Introduction
Perhaps asking such a question may seem futile. For if there is a transcendental, creator God of the universe, surely His ways must be incomprehensible to the simple five-sensory limitations of human observation and comprehension. Or perhaps your view of God is much smaller — something explained to naive children sitting cross-legged during Sunday school.
Surprisingly, both perspectives are not entirely wrong.
There’s an inherent, beautiful paradox regarding the God of the Bible. He is incomprehensibly vast, and yet He desires to be known and reveals Himself to us. This is unlike any other deity of any other religion. The divine and the human should not be so compatible as to allow a real, knowing relationship.
Yet this is exactly what we find in Scripture.
So — who is God? In asking this question, I’m chasing after the essence of who God is — not what He does, His titles, or how He feels. To pose a question such as “Who was William Wilberforce?” it would be quite simple to answer plainly: “He was a renowned English abolitionist.”
Fair enough. But to the person who knew William Wilberforce — say, his spouse or his child — you should expect the answer to be far less about his accomplishments and far more about his character, his motivations, his essence. Who was he at his core? What drove him to sacrifice and risk so much of himself in pursuit of a righteous cause? Was his demeanor kind? Impassioned? Bold?
In our merit-based civilization, it’s understandable that we’re quick to define a person by their titles and achievements. Crack open a history book, and this is mostly what you’ll find — a long line of names, matched with their accomplishments, a quick nod to how they shaped their era, and then we move on. Year after year in grade school we cram these summaries into our brains, and yet we know precious little about the actual people who lived the lives behind the legacies.
But the Bible was not written merely that we might know what God has done. It was written that we might know who God is. Of course, the Scriptures are filled with God’s astounding feats (and rightly so). But the greater feat is not knowing about Him — it’s knowing Him.
Consider these words from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 9:
“Thus says the Lord:
Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom,
let not the mighty man boast in his might,
let not the rich man boast in his riches,
but let him who boasts boast in this,
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these things I delight,” declares the Lord.
Or consider the striking words of James — a warning against mistaking theological correctness for a true relationship:
“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder!”
And so we return to the original question. Who is God?
The New Testament offers us three unique ontological statements:
God is Spirit.
God is Light.
God is Love.
These statements are distinct. They don’t describe what God does, like “God gives light.” Nor do they describe how He acts, like “God is loving.” No — these tell us who God is.
They are statements of essence. Of being.
God is Spirit
The fourth chapter in the Gospel of John is brimming with worldview-shattering consequences. It is an encounter that, according to the culture of the day, should not have occurred at all. The Son of God — the promised Messiah — is having a private conversation with a woman.
But it’s worse than that. She is a Samaritan woman. In the eyes of the Jew, she descends from a lineage of apostates who corrupted the Holy Land by introducing foreign traditions and idols from the Assyrian empire. And now, they have the audacity to claim that the mountain in their land is the true place to worship the Most High — rather than the holy Mount Zion.
If that weren’t enough already, she is an adulterous Samaritan. The very definition of a sinner.
Yet Christ — God Himself as a man — desires to spend time with her and reveal profound mysteries about who He is.
He wants her to know Him.
Considering that we’re reading about a first-century Jewish encounter, this moment breaks every social convention expected of a well-to-do Jew — let alone the holy Son of God.
John 4:19–26 (ESV)
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
To the native English speaker, it is easy to miss the impact of the phrase God is spirit. English is a language well-suited for contract law — every word trimmed and loaded with precision. But ancient languages like Greek and Hebrew do not confine meaning in quite the same way. Their words have room to breathe. They overlap. They glisten with layered meaning.
So when we read that God is spirit, we might assume it simply means that God is incorporeal — that He lacks a physical body. Technically true, but that only captures a fragment of what the Greek word pneuma, or its Hebrew sister ruach, really means.
Both of these words are translated into English as spirit, yes. But to their original hearers, they evoked far more than a disembodied presence. Pneuma and ruach are words of movement. They describe not only the invisible essence of a living being, but also wind, breath, and the very force of life itself.
To the ancients, spirit was understood as the unseen animator of the universe.
Why do the leaves dance to the rhythm of a gentle breeze? Pneuma.
What gives life to the hummingbird as it darts weightlessly through the air? Ruach.
What is the invisible substance you breathe in — and, if lost, would cause your body to collapse? Spirit.
So to say God is Spirit is not merely to say that He is without a body. It is to say that God is the one who animates His entire creation. He is what gives life to life.
He is the force that rustles the leaves in the trees.
He is the power that gives life to the hummingbird.
He is the breath you just took. And the one you’ll need next.
Put another way by the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:28, he says this of God the Father:
“In Him we live and move and have our being.”
I believe the point has now been made: God is fundamental. He is not only the Creator, but also the Sustainer — the power that brings life to the universe. The one who makes the dead come alive. He is the foundation beneath all things.
Before we move on to the next “God is” statement, I want to pause and consider another well-known biblical mystery — one that speaks directly to God’s fundamental nature.
When God speaks to Moses through the burning bush, He instructs him to say this to the Israelites:
Exodus 3:14 (ESV)
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Now consider just how strange a claim this is.
Let’s say you’re holding a mug of coffee in your hand. You feel its warmth, take in its aroma, feel the tap of your fingernails gently against its side. And then I ask you, “What is that coffee mug made of?”
After a moment of confusion at the odd question, you answer, “Ceramic, I suppose.”
“Ceramic?” I reply. “And what’s ceramic made of?”
You shift in your seat, still trying to be polite. “Well, I’m no chemist, but… atoms, molecules?”
“I see,” I say. “And what are atoms and molecules made of?”
Everything in the observable universe is made up of something. But God is not like that. He is the one entity that is truly fundamental. God is made up of God. He is who He is. Eternal. Unchanging. Foundational. He was not created — rather, all things have been created by Him.
To be clear, this does not mean that God is all things — as some modern spirituals have asserted. God is not the universe, but the Intelligent Source from which it came and by which it lives.
And so, God is the source of all things — the one Fundamental. By Him, the universe is created and animated. He is your breath. The wind. Spirit. He is the intelligence who placed each molecule in its perfect place — the incomprehensibly vast and sophisticated Author of all.
To say that God is Spirit… is to say that God is.
God is Light
1 John 1:5 (ESV): This is the message we have heard from him (Jesus) and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Just like in the first “God is” statement, we are told plainly by the Apostle John that Jesus is the source of this next revelation: God is Light.
What is the function of light? Let us not overthink this. Light’s utility to mankind lies in making sight possible. When there is light, we can see a space for what it truly is. Where there is no light, we fumble about. This is not something we had to be taught; our first stubbed toe in the dark quickly educates us on light’s usefulness.
Put another way: light provides clarity from obscurity. It reveals truth from the unknown. It brings about order from chaos. Within the Light, we are held and protected from every evil force. It is like the sanctuary found in a mother’s embrace — a place where we once felt perfect security and love. A place of pure goodness. Of holiness.
And so, we should agree — light is good. We desire safety, clarity, truth, and order. However, consider this thought-provoking statement made by Jesus in John 3:19–20 (ESV):
“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
Despite our agreement that light is good, Jesus tells Nicodemus that “people loved the darkness rather than the light.” And who does He mean by “people”? All of us.
Romans 3:10–12 (ESV): “As it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’”
And so, light reveals all darkness — within all people. What may sound attractive on the surface becomes far more terrifying. For as Christ has said, judgment arrives when the light exposes the guilt within — and no one can attain the same measure of purity as the Light (except for the Son of God). This is what the Christian means when they say that God is holy. God’s transcendence, purity, and perfection are of a kind infinitely superior to man’s. And this holy God sets the standard by which we are judged.
This is exactly why the Light is a fearful thing: it exposes our inadequacy to exist within its purity. Yet to exist outside of it is to reside in darkness — in death and despair.
The very thing we so desperately long for is outside of our reach because of our guilt.
According to the words of Christ, which we referenced earlier, there is an inseparable link between light and judgment. In fact, Jesus uses the light’s arrival as a definition: This is the judgment: the light has come into the world. The text seems to say that judgment is not so much a sentence imposed, but the outcome of the Light’s arrival. There is no courtroom filled with angelic judges and heavenly lawyers scurrying about, trying to prove or disprove the guilt of the accused. No — in this system, the Light simply reveals all darkness. Nothing and nobody can hide. And we are all found guilty.
For Christ Himself says in Mark 10:18, “No one is good except God alone.”
Now, I understand the difficulty this creates for some. We are all accustomed to self-justification, evaluating our “goodness” in comparison to the worst offenders in our community. It’s a defense mechanism — and a natural one — for within nearly all people exists a yearning to do well. Yet if we were to shift our comparison from criminals to the God of Light, and if we could grasp the purity that exists within His ultimate goodness, this principle would become perfectly clear.
Humanity is still made in the image of God and capable of doing good things. But within all — myself first among us — exists much darkness. And what does light do to darkness? When we flip on a light switch, we observe that darkness cannot coexist with light. There is a natural polarity between them. And there is no shadow to retreat into when the Light comes into the world.
So what does that say of me? If darkness is found within me, and darkness cannot coexist with the Light — where does that leave me?
Well, either I give up the Light to remain in darkness, or I must find a way to become like the Light and remove the darkness from within me. To have both is an irreconcilable paradox.
So what is judgment, exactly? Judgment is being sentenced to separation from the Light. And if the Light is synonymous with true good, then you can imagine the horrors of choosing a path in which there is no glimmer of goodness at all.
So we arrive at a puzzling, yet inescapable, reality: the Light is both the perfect embodiment of goodness — and yet, fundamentally terrifying. Not because the Light inflicts pain, but because it is so holy that we are unworthy even to look upon it. Without it, we are damned. And yet we cannot attain it.
It is both perfect and terrifying.
Now, if we were to close here, we would have to conclude that attempting to follow the God of Christianity would be quite a hopeless endeavor, indeed.
Thankfully, we know this is not so.
And so, let us move into our third, and final, “God is” statement.
God is Love
Love. What a beautiful, tricky little word.
Why tricky? Because no other word in the English language has been so misused and misappropriated. Does love mean passion — that bursting tension as a lover anticipates a touch? Does love mean preference — like a favorite vacation spot or a song that resonates deeply? Does love mean romance — the excitement of budding companionship and cherished moments?
And then there are all those prepositional phrases: in love, out of love, over love.
Love, it seems, carries a fleeting, emotional quality. It’s a feeling we all long for, yet one we’ve accepted isn’t meant to last — no matter how good it felt while we were “in it.”
If this is your understanding of love — let me introduce you to real Love.
1 John 4:7–12 (ESV)
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
This Love restores hope to the hopeless.
This Love embraces the destitute and the broken.
This Love freely sacrifices itself to save the worst of us.
This Love is revealed to us in a person — and His name is Yeshua: Jesus Christ.
The purest demonstration of love is that Jesus came into the world. Why did He do it? So that we might live through Him — that I may be fully forgiven and restored.
Jesus is our rescuer. His coming, death, and resurrection have flipped the whole system in on itself. Now, we may use His worthiness to access the Light. In Christ, we are no longer judged on the basis of our merit — which is filled with darkness. We are judged on Christ’s merit — as if we were already pure light. And therefore, we are now compatible with that divine “true good” and may enter the Light.
So love.
Love is sacrificial.
Love puts others above itself, despite their deserving or undeserving.
Love moves in astounding compassion.
Love is constant.
Love is determined.
Love bled for you.
Love is for you.
How could we possibly say all that without going on and on?
God is love.
Now, the intricacies of Christ’s victory in His resurrection are quite a mystery. You may be asking yourself, as I often do, “Why did Christ have to come and die? Couldn’t an infinite God simply wave His arm and declare that all men could join Him in heaven without a crucifixion?”
Here is what we can know: God will never violate His own nature, His covenants, or His will. So to address the infinite questions that begin with “Couldn’t God have just…” — well, to ask what God could do is simply the wrong question. Why? Because the answer is always “yes.” When you are the architect, builder, and sustainer of the known universe, then you can do whatever you will. Period.
The better question is this: Would God wave His arm and declare that all men are now without sin?
Now we have something to work with. Why? Well, not because I can predict God’s will — that would be arrogance in the highest order. But because God is unchanging, and He has revealed Himself and His will through His Son.
So, the idea of “waving His arm and bringing all of mankind into heaven” is incompatible with what we know to be true of God. First, because there would be no judgment cast upon the offense of darkness. Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross was far more than Roman crucifixion — it was a separation between the Father and the Son.
Remember what we said before: judgment is separation from the Light. And upon the cross, Christ cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The unimaginable horrors that exist outside of the Light’s embrace — this is what Christ took upon Himself for you.
Further, God cannot force the darkness out of mankind without removing the free will of mankind. Let us recall what Jesus said in John, chapter 3: “…people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
It is clear that mankind has made a choice — to love the darkness and hate the Light. This world is painful and broken. There is no real peace in the domain of man. We are corrupted to the core and prioritize self-promotion and preservation despite an inward conscience that tells us to stop. It’s not that there is no goodness in man at all — but that we have chosen to love the darkness. And our world makes this claim self-evident. We must be honest with ourselves and admit this.
To thrust the darkness from mankind and replace it with Light would be to remove what it has loved and insert what it has hated. This is impossible without removing the free will of man.
But if you remove man’s free will, are we even mankind at all anymore? Are we still made in the image of God? Is love even possible without choice?
1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (ESV)
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
No — love is not possible without choice. It does not insist on its own way.
Therefore, free will is an essential element in the system of love. For mankind to be reconciled with the Light, it would require both a choice (so as not to violate man’s will) and a great act of sacrifice (so as not to violate the Light’s just nature). And so, God reveals His love to us in this: Jesus Christ. And all we are asked to do is to choose Him over the darkness.
For this reason, Love became a person. And Love carried His cross up the hill. Love sacrificed more than we can comprehend — for our restoration to the Light and access to the Spirit.
It is in Love that we know God.
It is in Love that we shall be embraced in a future, perfect world.
It is in Love that we may now live.
Closing
Now to steal one of my favorite lines from the Gospel of John, its final verse: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
There is much more to say about God, such as how he is the Word, Creator, Wisdom, Truth, Life, and so on. We have not even begun to discuss the nature of His three aspects in Father, Son, and Spirit. This will have to wait for another time.
God is Spirit. He is the living force behind the entirety of the universe which He made.
God is Light. He is the only “true good” force that exists, and without Him no goodness exists — yet we are incompatible to coexist with it.
God is Love. Despite our incompatibility, God’s love for His creation is abundant and overflowing. He demonstrates his love for us through the ultimate sacrifice, which transforms us to be compatible with the Light.
These core tenants of God’s nature are eternally unwavering, and they are our unbreakable axioms for exploring deeper questions of purpose and meaning. This is why there was no other starting point for asking life’s most difficult questions through the biblical perspective. For as challenging a question as “why do awful things happen to innocent people?” or “what is the deal with eternal punishment?” are — we must search for meaning holding fast to the truth that God is Spirit, God is Light, and God is Love.
So this is just the beginning of a long and arduous exploration — one where I hope to find harmony where tension appears to exist between the world and the scriptures. And nothing would please me more than if you were willing to stake your worldview alongside mine, as we ask the most personal questions.