on yourself. What God's justice does is make it very clear that he hates sin. And when we hate sin, that we will be compatible to His justice. The justice of God toward us as sinners, of course, has been satisfied by Jesus Christ on the cross, so that those who believe the Gospel are adjusted to the justice of God, and they can then be blessed.

1 John 2:2 tells us that Jesus Christ is the propitiation. That means he is the satisfaction for our sins, and as a matter of fact, for the sins of the whole world. There are no human works from the sinner which are contaminated by the sin nature which can satisfy the justice of God for salvation. It would be unfair for God to accept any human good works.

So, if you are in a religious system that tells you that you can become a saint by a series of good work that you perform. The Pope is traveling again, as you may have noticed on television, and he's out making some more saints in appropriate places and appropriate countries. And that is the most blasphemous, paganistic thing under the sun. It is the height of Papal blasphemy to stand up and say, "I, the Pope, can declare you to be a super person with God," when God says, "My justice demands total payment for all sins, and no human being can produce works that are adequate to meet that demand of my justice. Therefore, I have to satisfy My own justice, and," God says, "by my own act through My own Son on the cross." When a person's sins have been forgiven, he now indeed becomes a holy person.

Do you know what a holy person is? You've already learned enough about the Greek language to know that the word "holy" is the Greek word "hagios." And the word "hagios," means, "saint." A saint is a holy person. It is a person that God has elevated to a position equal to Jesus Christ. Every Christian is equal in the eyes of God. It is good as Jesus Christ. Now, how could anybody become a saint, being a super person in the human race, when all of us, the Bible says, are already in Christ. And therefore, we are equal to Christ, because we are in Him. It's a wonderful thing to know that the justice of God is out there running interference for us.

God is Love

1 John 4:7-8 said, "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." You notice, it doesn't say that God HAS love; it says that God IS love. That's the nature of His being. Notice verse 16, "And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in Him."

And the only way you and I come into the position where we act with this kind of love is because we are in Him. God does not merely possess love; He is love in His very being. He can't act in any other way. God's love, furthermore, is eternal, so it cannot be diminished, and it cannot be improved in time.

Now, what does God love? He loves you as a sinner? No, He does not love you as a sinner. What God loves is what potentially He can do through you as a vessel of wrath. And what He loves is that He can take you and put into you His absolute righteousness as a target of His affection. The only thing that God ever loves is His own righteousness. Be sure you understand that. The only thing that God ever loves is His own perfect, absolute righteousness. And so, He does not love the sinner in His fallen, degraded, rebellious condition, a many of whom He will send out to destruction in the lake of fire. And He makes a change in them by placing in them at the point of their faith in Christ as Savior the absolute righteousness of God, the character of Jesus Christ so that now God can love the only thing He can ever love: His own perfect righteousness. He imputes that righteousness to the believing sinner. That, then, becomes the target of His divine love.

God's love, therefore, you see, is not subject to emotional fluctuations. Therefore, God's love is not blind. You know the expression, "love is blind?" When you see some of the people that some people marry, you know that is so true. Oh, how true that is! It's not only blind, but many times, it's also dumb. But, that's an emotional fluctuation. Here you are, you've met somebody. You know, I'm a sucker for blue eyes every time, and yellow hair. It just gets me. You get emotionally fluctuated. And this might be the biggest slob in the world looking at you with blue eyes and yellow hair.

And the entertainment world is full of them. I think that everybody who is in the entertainment world must wear blue contact lenses. Watch close-ups; they all have blue eyes. They all have these blue eyes. And, that's a sign of real class. You know, you're really up there if you have blue eyes. There's a. there's just a, a quality there. But those blue eyes hide, we well know, some very corrupt souls. And I won't go giving you a litany of actors and actresses of our day who demonstrate that so well.

God's love is not an emotional fluctuation, so that you become excited over some quality, some characteristic, something that somebody does. Something the way they dress. Something they're involved in. Something they say to you. Some way that they treat you. You see, all of that is the old sin nature's sucker game for getting you attached to a marriage of misery for the rest of your life.

So, God's love is a love that is another attitude quality that is stable, and it transcends the fact that we as sinners don't deserve that love. It is a love that is directed to only one thing: His absolute righteousness. And when He wants to deal with us, He puts that righteousness in us so that He can then love us.

And when we function, you see, through the Word of God, day by day, on that absolute righteousness, when you become a godly person in you're thinking and in your action, then God can pour out blessings like you can't believe. That's what Psalm 23 means about, "my cup runneth over." It is super grace running over, because God has a person whose absolute righteousness is functioning at maximum level so that God can pour material and spiritual blessings into that life. God's love is governed by His holiness so that it is never directed to any false object. It only goes to His own righteousness.

God is Eternal Life

2 Timothy 1:17 says this, "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen." "Unto the King eternal." The word "eternal" means "no beginning, no ending."

Take Revelation 1:8. Jesus says, "'I am Alpha and Omega [that is, the beginning of the alphabet, and the last of the alphabet].' saith the Lord, 'who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.'" "Who is, and who was, and who is to come." That's another way of saying, "eternal."

In the Old Testament, this is frequently declared that God is eternal life. In Psalm 90:2, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." "From everlasting to everlasting." God does not merely possess eternal life; He IS eternal life. That is the very nature of His being.

That's why Jesus in John 14:6 said, "'I am the way, the truth, and the life.'" "I AM the life." As God, He was eternal life. Now, the marvelous thing about this part of the glory of God is that we Christians, at the point of our salvation, receive this eternal life of God. This is what happens to you. When we say, "You receive eternal life," we mean that you come into possession (you do not come into experience yet; that awaits heaven), but you come into the possession of the very eternal life of God.

1 John 5:11-12 tell us that, "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life [How?], this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." You see, this is why we say that Christian is not a religion but a relationship. All religion in the world is a product of Satan. All religion is based upon the fact that man is going to do something that will secure salvation for himself. Man is doing something to please God. Whereas, salvation is God doing something for man who doesn't deserve it. And that is done through a relationship that one has through Jesus Christ as Savior.

So, all life comes from God who Himself is life. Death is an aberration in the human race. It's a product of sin, and so someday, God is going to wipe death out. We are told that this is the last enemy of God that's going to be destroyed is death itself. It never was in the original creation. It came in because of sin, and it violates what God Himself is by nature: that He is eternal life.

God is Omniscient

Proverbs 15:3 says, "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." God knows and sees it all. God cannot be ignorant of anything, so He is never absurd or wrong in what He thinks. Because we human beings are ignorant, we are often absurd in what we do and say. God has never had to overcome ignorance, furthermore, by learning something. God knows it all, and He has always known it all.

Acts 15:18 says, "Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the age." God knows everything that He is doing. God has furthermore perfect wisdom so that He is able to pass a test on any subject. There is nothing that God cannot make a perfect score on.

Ephesians 3:10 says, "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." God's wisdom is perfect; it's manifold. God's knowledge, furthermore, is infinite from eternity past. God did not accumulate knowledge. He does not learn things so that He knows how to act. He knows it all from the beginning.

Romans 11:33 expresses that in the words that praise the wisdom of God when it says, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" Who's going to know the mind of the Lord? Who's going to be His advisor, you see? God knows everything. Therefore, He knows the future in detail. No creature can outsmart God or hide anything from Him. That was Satan's mistake. While some things are totally incomprehensible to man, they are all crystal clear to God who knows everything.

God, furthermore, reads the mind of man. You cannot hide from God by the fact that you choose to think something. He sees into the mind of man. He reads it all.

Mark 2:6-8. Jesus has just healed the paralytic man. And we read, "But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts [in their minds], 'Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?' And immediately when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, He said unto them, 'Why reason ye these things in your hearts?'" God can read the minds of people. That's amazing glory of God, that He is omniscient. And it is a great comfort that He does know it all.

God is Omnipresent

Notice Proverbs 15:3, "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." Jeremiah 23:24, "Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see Him? saith the Lord. 'Do not I fill heaven and earth?' saith the Lord."

And then, one more, in the New Testament, the book of Acts 17, in verse 27, "That they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us." Those who would seek salvation, because God is omnipresent, He is near at hand. The whole being of God is everywhere in His creation at the same time, is what this tell us. But, please be aware of the fact that God, when we have said that, is not part of creation. He is not what Hinduism says: part of the creation itself. God is separate from creation.

In Psalm 139:7, "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?" That is the actual person. He is not just in the storm in the wood.

Yet, God can deal with individuals in one place at a time. He is, furthermore, present with every believer to counsel him at all times. God, in short, is an eye-witness to everything you and I say and do. You cannot hide from God. All you and I can do is ignore His presence. You can't hide from Him, and very often, we do ignore His presence.

God is Omnipotent

Matthew 19:26, "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, 'With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.'" Why? Simply because God is omnipotent.

In Luke 1:37, we have that statement again, "For with God, nothing shall be impossible." Here, referring to the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ in the body of a virgin woman.

And then, Revelation 19:6, we read, "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of mighty peels of thunder, saying, 'Hallelujah: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.'" And that's the point. Because He's omnipotent, He does indeed reign. He is in charge. God can do anything that does not violate His holiness that He chooses to do. God never uses His power for evil, nor does He us it for foolishness. God never abuses His infinite power. He has made the universe as a creation because of His infinite power.

Isaiah 44:24 and Psalm 8:3-4 tell us He has the power. And one of the great uses to which He put the power is of particular interest to we Christians in our daily lives, because here's where we come into direct touch with this element of the glory of God. For we're told that the power with which Christ deals with us in our daily lives in sustaining us is the power He used to raise His Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead.

Ephesians 1:19, "And what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places." Now, that is tremendous power.

Ephesians 3:20 says the same thing. Death is powerless in God's presence. It can only touch those whom God permits. Because God is all-powerful, because He is omnipotent, nobody dies until God says, "Go." And therefore, every believer is immortal until God says, "Go," because He is omnipotent.

You see, if Satan was omnipotent, a lot of us would go a lot sooner, because it is the devil's purpose to kill as many Christians as He possibly can. It is only the omnipotence of God that prevents that from happening. God never gets tired. He does not sleep. He never gets worn out. God enables the Christian to have the capacity to serve Him and to serve Him with divine good.

God is Immutable

Concerning the person of the Lord Jesus Himself, Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever." The charismatics love to use this verse to prove that if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then all those miracle workings and all those speaking in tongues, all those marvelous things which were in the early church are still in existence today. But, of course, what this verse is talking about is the person of Jesus Christ, not how He operates. God operates in different ways in different times, and that certainly is true in respect to the church age. But He is Himself exactly the same as He always has been.

One more. James 1:17 says, "But every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Now, it refines it down that there's not even the slightest shadow of difference in God from what He hath always been.

God cannot do better or worse from moment to moment the way people do. You know, people have good days and have bad days. You have up days and you have down days. There is no point in you going up to God and saying, "How are you today?" Because He's just the way He's always been. He was unchangeable. Now, there's a lot of point in coming and asking each other, "How are you doing today?" Because, we, fellow creatures of sin, were up and down. But not God. People are fickle, but God's the same. People learn more about God, indeed, from their experiences. They learn more about what God is like, but He was always like that.

It is we who are entering a greater knowledge. He didn't change. God always responds to any event in keeping with what He is. His holiness. He doesn't compromise His integrity to adapt to human sin. All blessings from God require changes on man's part to be compatible with the unchanging character of God. Those who refuse to become adjusted to God's character suffer divine judgment. This is true of believers and unbelievers. Man cannot change the moral laws of God to suit himself, because those moral laws express the character of God, and they're never going to change.

So, no matter how our society deviates from God's standard of morality, it doesn't make any difference. God's still going to bring the judgment upon those violations, because He is unchangeable. He is not going to say, "Well, in this age, we'll have to make an adjustment." God is the same, you see, every time you deal with Him. There are no surprises, no switcharoos when you go to deal with Him. So, no matter what God does to us, we can say it is most certainly consistent with the nature of God. He is not treating us suddenly in some way that is different than what is true of Him than all the dealings that we've had from Him in the past.

Job 2:10 puts it this way. Job's saying to his wife, "But he said unto her, 'Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh [when she told him to curse God]. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?' In all this did not Job sin with his lips." God is consistent, and Job knew that. Now, the pagan gods, which were spawned by Satan and are in Satan's image, so those gods are arbitrary. They're inconsistent. They're fickle. You cannot trust a pagan god. He will turn on you every time. God is always, therefore, at His best. He is performing with perfection. He is consistent with Himself.

God is Veracity

In the book of Numbers, this was made plain to the people of Israel. Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the Son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?" Very clear declaration that you can always trust God to be true to Himself and to others. God can be fully trusted in terms of what He says, and you must believe Him. Nothing false can come from Him.

And all members of the Trinity are truthful. John 14:6 tells us that Jesus Christ is true. 1 John 5:6 tell us that the Holy Spirit is true. John 17:17 tell us that the words of God the Father are true. God never adjusts His message to human evil. God cannot diminish or compromise the truth. He is true truth. God's truthfulness is expressed to us in the doctrines of scripture. The Christian may acquire the mind of God's truth through the study of the Word of God through the grace system of perception.

Man, by nature, follows Satan in being a liar. Romans 3:4, John 8:44 point this out that people, by nature, are liars. God, by nature, is the truth. So, man has to adjust his thinking to God's truth through the Gospel, through doctrine, and through the confession of sin. God's truth, as revealed in scripture, enables man to live in keeping with reality and with integrity.

It is the people who are in positions of public influence who do not know the Word of God who are the problems for us. Because they are detached from the real world. Only those who understand doctrine can know how to be in positions of public authority and to act in keeping with the real world, the world of truth that God has established and that God reveals to us so that we know how to function in it. This is why we have so much misery in American society today is because we have clowns in public office who do not understand the truth of God and who therefore cannot or will not act according to the Word of God, which is the basis of all reality.

God's motivation of all that He does is for His own glory. That's not self-praise. That's not arrogant on the part of God. It is a true recognition of His divine perfections that we looked at this morning. He alone is worth of being exalted in the universe. And all things exist, therefore, to exalt the perfections of God, and to bring to glory to Him.

The only thing which impresses God, I remind you again, is His own absolute righteousness. The only thing that glorifies Him is what He does - not what you do. The religious world is still thinking that God's impressed with what man does and that God gives some quality and merit to it. God's only impressed with what He does so that He gets the glory. We gain from associating with God in His glorious perfections. He does not gain from us.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

Back to the Romans index