What’s the Difference Between True and False Faith?
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What’s the Difference Between True and False Faith?

Who Is God? (1 Timothy 1:17)

Posted January 3, 2025
Attributes of God

To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.1 Timothy 1:17

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” God made people “that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26–27). Knowing our maker is the first step toward knowing ourselves and the rest of our world.

It is not enough to believe in the existence of a god; even God’s fiercest enemies do better than that (James 2:19). We must know him. And in his word, God tells us how. Paul’s exclamation—prompted by his experience of divine mercy—is a crisp summary of how we should think of the Lord.

God is the only god. “I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God” (Isa. 45:5). Because humans are incurably religious, we shouldn’t be surprised at how many false gods are worshiped in the world. People believe in false gods because their darkened hearts mishandle the clear evidence for the real one. False gods are strong proof of the one true God, even as they are shabby recreations of him, like the result of drawing your best friend while blindfolded. Your friend is real even if your sketch is poor.

God is immortal and invisible. Curiously, Paul honors God by declaring what he’s not: corruptible and visible. Paul knew these divine traits from special revelation (Rom. 1:23; 1 Tim. 6:16). But he also knew that, because of God’s differences from us, it’s easier to say what he’s not. The sixteenth-century Belgic Confession describes God as “incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite” (art. 1). God cannot be neatly defined. Another historic catechism asks not, “Who is God?”, but, “What is God?” Knowing God isn’t like picking a particular person out of a crowd; it’s trying to figure out what kind of being he is.

God is the King of the ages. There are two ages: the present age of tension between good and evil, and the future age in which sin will be banished from the reconstituted world. God is unshakably enthroned as King over both. He laughs at those who resist his rule (Ps. 2:4).

God is worthy of our glory and honor. Those who come closest to what it means to see God are always struck by his infinite worth. The angels declare his holiness (Isa. 6:3). The redeemed in heaven fall “on their faces before the throne and [worship] God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen’” (Rev. 7:11–12). Only when we reject any notion of a domesticated deity can we commune with him “in adoring silence” and unhindered praise.


Footnotes

  • A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York, HarperCollins, 1961), 1.

  • Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q/A 4.

  • Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, vii.

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William Boekestein

William Boekestein is the pastor of Immanuel Fellowship Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He has written several books and numerous articles. He and his wife, Amy, have four children.