Attributes of God - The Godhood of God - Arthur Pink

The Godhood of God! What is meant by this expression? Ah, sad it is that such a question needs to be asked and answered. And yet it does: for a generation has arisen that is well nigh universally ignorant of the important truth which this term connotes. That which is popular today in the colleges, in the pulpits, and in the press, is the dignity, the power, and the attainments of man. But this is only the corrupt fruit that has issued from the Evolutionary teachings of fifty years ago. When Christian theologians accepted the Darwinian hypothesis, which excluded God from the realm of Creation, it was only to be expected that more and more God would be banished from the realm of human affairs.

To the twentieth-century mind God is little more than an abstraction, an impersonal First Cause, or if a Being at all, One far removed from this world and having little or nothing to do with mundane affairs. Man, forsooth, is a god unto himself. He is a free agent and therefore the regulator of his own life and the determiner of his own destiny. Such was the Devil's lie at the beginning: “Ye shall be as God” (Gen. 3:5). But from human speculation and Satanic insinuation we turn to Divine revelation.

The Godhood of God! What is meant by the expression? This: the omnipotency of God, the absolute sovereignty of God. When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that God is God. We affirm that God is something more than an empty title: that God is something more than a mere figure-head: that God is something more than a far-distant Spectator, looking helplessly on at the suffering which sin has wrought.

When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that He is King of kings and Lord of lords. We affirm that God is something more than a disappointed, dissatisfied, defeated Being, who is filled with benevolent desires but lacking in power to carry them out. When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that He is the Most High.

We affirm that God is something more than One who has endowed man with the power of choice, and because He has done this is therefore unable to compel man to do His bidding. We affirm that God is something more than One who has waged a protracted war with the Devil and has been worsted. When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that He is the Almighty.

To speak of the Godhood of God then, is to say that God is on the Throne, on the Throne as a fact and not as a say-so; on a Throne that is high above all. To speak of the Godhood of God is to say that the Helm is in His hand, and that He is steering according to His own good pleasure. To speak of the Godhood of God is to say that He is the Potter, that we are the clay, and that out of the clay He shapes one as a vessel to honor and another as a vessel to dishonor according to His own sovereign rights.

To speak of the Divine Despot doing according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him “What doest Thou?” (Dan. 4:35). Therefore, to speak of the Godhood of God is to give the mighty Creator His rightful place; it is to recognize His exalted majesty; it is to own His universal scepter.

The Godhood of God stands at the base of Divine revelation: “In the beginning God” — in solemn majesty, eternal, uncaused, self-sufficient. This is the foundation doctrine, and upon it all other doctrines must be built, and any other doctrine which is not built upon it will inevitably fail and fall in the day of testing.

At the beginning of all true theology lies the postulate that God is God — absolute and irresistible. It must be so. Without this we face a closed door; with it we have a key which unlocks every mystery.

This is true of Creation: exclude an Almighty God and nothing is left but blind and illogical materialism. This is true of Revelation: the Bible is the solitary miracle in the realm of literature; exclude God from it and you have a miracle with no miracle-Worker. This is true of Salvation: salvation is of the Lord, entirely so; exclude God from any aspect or part of salvation, and salvation vanishes.

This is true of History, for history is His story: it is the outworking in time of His eternal purpose; exclude God from history and all is meaningless and purposeless. The absolute Godhood of God is the only guaranty that in the end it shall be fully and finally demonstrated that God is All in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

In the beginning God. This is not only the first word of Holy Scripture but it must be the firm axiom of all true philosophy — the philosophy of human history, for example. Instead of beginning with man and his world and attempting to reason back to God, we must begin with God and reason forward to man and his world. It is failure to do this which leaves unsolved the riddle of the universe.

Begin with the world as it is today and try to reason back to God, and what is the result? If you are honest of heart and logical of mind, this: that God has little or nothing at all to do with the world. But begin with God and reason forward to the world as it is today and much light is cast on the problem.

Because God is holy, His anger burns against sin. Because God is righteous, His judgments fall on those who rebel against Him. Because God is faithful, the solemn threatenings of His Word are being fulfilled. Because God is omnipotent, no problem can master Him, no enemy defeat Him, and no purpose of His can be withstood.

It is just because God is who He is and what He is that we now behold what we do — the gathering clouds of the storm of Divine wrath which will shortly burst upon the earth.

For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things (Rom. 11:36). In the beginning God. In the center God. At the end God.

But as soon as this is insisted upon men will stand up and tell you what they think about God. They will prate about God working consistently with His own character, as though a worm of the earth was capable of determining what was consistent and what was inconsistent with the Divine perfections.

People will say with an air of profound wisdom that God must deal justly with His creatures, which is true, of course, but who is able to define Divine justice, or any other of God’s attributes? The truth is that man is utterly incompetent for forming a proper estimate of God’s character and ways, and it is because of this that God has given us a revelation of His mind.

In that revelation He plainly declares: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8–9).

In view of such a scripture as this it is only to be expected that much of the contents of the Bible conflicts with the sentiments of the carnal mind which is enmity against God. And further: in view of such a Scripture as the above we need not be surprised that much of human history is so perplexing to our understandings.

The natural world, to begin with the simplest, presents sufficient problems to humble man, were it not that he was blinded by pride. Why should there be diseases and remedies for them? Why poisons and their antidotes? Why rats and mice, and cats to kill them? Why not have left unmade the evils, and then no necessity for the instruments to remove them!

Ah, why are we so slow to learn that God’s ways are different from ours? And when we enter the human realm the mystery deepens. What is man placed here for at all? To learn some lesson or undergo some test or experience which he could not learn or undergo elsewhere?

If so, then why is such a large proportion of the race removed in infancy, before such lessons can be learned and such experiences be gained? Why indeed! Such questions as these might be multiplied indefinitely, but sufficient has been said to point out the manifest limitations of human wisdom.

If we are confronted with insoluble problems in the domain of nature and of human existence, what of the Divine realm! Who can fathom the ways of the Almighty? “Canst thou by searching find out God?” No indeed. “Clouds and darkness are round about Him” (Ps. 97:2).

If God were not a mystery He would not be God to us.

But why write in this strain? Surely the need of our day is for that which will strengthen faith, not that which paralyzes it. True; but what is faith? Faith is, essentially, an attitude rather than an act: it is that which lies behind the act. Faith is an attitude of dependency, of recognized weakness.

Faith is a coming to the end of ourselves and looking outside of ourselves — away from ourselves. Faith is that which gives God His proper place. And if we give God His proper place, we must take our proper place, and that is in the dust.

And what is there that will bring the haughty, self-sufficient creature into the dust so quickly as a sight of the Godhood of God! Nothing is so humbling to the human heart as a true recognition of the absolute sovereignty of God.

So then, instead of seeking to weaken faith, we write to promote and strengthen it. The chief trouble is that so much that passes for faith today is really only maudlin sentimentality. The faith of Christendom in this twentieth century is mere credulity.

The god of many of our churches is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but a mere figment of the imagination. Modern theology has invented a god which the infinite mind can understand, whose ways are pleasing to the natural man, a god who is altogether such a one as those who profess to worship him — a god concerning whom there is little or no mystery.

But how different the God which the Holy Scriptures reveal! Of Him it is said, “His ways are past finding out” (Rom. 11:33).

1. The god of the moderns is altogether lacking in power. The popular idea of today is that deity is filled with amiable intentions but that Satan is preventing the making good of them. It is not God’s will, so we are told, that there should be any wars, for wars are something which men are unable to reconcile with their ideas of Divine mercy.

Hence, the conclusion is that all wars are of the Devil. Plagues and earthquakes, famines and tornadoes, are not sent from God, but are attributed solely to natural causes. To affirm that the Lord God sent the recent Influenza epidemic as a judgment scourge would be to shock the sensibilities of the modern mind.

2. The god of the moderns is altogether lacking in wisdom. The popular belief is that God loves everybody, and that it is His will that every child of Adam should be saved. But if this be true, He is strongly lacking in wisdom, for He knows quite well that under existing conditions the majority will be lost.

If He is really desirous that every creature should have an equal chance to be saved, then why suffer so many to be born into families of criminal parents, for example, and be brought up under conditions where they will never hear the Gospel?

3. The god of the moderns is lacking in holiness. That crime deserves punishment is still allowed in part, though more and more the belief is gaining ground that the criminal is really an object of pity rather than censure. But that sin — sins of thought as well as deed, sins of the heart as well as life — should be hated by God is a concept that has gone almost entirely out of fashion.

4. The god of the moderns is altogether lacking in sovereign prerogative. Whatever rights the deity of present-day Christendom may be supposed to possess in theory, in fact they must be subordinated to the rights of the creature.

How different is the God of the Bible from the god of the moderns! The God of Scripture is all-mighty. He is one who speaks and it is done, who commands and it stands fast. He is the One with whom all things are possible and who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11).

He is the One with whom the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; with whom all nations before Him are as nothing and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity (Isa. 40:15, 17).

He is the One who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity (Isa. 40:22–23).

He is the One who declares: “I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself… That saith of Cyrus, He is My shepherd, and shall perform all My pleasure” (Isa. 44:24–28).

Such is the God of the Bible, the God who throws out the challenge: “To whom then will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto Him?” (Isa. 40:18).

The God of Scripture is infinite in wisdom. “Great is our Lord, and of great power: His understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147:5). “There is no searching of His understanding” (Isa. 40:28).

The God of Scripture is infinite in holiness. He is the One who beheld the wickedness of the antediluvians and opened the windows of Heaven. He is the One who rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah. He is the One who spared not His own Son when He was made sin for us.

The God of Scripture has a will that is irresistible. Men talk and boast of their will, but God also has a will — and His will always stands.

“O Lord God of our fathers, art not Thou God in heaven? and rulest not Thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in Thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand Thee?” (2 Chron. 20:6).

The God of Scripture is absolute Sovereign. “For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and His hand