The Doctrine of God in the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith

Since I have mentioned in my last two posts our studies in the 1689 Baptist Confession on the doctrine of God - I thought it might be helpful to give a sample of that chapter from the Confession. Here is the first paragraph from chapter two regarding the attributes of God:

"There is but one, and only one, living and true God. He is self-existent and infinite in His being and His perfections. None but He can comprehend or understand His essence. He is pure spirit, invisible, and without body, parts, or the changeable feelings of men. He alone possesses immortality, and dwells amid the light insufferably bright to mortal men. He never changes. He is great beyond all our conceptions, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty and infinite. He is most holy, wise, free and absolute. All that He does is the out-working of His changeless, righteous will, and for His own glory. He is most loving, gracious, merciful and compassionate. He abounds in goodness and truth. He forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. He rewards those who seek Him diligently. But He hates sin. He will not overlook guilt or spare the guilty, and He is perfectly just in executing judgment."

Gen.17:1; Exod.3:14; 34:6,7; Deut.4:15,16; 6:4; I Kings 8:27; Neh.9:32,33; Psa.5:5,6; 90:2; 115:3; Prov.16:4; Isa.6:3; 46:10; 48:12; Jer.10:10; 23:23,24; Nah.1:2,3; Mal.3:6; John 4:24; Rom.11:36; I Cor.8:4,6; I Tim.1:17; Heb.11:6.

A Man-Centered View of God

For nearly ten months our church has been studying on Wednesday evenings the biblical doctrine of God, as it is expressed and expounded from the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. This has been the richest study so far in the Confession, and I imagine there will be no other study that will exceed both its depth and importance. Quite frankly, there is no doctrine more important to the Christian faith than the doctrine of God - who God is, what He is like, and how He works. For if we go wrong on this one doctrine, then we will go wrong on every other doctrine in Christianity.

Sadly though, there is probably no doctrine more twisted, misunderstood, and misapplied than the doctrine of God. In other words, how the revelation of God's nature, character, and works are taught in His Word, has got to be the most underminded and distorted truth of Scripture. And the chief reason for this perversion is because when we talk about God, we tend to always begin and end with man at the center of the universe. To say this another way: many people in the church really believe that God exists and works for the sole purpose of making them happy. In short, God exists to glorify man. Consider how Edward Donnelly made this same tragic observation in his book entitled, Heaven and Hell:

"The God people speak about today - if he exists at all - is only for man's benefit. His purpose, it seems, is to supply our needs, to provide for our happiness. God is a heavenly bell-boy. When he is needed you ring for him, and when you don't need him any longer you tell him to go away. The first answer of the Shorter Catechism has been rewritten to read, 'God's chief end is to satisfy man and to provide for him forever.' Even in evangelical churches the impression is too often given that God exists to make us happy, to solve our problems, to answer our prayers, to heal our sicknesses, to improve our marriages, to help us to keep a diet.

[Martin] Luther described this as 'using God'. What a disgustingly accurate expression! Have you ever been used? You thought that someone was your friend. You assumed that they enjoyed your companionship and valued you for yourself. You trusted them, but then found out that they were using you. They cultivated you only for what they wanted from you, then laughed at you behind your back. What would you think of a man who spoke of using his wife? What a wretch he would be! Yet this is exactly what people are attempting to do with God. This is how they think they can treat the Lord of heaven and earth. There is no sense of his holiness, awesomeness or majesty. He is seen as a puppet who stays in a box until we press the switch to let him out.

How Important is the Doctrine of the Trinity?

This morning as I was preparing for our Wednesday evening study in the 1689 Baptist Confession, I came across this searching and sobering observation regarding the biblical doctrine of the Trinity (our present studies right now are concerning this vital doctrine). The observation comes from Dr. James White, in his book The Forgotten Trinity. There is much here that the church at large needs to weigh in and evalute when we think and talk about God:

"The Trinity is a truth that tests our dedication to the principle that God is smarter than we are. As strange as that may sound, I truly believe that in most instances where a religious group denies the Trinity, the reason can be traced back to the founder's unwillingness to admit the simple reality that God is bigger than we can ever imagine. That is really what Christians have always meant when they use the term "mystery" of the Trinity. The term has never meant that the Trinity is an inherently irrational thing. Instead, it simply means that we realize that God is completely unique in the way He exists, and there are elements of His being that are simply beyond our meager mental capacity to comprehend...When men approach God's truth with a haughty attitude, they often decide that particular elements of that truth are not "suitable" to them, so they "modify" the message of the faith to fit their own notions. Since the Trinity is the highest of God's revelations concerning himself, it is hardly surprising to discover that many groups deny it. If one denies any of the preceding truths upon which the Trinity is based, one will end up rejecting the entire doctrine en toto. An unwillingness to worship God as God is and has revealed himself lies behind every denial of the Trinity that appears down through history. We want a God we can fit in a box, and the eternal, Triune God does not fit that mold."