IMAGES OF GOD #10

The God of whom the Bible speaks is the God who makes himself known.

He reveals himself through the things that he has made:

' ... what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.'

He reveals himself by means of special revelation which he communicated to people, and which they recorded in writings now known as the Bible:

'In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways' 'no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. ... but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit'; 'all Scripture is God-breathed'.

He reveals himself, finally and fully, in Jesus Christ, his eternal Son, who claimed:

'No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him'; 'I and the Father are one'; 'When a man believes in me, he does not believe in my only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness'; 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father'.

Anyone who wants to know who God is and what he is like needs only to look at Jesus Christ, because 'God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him' and 'in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form'.

Scripture references: Romans 1:19,20; Hebrews 1:1; 2 Peter 1:20,21; 2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 11:27; John 10:30; 12:44-46; 14:9; Colossians 1:19; 2:9.