4.3 God Is a Person
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
There is one God, the Father, and one Mediator between God and man, the MAN, Christ Jesus (1 Timothy :5). I know God BECAUSE I know a Man. Jesus, the Man, as a Man, lives now in my heart – and yours. Jesus, the Human, is omnipresent and eternal, all here now.
I know Jesus the Man because I know myself. Jesus is just like me; I am just like Him. Yet this Jesus, a Man, just like me, is also every Word coming forth out of God, every word of purity, life and power. Yet He is a Man (and a Wombman) and He lives in my heart. (Sisters, as Jesus is manly, so He is wo-manly, just like you.)
Defining “Person”
What is a person? Person (Webster’s 1926): A rational being; possessing, or forming the subject of, personality.
Typically, “person,” in the definitions, is described as a human being, but only in the sense of separating the “person” of a human from the non-rational animals or plants. Yet “person” allows for beings higher than humans to be rational and to possess a personality, specifically the three “persons” of the “trinity.”
Personal (Webster’s 1926): Of or pertaining to a particular person; affecting an individual; peculiar or proper to private concerns.
Personality
Personality (Webster's 1926): 1. That which makes a being a person and not a thing or abstraction; personal existence or identity. 3. That which constitutes distinction of person; individuality. Personality implies complex being or character having distinctive and persistent traits, among which reason, self-consciousness, and self-activity are considered essential.
[Twice, in referring to the “persons” of God, Webster’s 1926 uses the term “hypostasis.” We recognize hypostasis as a Greek word from our study of Hebrews 11:1 – substance. Now we see that it is also an English word with the same meaning.]
Substance
Hypostasis (Webster’s 1926): 1. That which forms a basis of support. 2. Personal subject; person; personality (related to God). 3. Substance, subsistent principle or the essential nature of anything; a subject in which attributes are conceived to inhere, or a self-subsistent reality, or mode of existence.
These definitions give us an outline of thinking, a framework in which we can work. They do NOT, however, satisfy. Somehow “definitions” cannot connect to ME, to the personal person that feels and hopes and dreams and suffers, this person that is ME. Thus we must add flesh to this framework.
Flesh
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. I am speaking literally. I skipped over the specific parts of the definitions that add a “body” to a person, though always implying that the body is not the person. Yet a person is known as personal only through a body, only through some means of being known by others.
How are you and I persons? What makes us personal? May I suggest that being a person does not begin with being rational, but rather with possessing feelings about ourselves. Let’s bring in some verses before we start attempting to define what we mean when we say that the Father is a Person, personal, and possessing a distinct and intricate personality.
Thirst and Desire
If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink (John 7:37). – Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. . . (Matthew 11:29).
I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will (Acts 13:22). – One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek . . . (Psalms 27:4).
Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—in the volume of the book it is written of Me—to do Your will, O God (Hebrews 10:5-7).
God Desires
Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am . . . (John 17:24). Jesus wept (John 11:35).
Personhood, being personal, begins with desire. What do you want? What does the Father want? God DESIRES; God WANTS something He does not have. This quality is the beginning of personhood. In all of my writing until now I have avoided almost entirely the “will of God.” I have done so because of the abuse made of God’s “will” in the Christianity I have known. I could never meet “God’s WILL”; it always destroyed me.
A Man Like God
In complete contrast, David treated God, all the way through, as another human being, just a bit more. David treated God as David wanted others to treat himself. When David displeased God, he simply continued on reasoning with God as a fellow person, expressing his own emotions in conjunction with the emotions of God. David paid little attention to his violation of the “will of God” and a whole of attention into talking God into backing down. And when David failed to persuade God to back down, he simply placed himself entirely into God’s hands, wanting to be nowhere else. – Here is a man after My own heart.
What Do I Want?
In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).
What do I WANT in this world? I WANT my children to experience wholesome and full lives, rich with blessings and with giving and with knowing Father. I want to see my children know the full meaning of creative expression, as God made them in particular. I want them to be content with their lives, to say, “God is good, all the time,” to sing, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.” Yet I know that they will taste of sorrow and defeat, of failure and falling short. And I would give all that I am to spare them, and to cause them to know JOY.
God Loves Even Them
This is what I am as a person. Our Father is the same.
All hatred and racism and war comes out of imagining other people to be less personal than the person hating and killing. Americans can destroy the lives and hopes of millions of people without giving it a thought because they imagine that “those people over there” cannot be as fully human as we are. I have heard that belief expressed across the pulpit as a calling for more destruction upon those “less-than-human” others. Anyone who would kill a father, a mother, a sister, a brother, a son, a daughter “so we can be free” is not worthy of freedom – yet God loves even them.
Carrying Sorrow
All war against God comes out of the non-thinking, non-feeling imagination that God is not really a Person, and that He does not hurt. To be a person is to be capable of carrying sorrow. The personal knowing of joy and pleasure is matched by the personal knowing of sorrow and agony.
He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:3-4). – He that has seen Me has seen the Father.
Being Personal
Being a person is being personal. Only a person, full and complete in all that it means to be a fully developed personality can know what a person is. Thus “rational,” though definitely an essential part of being a person, cannot be the structure of our definition. Yes, I think rationally, and my rational thought guides my writing. But in defining “God as a Person,” you can see that I have reached for metaphor, for illustration, for contrast, for story. God as a Person can be known no other way. – A body You have prepared for Me.
Distinct Personalities
Being a person is also possessing a distinct personality, the same in substance as all other persons, but unique and individual in fabric and expression. We are unique persons because God is utterly, uniquely Personal. We are unique persons because Jesus calls each one of us by name.
Personality: That which makes a being a person and not a thing or abstraction; personal existence or identity.
God is a Person. God has a heart that cares, that enjoys delight and suffers loss. God desires; God wants what He does not have.
A Body for Me
“The will of God” is God winning for Himself the Desire of His heart.
A body You have prepared for Me. I have come to do Your will, O God. I have come to make the Father known by all. And He took little children into His arms and blessed them.
Can you see God? Do you hear the beating of His Heart? God is a Person who DESIRES, with all the longing of His Heart, to make Himself known through His Body, through other persons, through you and me – the Father. But let’s expand personality just a bit.
The Personality of Father
The Father is a unique and distinct individual Person. The fabric of His personality, though generating the substance of all other persons, yet it remains completely unique, individual, and different than all other persons. You and I are persons and personal entirely out from the substance of God’s personal Person. Yet each individual person is unique in character and expression, that is, in outward appearance.
The personality of the Father is, however, a most fascinating subject, one which we MUST explore. What is the Father’s unique personality, different in fabric from the personality of Jesus and of our own personalities?
The Father’s Story of Self
What is the personal Personal-ness of God’s most private Heart? What are the secrets of His desire? What story does the Father tell Himself about Himself?
The personal Personal-ness of Father can be known in only one way – through Symmorphy, through Person inside of Persons expressing Himself through many persons. It takes first, a many-membered Body, those who belong to Father, you and me together, each one of us expressing the full measure of our own personality for Father’s personality to become known. But in the end, it will take all creation singing for joy to really reveal all that is the personality of Father – God all in all.
Two Lenses for Seeing
We have set before ourselves two lenses, then, through which to seek for an answer to the question – What is God? The first lens is Jesus, the Man, showing us Father through all of His humanity, in strength and in weakness. The second lens is the personal privacy, the personality of our own persons, and the secret delights and sorrows of our own hearts.
Yet it is John, the disciple closest to Jesus, who gives us the defining statements of what God is. God IS Spirit; God IS Love; God IS Word (that is, Life); and God IS Light. In the next session we will seek to know what these mean.