The Godhead · The Nature & Character of God
YHWH · Yahweh, the LORD · “I AM WHO I AM” (Exod 3:14)
who God is — the self-existent I AM: holy, loving, sovereign, faithful, and unchanging
One name · I AM
At the burning bush God named Himself: “אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה — I AM WHO I AM” (Exod 3:14). His covenant name, יְהוָה (“the LORD”), speaks of His eternal, self-existent being — He simply is, dependent on nothing, the source of all.
And when He revealed His character, He said: “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, abounding in goodness and truth … forgiving … yet who will by no means clear the guilty” (Exod 34:6–7). He is holy, loving, sovereign, faithful — and unchanging. These pages trace who He has shown Himself to be.
God as the eternal I AM; His holiness; His love; His sovereignty and might; and His faithfulness, goodness, and unchanging constancy.
Eternal, dependent on nothing.
אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה
ehyeh asher ehyeh
I AM WHO I AM.
God is uncreated and self-existent — “from everlasting to everlasting You are God” (Ps 90:2). Jesus took this name to Himself: “before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58); “the Alpha and the Omega … who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev 1:8). Everything depends on Him; He depends on nothing.
Utterly pure, set apart, transcendent.
קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת
qadosh qadosh qadosh YHWH tseva’ot
Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.
Holiness is God’s crowning perfection — He is pure, separate from all evil, exalted above all (Hab 1:13; 1 Pet 1:16). It is the only attribute Scripture lifts to the third degree. His holiness is not cold; it is the blazing purity behind all His goodness. (See the companion study on holiness.)
Not merely loving — love itself.
… ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν
… ho theos agapē estin
…God is love.
God does not merely love — He is love (1 John 4:8, 16); within the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit have loved one another from eternity. “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer 31:3); “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3:16). His love is the fountain of the gospel.
He does whatever He pleases.
… ἐβασίλευσεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ
… ho theos ho pantokratōr — the Almighty
…the Lord God Almighty reigns.
“Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Ps 115:3); “none can stay His hand” (Dan 4:35). He knows all things (Ps 139), fills all places (Jer 23:24), and rules over all. His sovereignty is not bare power but power wielded by perfect wisdom, holiness, and love.
What He is, He is forever.
… παρ’ ᾧ οὐκ ἔνι παραλλαγὴ ἢ τροπῆς ἀποσκίασμα
… ouk eni parallagē …
…with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
“I am the LORD, I do not change” (Mal 3:6); He is “not a man, that He should lie” (Num 23:19). His mercies are “new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lam 3:22–23); “the LORD is good … His faithfulness endures” (Ps 100:5). What He is, He is forever; what He promises, He performs.
We are forever tempted to remake God in our own image — and there are two favorite distortions. One is a sentimental god, all softness and no holiness, who shrugs at sin and asks nothing. The other is a harsh, distant god, all wrath and no love, served from dread rather than delight. Both are idols of the imagination. The true God is holy and loving, just and merciful — and the two meet, gloriously, at the cross.
דִּמִּיתָ הֱיוֹת־אֶהְיֶה כָמוֹךָ
dimmita heyot ehyeh khamokha
you thought that I was altogether like you.
To imagine a god who conveniently shares our preferences and winks at our sins is to make an idol, not to know God. He is not a projection of our wishes; He has revealed Himself, and we must let Him be who He is — not edit Him down to our size.
ἴδε οὖν χρηστότητα καὶ ἀποτομίαν θεοῦ
… chrēstotēta kai apotomian theou
behold then the kindness and the severity of God.
Scripture refuses to let us choose between God’s kindness and His severity — “behold” both. The harsh-god and the soft-god are equal errors. Hold His holiness and His love together, and you will worship Him in awe and rest in Him in joy.
So come to know God as He truly is, not as you wish or fear Him to be. He is the holy, loving, sovereign, faithful I AM, who does not change and cannot lie. Let His holiness humble you, His love draw you, His sovereignty steady you, His faithfulness anchor you. To know Him rightly is the beginning of worship and the ground of all trust — for everything rests on the character of the God you are dealing with.
EXODUS 34:6 · GOD’S OWN SELF-PORTRAIT
יְהוָה יְהוָה אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן
The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
“Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me” (Jer 9:24). Know Him as He is, and worship.
We can truly know God, because He has revealed Himself — in creation, in His mighty acts, in His Word, and supremely in Jesus, “the exact representation of His nature” (Heb 1:3; John 14:9). Yet we cannot know Him exhaustively; He is beyond full grasp — “My thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isa 55:8–9), “how unsearchable His judgments” (Rom 11:33). So we approach Him with confidence and reverence together: knowing Him truly, never claiming to have Him fully figured out.
The great danger is to seize one attribute and lose the rest — a god of all love and no holiness, or all holiness and no love. Scripture holds them together: He is both the consuming fire and the Father who runs to the prodigal; the just Judge and the One who justifies the ungodly. The cross is where His justice and His mercy meet and embrace. And His character is the ground of our trust: because He is holy, loving, sovereign, faithful, and unchanging, we can rest our whole weight on Him. (See the companion studies on holiness, the love of God, and the deity of Christ.)
The most common error about God is to take one of His perfections and drop the others. A god of all love and no holiness would wink at evil and leave the world unjust; a god of all holiness and no love would crush us and offer no hope. The true God is both at once — “the kindness and the severity of God” (Rom 11:22) — and the two meet at the cross, where His justice against sin and His love for sinners are perfectly satisfied together. Never trade one of His attributes to make Him more comfortable.
“No one has ever seen God; the only Son … has made Him known” (John 1:18). If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus: “he who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9); He is “the exact representation of His being” (Heb 1:3). Every attribute — holiness and love, power and tenderness, justice and mercy — is perfectly displayed in Christ. We do not have to guess at God’s character; we behold it in His Son. (See the companion study on the deity of Christ.)