The Profound Simplicity of God's Nature

And yet, the paradoxical thing about the doctrine of the simplicity of God is that in our time it is rejected by the vast majority of philosophers who regard it as untenable. It is ignored by the vast majority of theologians and probably also of Christian believers as irrelevant and impractical, and I want us to try and discover a little as we think about God at the end of this day for this last time communally in this day of grace to come to understand that though we can never grasp how utterly, sheer, simple God our God is, we can nevertheless in Jesus Christ who has revealed Him to the extent that we can ever understand, bow before Him and worship Him and recognize as we sometimes sing, "If my love were but more simple, I would take You at Your Word, and my life would be all sunshine in the sweetness of the Lord." [00:06:42]

What do we mean when we speak about the simplicity of God? This doctrine that has been held and expounded by almost all the great theologians of the Christian church, from Irenaeus in the early centuries through Augustine and Anselm and Thomas Aquinas and the great Puritans and the great orthodox Reformed theologians. What do we mean by the simplicity of God? We mean something so stunning, so singular as to say that God, as the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it, that God is pure Spirit, that He is without body, parts, or passions, or to put it in other terms echoing what we've already heard today, that God is without origin, that God is without composition, that God is without becoming. [00:08:08]

The simplicity of God means this, that the being of God and the attributes of God are one with each other. That the essence of God's being and the attributes of God's possession are not two different things that by some kind of inner divine superglue are held together, but are in fact one and the same thing; God is His attributes. That's different from you and from me. You and I have attributes, but we lose one of those attributes, for example, we are kind and gentle and something happens to us and we become malicious and personally dangerous, we lose that attribute. [00:18:14]

The essence of God's being is His attributes, and His attributes are His essence. It isn't that God has goodness; God is goodness. It isn't that God has holiness; it is that God is holiness, that the holiness that He has is the holiness that He is. And that the goodness He has by which He is good is actually the goodness that He is. That the attributes of God are not, as it were, attached to His being. This is what He is through and through. [00:19:47]

Why then do we ask, is it, that when we encounter God in His Word it emphasizes His holiness now, His love now, His goodness now, His patience now, His righteousness now, His faithfulness now, His lovingkindness now for this very simple reason, that it is not possible for a human being to bear upon his or her soul the full blast of the revelation of God as He is in the intense strength of all of those attributes that at the end of the day turn out simply to be this attribute that this is how God is. [00:22:35]

And so it is that even when our Lord Jesus Christ comes and the Apostle John, who was with him on the Mount of Transfiguration is able to say, as he does in John 1:18, that "the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has exegeted God to us. We beheld His glory." What he means is not that he gazed upon the bright perfect light of the perfection of the glory of God that we can only begin to describe in several different attributes. What he means is that God accommodated Himself to the ultimate manner in which we could begin to grasp who He really is. [00:27:58]

And in that glorious unity of being in that perichoresis, in that circum in cessio, that indwelling, that mutual indwelling; "I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. We will send the Holy Spirit to you, who proceeds from the Father." Within this glorious uncompounded unity of God, there is that which Jesus expresses to the disciples at the end of Matthew's Gospel by saying to them, "Now at last the time has come, when you may learn to pronounce the ineffable and unpronounced name of Yahweh." [00:38:34]

So we understand that the simple God is all of His attributes that the simple God is three-in-one and one-in-three and we understand that the simplicity of God does make a difference to the Christian believer. For one thing, to me at least, it enhances my appreciation of the wonder of my Lord Jesus Christ. As I think of my dear Lord Jesus within hours of His crucifixion, entering into the moments of His passion, surrounded by His troubled disciples, His own soul profoundly disturbed, overcome even to the point of death, what does our dear Lord Jesus find His resting place in? [00:41:33]

And so, He begins to speak to them about mysteries they never heard Him discuss before; how the Father is in the Son and the Father and the Son are one, and how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and is going to be sent by the Son, and how the Father loves the Son, and how the Son loves the Father, and how the Spirit appears, as Augustine said, almost to be the bond of love between the Father and the Son experiencing everything in which both Father and Son share in the glory of the ineffable Trinity. [00:42:52]

And then you remember, He goes out into the garden of Gethsemane and rising from His agony, which John does not describe, the soldiers come for Him and ask the question, and Jesus responds very significantly in John's Gospel by using the ineffable divine name—I AM, ego eimi, I AM. And that's why even unbelieving pagans fall back before just a glimpse, a verbal glimpse of the inner glory of our ineffable Savior and God, Jesus Christ. [00:43:56]

And so, as we've thought today about the omniscience of God, as we've thought today about the holiness of God, we have thought today in this wonderful way about the aseity of God and thought today about the beauty of God, at the end of the day we've just been thinking about God who says to us, "Because I change not, you are not consumed," and Moses covered his face. [00:49:21]

Our Heavenly Father, our words, our minds are too many and too complex to begin to express the glory that lies in your eternal simplicity. We confess that we have often spoken where we did not understand. We have gone with light spirit and not known that You have been present. We have sung and not penetrated through the curtain behind which You reside in eternity, in majesty and glory. But as we come to the end of this day of our minds full, our hearts expanded, our lives blessed by the fellowship of Your people, our deepest desire is to prostrate ourselves before You, who has made Yourself known to us in the human face of our dear Lord Jesus Christ and to thank you with all our hearts that You who are so beyond our understanding should come for our salvation and help us to know You. [00:50:50]