Every doctrine in the Christian faith grows from the root of what we confess about God Himself. Theology Proper—the study of God’s being, nature, attributes, and works—stands at the foundation of everything we believe and practice. Scripture does not begin with arguments for God but with His presence and action: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). From that opening line onward, the Bible unfolds the story of the God who is, who speaks, who creates, who covenants, who saves, who judges, and who reigns. He makes Himself known progressively across the ages, revealing both His unchanging character and the wise variety of His dealings with the world. He is one in essence and three in persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—eternal, holy, sovereign, and good, working all things according to the counsel of His will.
To know this God truly is to be transformed. The more clearly we see His holiness, the more honestly we repent. The more deeply we grasp His love, the more freely we worship. The more firmly we trust His providence, the more patiently we endure. In a dispensational reading of Scripture, we attend to God’s steady character and His ordered administrations, keeping Israel and the Church distinct without dividing the unity of His purpose in Christ. In what follows, we will consider God’s self-revelation in creation and Scripture, the mystery and clarity of the Trinity, the beauty of His attributes, the wisdom of His decrees, and His mighty works in creation and providence. Above all, we will receive these truths not as abstractions but as invitations to adore, to trust, and to obey.
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Historical & Cultural Background
The nations of the ancient world were filled with gods made in the image of their worshipers—local, limited, and often capricious. Israel’s confession was different. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The God who called Abram from Ur, who spoke to Moses from the bush that burned and was not consumed, and who led His people by fire and cloud was not like the gods of the nations. He revealed His personal name, “I AM WHO I AM,” declaring His self-existence and faithfulness across generations (Exodus 3:14–15). He is the Maker of heaven and earth, not a part of nature but Lord over it. He is holy, separate from all sin and creaturely limitation, yet near to the brokenhearted and attentive to prayer.
Israel’s worship, law, and prophetic witness formed a people who knew God as Creator, Covenant Lord, and Redeemer. The psalmists sang, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1), while prophets proclaimed that He “sits enthroned above the circle of the earth” and that “his understanding no one can fathom” (Isaiah 40:22, 28). Yet this same God promised a coming Servant and a Davidic King through whom the nations would be blessed. In the fullness of time, the Son would come, and the Spirit would be poured out, and the church would come to confess with clarity what was hinted from the beginning: the one God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the first-century world of Jewish monotheism and Greco-Roman philosophies, the apostles preached the God of Israel now revealed in Christ. He remained the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet He was known with a fullness that matched His self-giving in the incarnation and the sending of the Spirit. Thus, while God’s being has never changed, our knowledge of Him has deepened by His own design, as He has drawn near to save and to dwell with His people.
Biblical Narrative
The Bible’s narrative of God begins with creation, where His power and wisdom overflow into a world teeming with life. He speaks, and it is. He blesses, and it flourishes. Humanity, made in His image, receives vocation and fellowship. Even after sin enters the world, God’s presence does not recede into silence. He seeks the guilty, clothes the ashamed, judges wickedness, and keeps promise alive. He covenants with Noah, sets His bow in the clouds, calls Abram and pledges blessing to the nations, binds Himself to Israel at Sinai, and raises up kings and prophets to shepherd and confront. Through it all, His character shines—merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and yet not clearing the guilty (Exodus 34:6–7).
The narrative reaches its climactic turn when “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). In Jesus Christ, the exact representation of God’s being is made manifest, so that to see the Son is to see the Father (Hebrews 1:3; John 14:9). The Son reveals the Father’s heart, accomplishes the Father’s will, and pours out the promised Spirit. After the cross and empty tomb, the church goes forth declaring that the God who made the world and everything in it is not served by human hands as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:24–25). Paul tells the nations that God has set the times and places so that people would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us, “for in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27–28).
From Genesis to Revelation, God is the principal actor. He creates and sustains, elects and redeems, judges and restores, promises and fulfills. He gathers a people from every tribe and language and nation, and He will dwell with them forever in a renewed heaven and earth. The story is not about a human ascent to God but about God’s gracious descent to us, that we might know Him, be reconciled to Him, and glorify Him.
Theological Significance
To speak rightly of God is to let Scripture set our terms. God’s existence is not a conclusion we reach by climbing a ladder of reason; it is the reality that makes our reasoning possible. Yet God graciously confirms Himself through general revelation, so that His eternal power and divine nature “have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). The heavens declare His glory; conscience bears witness to His moral law; providence orders times and places. Still, general revelation cannot save; we need His special revelation, through the prophets and apostles, and supremely through His Son, who “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). Scripture, breathed out by God, is profitable to teach, reprove, correct, and train, that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16–17).
Within that revelation, the mystery of the Trinity stands as light rather than contradiction. There is one God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. They are not three gods but three persons who share one undivided essence, co-equal and co-eternal, acting inseparably yet according to personal properties. Jesus commissions His disciples to make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Paul blesses the church with “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:14). The oneness of God guards us from idolatry; the threeness of persons guards us from vague generalities, so that we may truly know the Father through the Son by the Spirit.
God’s attributes describe who He is in Himself and how He is toward His creatures. He is eternal, “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2). He is immutable, declaring, “I the LORD do not change” (Malachi 3:6). He is omniscient, knowing the end from the beginning and declaring what is yet to be (Isaiah 46:9–10). He is omnipresent, so that the psalmist asks, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” and finds that even there God’s hand will guide and hold him fast (Psalm 139:7–10). He is omnipotent; nothing is too hard for Him (Jeremiah 32:17). He is holy, and the seraphim cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). He is love, demonstrated in that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He is just and the Judge of all the earth who will do right, and yet He delights to show mercy. In every dispensation, these attributes remain constant; what changes is the administration of His covenant dealings, not the character from which those dealings proceed.
God’s decrees express His eternal purpose. He “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). He decreed creation and called it very good. He purposed redemption in Christ before the foundation of the world and brings that purpose to pass in history. He pledged Himself to Abraham and to David, and His gifts and calling are irrevocable, so that Israel’s future hope rests not on human strength but on divine faithfulness (Romans 11:29). Progressive revelation does not alter His plan; it unveils it step by step, until all the promises of God find their Yes in Christ.
Creation reveals both His wisdom and His generosity. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,” the elders sing, “for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” (Revelation 4:11). The Son is not only agent but sustainer, for “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Providence carries creation forward with care. Jesus points to birds fed and lilies clothed and asks why we should be anxious, for “your heavenly Father knows that you need them” (Matthew 6:26–32). Joseph, looking back on betrayal and famine and rescue, tells his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Paul declares that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” not by preventing trials but by weaving them into His wise design (Romans 8:28). Across the dispensations—before the law, under the law, in the Church Age, and in the kingdom to come—God’s providence preserves, governs, and provides, so that history is never rudderless and hope is never naïve.
Spiritual Lessons & Application
To know God as He reveals Himself is to be led into worship that is both humbled and joyful. When we confess that God is eternal and immutable, we find ballast for days that feel uncertain. The world shifts, seasons change, and our hearts waver, but He does not. “Every good and perfect gift is from above,” writes James, “coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). In that confidence we bring our requests with thanksgiving, trusting His wisdom when His answers differ from our desires.
His holiness awakens reverent obedience. Isaiah’s vision of the Lord high and lifted up did not end in mere admiration; it produced confession and a commissioning: “Here am I. Send me” (Isaiah 6:8). So it is with us. The more clearly we see God’s moral beauty, the more we rise to pursue holiness in all we do, for it is written, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Holiness is not cold distance but consecrated nearness, life reordered by love.
His love cultivates assurance. The cross stands as the immovable monument that God is for us. If He did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things needed for our salvation and perseverance (Romans 8:32). In seasons of guilt, we rush not from God but to Him, confessing sin and receiving cleansing because He is faithful and just to forgive (1 John 1:9). Divine justice, satisfied at the cross, is now our ally, not our enemy.
His providence steadies our steps in the ordinary. Daily bread, safe travels, unexpected help, and even delays that later prove merciful—these are not accidents but gifts from a Father who sees in secret and knows what we need before we ask. We learn to pray with openness to His will, to plan with humility, and to serve with patience, knowing that our labor in the Lord is not in vain. We resist cynicism by remembering that God sets the times and places, and we resist presumption by remembering that we are creatures, not the Creator.
His triune life shapes our life together. The Father sends, the Son accomplishes, and the Spirit applies; love flows among the persons, and we are drawn into that fellowship. The church therefore lives not as a crowd of isolated seekers but as a family indwelt by the Spirit, gathered to the Son, and adopted by the Father. Unity becomes more than a slogan; it becomes a sharing in the one life of God that calls for humility, forgiveness, and mutual care. In a world of division, the church displays a foretaste of the kingdom by living in step with the God who is one.
Finally, a dispensational clarity cultivates expectancy. God’s promises to Israel will stand; His purposes for the Church will be brought to completion; His kingdom will come on earth as in heaven. We live this present age as pilgrims and stewards, honoring the distinctions God has made and anticipating the day when the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Such hope does not draw us away from earthly responsibilities; it sends us into them with courage and joy.
Conclusion
Theology Proper is not a library shelf to be dusted but the living center of the Christian mind and heart. God has made Himself known as the one true and living God, one in essence and three in persons, holy and loving, sovereign and wise, merciful and just. He created and sustains all things; He decreed a plan that spans the ages; He governs history toward a consummation in which Christ will be all in all. Across the dispensations His character remains steady while His administrations unfold with purposeful variety, preserving the distinction between Israel and the Church and ensuring that every promise finds fulfillment without contradiction. To study God, then, is to be invited into humble adoration, trusting obedience, and resilient hope.
Let the church therefore lift its eyes and lift its voice. Let believers, in homes and workplaces and congregations, live before the face of God with reverence and joy. Let us rest in His unchanging goodness, rely on His unfailing wisdom, and rejoice that in Him we live and move and have our being. For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever.
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?’
‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?’
For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11:33–36)
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