We’ve looked at the attributes of God individually. In reality, they cannot be parsed. This daily devotional looks at how the attributes are interconnected.
To read devotions in the Redo for Godliness series, click the appropriate button below.
Devotions in the Finding Our Center series
This devotion is going to be totally different than any I have ever done. It is going to be all quotes.
What I want to do is give the quotes that show us the attributes of God cannot be parsed out. As the last devotion in the series, I want to show how they are intricately tied together. God is everything!
Let's Put It into Context
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
God’s Attributes Can’t be Parsed
“God’s majesty and strength as a ruler is, in fact, the union of His perfect attributes.”
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God’s Attributes Are Overarching
“Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth!” (Ps. 8: 9 CSB)
“No other attribute could have helped us had ‘mercy’ refused. As we are by nature, justice condemns us, holiness frowns upon us, power crushes us, truth confirms the threatening of the law, and wrath fulfils (sic) it. It is from the mercy of God that all our hopes begin.”
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“Many theologians consider the goodness of God as an overarching attribute.”
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“Goodness is perhaps an attribute of wider reach than mercy, embracing mercy for the sinner and the wretched in the beneficent relation towards all whose welfare and happiness God ever seeks. Truth is that harmony of being upon which we may ever depend. It is order and peace, it is fidelity and changelessness — everything that renders trust in the truthful God a certain thing, not liable to disappointment, change, and decay.”
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“He exercises His sovereignty in doing only what is ‘holy and just and good.’ His sovereignty is itself ‘holy and just and good.’”
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“… God’s mercy is inseparable from his justness. He is infinitely, unchangeably, unfailingly merciful – forgiving, lovingly kind toward us. He is inexhaustibly, actively compassionate. His mercy is also undeserved by us.”
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“Mercy is the fountain of our consolation, and truth and faithfulness convey it to us, and keep it for us. It is these two that go before His face when He sits on a throne of majesty and makes Himself accessible to sinners (Psalm 89:14), and so they are the pathway He walks in towards those who seek Him (Psalm 25:10).”
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“Mercy is the intervention of gratuitous goodness. It is benevolence, bending in pity and compassion over the very creature, whose guiltiness has deserved the everlasting abandonment of Heaven.”
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“God is PERFECTLY GOOD. His other attributes are rendered engaging to us by His goodness. How extensive the Divine goodness (Psalm 145:9, 16). Is God perfectly good?”
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God’s Attributes Are Perfect
“For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds. The upright will see his face” (Ps. 11: 7 CSB)
“Just like his other attributes, God’s goodness exists within his immutability, and infinite nature, so that he is unchangingly, always good. His mercy flows from his goodness.”
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“1. If it be true that the supreme beauty or glory of God consists in His pure and universal goodness, then sinners hate God for that for which alone they ought to love Him supremely.”
“3. If God be perfectly good, and His goodness spreads a moral beauty and excellence over all His perfections, then there is nothing to hinder sinners from loving Him but merely their own selfishness.”
“4. If the supreme glory of God consists in His goodness, then the more clearly His goodness is exhibited before the minds of sinners, the more difficult they always find it to be to love Him.”
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“EVERY OTHER MORAL CONCEPTION THAT YOU CAN FORM OF GOD WHEN YOU ANALYSE IT WILL CARRY YOU BACK TO THE FUNDAMENTAL THOUGHT THAT GOD IS A HOLY BEING. He is said to be good. Goodness, if you analyse it, will bring you back to the idea of doing that only which is pure and fit and just and right.”
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“God could not be infinitely perfect without wisdom. All the other perfections of God without this would be as a body without an eye, a soul without understanding. God, being the first Being, possesses whatsoever is most noble in any being.”
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“Righteousness is similar to goodness and holiness, but differs in that it requires works to establish it. Something (like Adam) can be holy, but not righteous if good works do not accompany it. God is good, but He refers to Himself as righteous because He works the good as well.”
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“This stability [of the world] is an emanation of the wisdom [omniscience] and power [omnipotence] of God — of wisdom which has contrived it as the theatre where He is carrying forward His great plan, and which must be kept in its place as long as the plan demands, and of power which deals with unyielding matter, as easily as the potter with the clay.”
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“There can be but one Infinite Being, and therefore there is but one God. Two infinites imply a contradiction.”
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“The doctrine of the Trinity, as represented in Scripture, is no more repugnant to the dictates of sound reason than many other doctrines which all Christians believe concerning God. It is generally believed that God is a self-existent Being, or that there is no cause or ground of His existence out of Himself.”
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“An infinite Spirit must, of necessity, be immutable.”
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“Justice, goodness, love, and compassion, are principles that belong exclusively to spirit. But we cannot infer, from the possession of these moral excellences, that God is simply spirit; for these qualities may attach to a complex nature, as they sometimes do in man. It is the infinity of His perfections that indicates the exclusive character of His essence.”
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“As God exists everywhere, so all and whole God exists everywhere, because God is indivisible.”
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“Tis worthy of observation, that this right notion of the omnipresence of God, will very much assist us to form a just apprehension of the nature of that Providence, which attends to and inspects, not only the great events, but even the minutest circumstances of every the smallest action and event in the world: Even that Providence, without which not a sparrow falls to the ground, and by which the very hairs of our head are all numbered. There is a certain determinate number or quantity of things, which every intelligent creature, according to the proportion of its sphere of power and activity, is able to attend to. And by this we may judge, that as creatures of larger capacities can observe a much greater number of things at one and the same time, than beings of a lower rank can imagine it possible they should, so God, who is present everywhere, can with infinitely greater ease direct and govern all things in the world at once, than we can attend to those few things which fall within the compass of our short observation.”
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“If God be a God of truth, and faithful in performing His promise, then here is a firm foundation for our hope and trust.”
Making the Connections
What an awesome God we serve!
I entitled the working copy of this devotion Attribute Soup. In a soup, all the ingredients are mixed together. It is usually really hard to separate them.
We can’t separate God’s attributes. But then, we don’t want to do that.
God wants us to be like Him. That is what our redo for godliness is all about.
That is a total makeover.
How Do We Apply This?
“Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children” (Eph. 5: 1 CSB).
Father God. You are One Who deserves to be imitated. Lord, You are every good thing that we want to be. Help us to grow to be like You. Amen.
What do you think?
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