Understanding the nature of God is just foundational to having a relationship with him. If you don’t understand the basic nature and character of God it’s going to be impossible for you to have a proper relationship with him. You can’t have a good, positive relationship with a person that you don’t understand, or that has been misunderstood. I believe that God is the most misrepresented and mischaracterized Being in the entire universe. God has had a lot of things ascribed to him that are absolutely untrue, and sad to say, a lot of this comes from religion. Religion has totally misinterpreted some of the actions of God.
If you have been in religion, I guarantee you there are probably concepts about God that hinder you from receiving from him. If you don’t understand a person, then you’re susceptible to lies. There are a lot of people that have a concept that God exists, but they don’t understand his true nature and character. And because of that they are susceptible to Satan lying about him. He maligns God continually. It says in Galatians 5:6 “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith worketh by love.” In the new covenant it says that faith works by love. If you really don’t understand that God is love ( John 4:8, 16). If you really don’t understand God’s love for you, then your faith is going to be hindered in working. When you really understand the goodness and grace of God, that faith just goes through the roof.
God is not Angry with You
But did you know if you’ve been taught that God is this harsh, mean, angry God, it’s going to hinder the way that you receive. Not that you will doubt that he exits, not that you doubt that he has power to do whatever. But you will doubt his willingness to use his power on your behalf if you’ve been taught that God is this harsh, mean, punishing God that imputes our sins unto us and that holds us accountable. You will doubt that God will use His power on your behalf because your own heart will condemn you and show you you’re wrong.
You need to understand that God has dealt with our sin. How he’s placed all of our sins upon Jesus, and now God is not mad at you. He’s not even in a bad mood. God loves you unconditionally and if you could ever really get a revelation of that, faith would work by love. Your faith would begin to work.
God is Sovereign
If you have a wrong concept, a wrong understanding, about who God is. How he relates to us and how he deals with us, it’s going to hinder you receiving from him. The term sovereign, for example, the way that it’s defined in the dictionary means, first in rank, order, or authority or power. This defines the sovereignty of God. He’s the top of the food chain. Nobody can tell God what to do. He is absolute God Almighty. Religion has redefined sovereign to mean that he controls everything that happens, and that is not true. That is not what the word of God says. That is not even a definition of sovereign.
God is absolutely sovereign. He is Almighty and in control in the sense that nobody can make him do anything. But does that mean that he just does whatever he wants to. That he is responsible for all that is happening in the world. No, the scripture puts limits on God. It says in Hebrews 6:18 that God can not lie. It didn’t just say he will not lie; he cannot lie. God’s word is binding unto him. Psalms 138:2 says, that he has magnified his word above his name. A man is no better than his word. If you can’t keep your word, it’s a reflection on your character. God’s word is infallible and he will never brake it. So when he says you resist the devil (James 4:7), it’s not God who lets the devil come in. You didn’t take your authority; you didn’t use it.
God is Love
God Almighty, who the Bible says in 1 John 4:8, 16 is love. He doesn’t just have love, this is who he is. Some think that God Almighty, who is love, loves people so much that he would put cancer on you to teach you something. That he killed your child because you had done something wrong, and we attribute those kind of thing to God. What that does, that impugns his character, and it keeps you from believing. You might believe that he has all the power. But you doubt that he will use it because maybe he’s wanting you to suffer to teach you something. That is not God.
In 2 Peter 3:8-9 “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promises, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Verse 9 says, he is “not willing that any should perish.” Yet Jesus himself said that there’s going to be more people enter by the broad gate to destruction than there is by the narrow gate into everlasting life. How can we say that everything that happens is God’s will when he says he is not willing that a single person perish. Yet multiples, millions, billions of people, are perishing because God does not force his will upon us.
Resist the Devil
This extreme sovereignty of God, where God controls everything, he either causes it or permits it is the most damnable heresy in the Body of Christ. It makes you passive. Again in James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” That says some things are from God, you submit to those. Some things are from the devil, you resist those.
It didn’t say that everything that happens is ultimately from God. If you believe that then you shouldn’t resist anything. If God is the one that’s ultimately in control, whether he caused it or allowed it, well then you would be resisting God. It’s hypocritical for us to say that everything come from God and then pray that he would change our situation, heal our body, help our finances, restore our marriage. If God controls everything well than whatever happens, whatever will be will be.
God is not the one who puts tragedy into our life. Hebrews 2:14-15 talks about all those things “who through fear of death were all of their lifetime subject to bondage.” He came to destroy him that had the power of death, which is the devil. God’s not the one who instituted death and put death into play in the human race. He told Adam and Eve, don’t eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, because if you do, you will die. God warned them against it. Have we learned something through this? We now understand that God’s love for us is so great that even though we rebelled at him and that we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God. God loved us so much that he sent his only begotten son to die for us.
Understanding God
Today, we can understand and see the love of God for us in a way that Adam and Eve couldn’t. In a way, you could nearly excuse their sin because they didn’t realize what was happening. They had never experienced death. Adam and Eve had never experienced lying and stealing and all of the terrible things that happen. They didn’t know how much God loved them. They were susceptible to a lie that a snake told them. That the reason God told you not to eat of the tree is because he does not love you and he doesn’t want you to be like him.
He twisted what God had said and made them doubt the character of God. The truth was they were already like him in every respect except they didn’t have the knowledge of evil. God didn’t want them to know evil. He didn’t want them to experience all of the hurt and pain you and I have been through. God loved them, but they didn’t know to what extent. There was no reason for them to doubt him, but he hadn’t proven his love to them.
Today, we now see through Jesus that God has proven his love to us in a way that Adam and Eve couldn’t even have dreamed of. Whoever thought that God Almighty would leave heaven, leave eternity? He became a man and he suffered for 30 years. Not just on the cross, but for 30 years being subject to a physical body. He died for us, took our sins, took our rejection and most importantly, he took the rejection of God. Saying “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
New Covenant
There is a reason the old covenant is called the old covenant because it has been replaced by a new covenant. In Hebrew 8:7-12 we read “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he said, Behold, the day come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”
Mercy and Grace
In the old covenant God was not merciful. There was mercy in the old covenant, but it was only through the sacrifices. If you sinned and broke the law then you offered the appropriate sacrifice, and went through all the rituals then you could experience the mercy and grace of God. Under the new covenant, this is characteristic of God, that he “will be merciful to their unrighteousness.”
That would have been considered blasphemy under the old covenant, “and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” In Hebrews 8:13 it says “In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” In the 7th chapter verse 18 it talks about a disannulling. The word annul means completely void. Just as if it never happened. To disannul is just a superlative, in that it is completely removed. There is a “disannulling of the commandment going before.”
Reason for the Old Covenant
By implementing the old covenant God saved the life not only of individuals but the human race as a whole. He kept it alive until Jesus could come and buy our redemption and usher us into this brand new covenant. There were some things under the old covenant that were misinterpreted and misunderstood by people. The law had a good function, and this good function was to kill our pride and to make sin come alive. It beat us down, the law made us condemned. The law showed us our sin. It didn’t show us our Saviour, it didn’t show us salvation. Showed us our ungodliness. It focused our attention on ourselves.
The purpose of the law was to acknowledge oneself as a sinner and our need for mercy. Religion has turned it around and said the purpose of the law is that if you will do all these things and keep all these commands then you can earn God’s favour. They had made our relationship with God proportional to our performance. Galatians 3:12 tells us “And the law is not of faith: …” Whereas (Romans 14:23) tell us “… whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”
If you keep the whole law and yet offend in one point you become guilty of all (James 2:10). You either have to be perfect or you need a saviour who was perfect, and you just put faith in what he did for you. The purpose of the law was to turn you from self-righteousness so that you would come to God and ask for mercy instead of judgment. Religion is using the law for justification. Scripture says the law is not for justification (Galatians 3:11). Nobody can ever be justified by the law.
The Nature of God
In 2 Kings, chapter 1 of the Old Testament, there is a story of Elijah the prophet casting fire down from heaven and consuming two groups of 50 soldiers with their captains. They were sent by the King of Israel to apprehend him. It says “fire of God came down from heaven.” In the 9th chapter of the book of Luke in the New Testament, Jesus and his disciples were going to Jerusalem and were unwelcomed in a Samarian village because “he had set his face steadfast to Jerusalem.” Because he was resolved to go to Jerusalem this village refused to have anything to do with him.
The Samaritans hated the Jews because the Jews considered them to be of mixed race. When the disciples of Jesus wanted to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them Jesus rebuked them for wanting to do what an Old Testament prophet had done. There is a difference between the way God deals with people under the old covenant and the way he deals with us under the new covenant. This is at the heart of understanding the true nature of God.