SUMMIT: Sessions

Unity (2.3d)

Definition: God is not divided into parts. He is not composed of parts or attributes.

A. God’s attributes are all connected.

God is light (1 John 1:5) in the same way that God is love (1 John 4:8). God is no part light or part love, God himself is light and is also love.

Exodus 34:6–7 ESV

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

These attributes of God are not little parts of God put together, but is entirely loving, entirely merciful, and so forth. Every attribute of God is true of all of God’s being. Every attribute of God qualifies every other attribute.

God himself is a unity, a unified and completely integrated whole person who is infinitely perfect in all of these attributes.

B. God is the same God always.

Everything God says and does is fully consistent with all his attributes.

Some actions of God show certain of his attributes more prominently.

Creation demonstrates his power and wisdom, atonement demonstrates his love and justice, and heaven demonstrates his glory and beauty, but all of these also demonstrate his other characteristics.

C. No one attribute of God is most important.

Because God is unity, God himself in his whole being is supremely important, and it is God himself in his whole being whom we are to seek to know and to love.

Personal Application

What did you learn about God tonight that taught you something new or corrected a previous belief that was incorrect?

We’ve learned that God is independent, unchangeable, eternal, omnipresent, and unity. How does this effect our spiritual life? How do these characteristics of God give you hope and assurance in who He is?

We’ve learned that these characteristics are incommunicable, meaning that we do not and cannot reflect God in these ways. Take a moment and reflect on how you are dependent, always changing, temporal, limited, and divided, and then thank God for who He is.