Thinking About the "Omni" Attributes

For the most part, which of God’s attributes are communicable is self-explanatory. He is loving and we love. Yes, he loves with infinite, independent love and we love with finite, dependent love, but God loves, and in some small way, we image his love. God is holy, too, and he commands us to be holy. He is infinitely and independently holy and we can only be holy as we depend on him to make us holy, but still, when he makes us holy, we truly reflect his holiness. God’s love and his holiness, then, and all the related attributes like righteousness, grace, mercy, etc., are communicable attributes.

It’s with God’s omniscience and omnipotence that classifying the attributes can get a little tricky. It may seem that omniscience should be an incommunicable attribute—after all, it starts with the omni prefix, and we certainly can’t be omni anything. But don’t be fooled by the omni in omniscience. Omni just means unlimited, and all God’s attributes, even the communicable ones, are unlimited. God’s omniscience is simply his unlimited knowledge. And it is a communicable attribute because God has also given us the ability to know. God has knowledge and so do we.

Read the whole thing at Out of the Ordinary.

God's Grace

Like God’s mercy and love, his grace has it’s source in the goodness of God. Specifically, grace refers to God’s kindness toward the undeserving. God’s mercy focuses on our helplessness or suffering, but God’s grace on our unworthiness.

Grace, as scripturally defined, is set in opposition to works or merit. Many statements in scripture put receiving something because of God’s grace in contrast to receiving something because of works. Perhaps the clearest is Romans 11:4, where Paul, speaking of God’s choice of a remnant out of the nation Israel, says that if this choice “is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace (ESV).” Something that comes to us from God’s grace cannot come as a result of our works or merit, for if it did, it would go against the very definition of grace used by Paul. Grace would no longer be true grace if it was meted out based on our good actions. To the extent that something is of works it cannot be of grace, and if our salvation is all of grace, then it is none of works.

Our God is the “God of all grace.” He is characteristically giving toward those who do not merit his favour, and every favour that we receive has its source in the God of all grace. His grace is eternal, for before time began, it was given to those who are being saved (2 Timothy 1:9 ESV). From this same verse in 2 Timothy, we learn, too, that grace is sovereignly and freely exercised by God, given “not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace.” We don’t call it out from him, but he extends it as it suits his purpose and because he is gracious. God is gracious “to whom [he] will be gracious” (Exodus 33:19).

God’s grace is abundant; it never runs out. The amount of God’s grace is always greater than the depth of our sin, for Paul tells us that grace multiplied where sin increased (Romans 5:20). We can be confident that the grace of God will always sufficient to save us.

God’s grace extends generally to all humankind—sustaining life, withholding judgment, and restraining sin. But there is special grace given those who are being saved, for they have been given redemption through Christ—the crowning work of God’s grace. It is out of God’s grace that he calls, regenerates, justifies, sanctifies and glorifies his own. Those who are God’s children can know that all of God’s actions toward them are gracious actions, because even the difficult things God allows them to endure come to them with a gracious purpose: to produce the fruit of righteousness within them (Hebrews 12:10-11). Those who are being saved are God’s workmanship—his recreated people—and that all of what they become is a result of God’s work rather than their own demonstrates the surpassing wealth of God’s grace (Ephesians 2:7-10).

It is in this work of salvation that we see God’s grace in all of its glory: we are saved “to the praise of the glory of his grace that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son” (Ephesians 1:6). God highly values his attribute of grace, for glorifying his grace—showing how abundantly rich it is—is an overarching purpose of the whole of redemptive history. God saves in order to reveal the greatness of His characteristic grace.

The more we understand God’s grace to us, the more thankful we will be and the less pride we will have in our own accomplishments. We are being spared what we justly deserved and are receiving something of which we are entirely unworthy simply because our God is a gracious God and he has graciously purposed to save us.  And any good we do is the result of God’s gracious creative work within us. There is no room for boasting from those who have seen God’s grace.

How can we not be thankful? How can we not graciously forgive the wrongs done to us and the debts owed to us, since we have been graciously forgiven by God (Ephesians 4:32)? Those of us who have experienced God’s grace are called are to do good and lend to others even when we know we will never receive anything in return for our generousity.

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to ungrateful and evil people. (Luke 6:35 NET)

We, of all people, should be free with our giving. We should be like the one who freely graced us, giving to those who mistreat us or who use us for their own gain.

Not that it’s easy! Our natural instinct is to protect ourselves from being used and abused. When we have some inkling, however, of what we have been given, how can we be stingy in the grace and forgiveness we extend to others? 

Grace, ’tis a charming sound,
Harmonious to mine ear;
Heaven with the echo shall resound,
And all the earth shall hear.

Grace first contrived the way
To save rebellious man;
And all the steps that grace display
Which drew the wondrous plan.

Grace first inscribed my name
In God’s eternal book;
’Twas grace that gave me to the Lamb,
Who all my sorrows took.

Grace led my roving feet
To tread the heavenly road;
And new supplies each hour I meet,
While pressing on to God.

Grace taught my soul to pray
And made mine eyes o’erflow;
’Twas grace which kept me to this day,
And will not let me go.

Grace all the work shall crown,
Through everlasting days;
It lays in heaven the topmost stone,
And well deserves the praise.

O let Thy grace inspire
My soul with strength divine
May all my powers to Thee aspire,
And all my days be Thine.

—Philip Doddridge and Augustus Toplady

God's Mercy

Reposted attribute of God post from 2004.

God’s mercy is another one of the attributes that comes from his goodness, so it, too, is closely related to his love and grace. Specifically, mercy has to do with God’s characteristic attitude toward people who are in trouble. It is God’s pity for those who are suffering or needy and helpless in their situation, but it includes more than just an attitude of pity, for his mercy has his rescuing power behind it. Out of God’s mercy he rescues those in difficulty, saves the powerless, and heals the sick. God’s delivering activity toward the oppressed, the afflicted, the poor, and the fatherless are all described as coming from his mercy. Since all of his creation is dependent upon him, the psalmist can say that “his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9).”

Like all of God’s attributes, God’s mercy in intrinsic to him. He is called “the Father of mercies” and a “God of mercy” (2 Cor. 1:3, Neh. 9:17). His mercy is boundless—higher than the heavens and filling the earth. Scripture refers to “the multitude of his mercies” (Lam. 3:32) because the acts that have their source in the mercy of God are so numerous.

God’s mercy is eternal and unchanging. His mercy is “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 103:17) in the same way that God himself is from everlasting to everlasting. His mercies don’t cease or fail, because they are new every morning (Lam. 3)—constantly fresh and perfect and never fading with age. His mercy, we’re told, endures forever.

It is from God’s constantly enduring mercy that he brought His people out of bondage in Egypt. They were helpless to save themselves, but God saw their desperate situation and redeemed them out of their trouble. From Psalm 136’s recounting of God’s merciful deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery, we learn one more thing about God’s mercy:

To Him who struck Egypt in their firstborn,
For His mercy endures forever;
And brought out Israel from among them,
For His mercy endures forever…

It’s a jarring juxtaposition, isn’t it? Out of God’s mercy He rescued Israel, but the merciful deliverance of his people resulted from an act that was not kind toward the people of Egypt. His act of mercy toward one group of people was at the same time an act of judgment toward another group of people. God’s mercy, then, like his love and grace, is particular. While his people can count on his mercy never being turned from them, there are times when he is not merciful to some people.

God is sovereign and free in his mercy. He is never compelled to express his mercy, but rather, he  is merciful because he delights in his mercy (Micah 7:18). To show mercy is his own choice according to his own purpose: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy.” That God shows mercy toward us does not depend on our action or our desire, but on “God who has mercy.” (Romans 9)

There is a tension in the truths of God’s mercy, and it’s important that we maintain that tension. While it is true that God is completely free in his acts of mercy, and that he acts mercifully according to his own purpose and as it fits his own plan, it is also true that those who seek his mercy will find it. God is always merciful to the truly repentant. If we confess, he faithfully forgives. We would not be correct in thinking that he is compelled to be merciful to us in response to our repentance, or to presume upon his mercy; but it is right to trust that our genuine repentance will be met with his willing and abundant mercy.

Although God’s mercy is over all his works, delivering us from sin through Christ was the supreme act of God’s mercy. It was because of God’s tender mercy that Christ was incarnated to be our Savior (Luke 1:78). It was on the basis of God’s mercy that he saved us from our state of helpless—and at the same time intransigent—disobedience (Titus 3:3-5). The ultimate sacrifice of Christ and all the saving actions of God on my behalf come because God is “rich in mercy”.

By his great mercy he gave us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that is, into an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. (1 Peter 1:3,4 NET)

The certainty of our inheritance and the new life we are born into both come to us by way of God’s mercy.

A first step toward understanding the depth of God’s mercy is understanding the depth of our own neediness. We are without hope without God’s merciful activity on our behalf. By recognizing that we come before God bringing nothing but our own sinfulness, just as the publican in the parable brought nothing when he prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner (Luke 13:18)”, we get a glimpse of the abundant richness of God’s mercy.

Because God has been merciful to us, we are to act mercifully toward those who are in need. We must “be merciful, just as [our] Father also is merciful (Luke 6:36 NET).” Mercy is one of God’s communicable attributes, which means that he shares it with us and expects it from us. Our Father is motivated by mercy when he sees the plight of the needy, and the poverty of others—both material and spiritual—is  an opportunity for those who are God’s children to be like their Father.

If we belong to him—if we are being delivered from sin because of God’s mercy—we have a reason to be  forever grateful to our heavenly Father. God’s own should be singing right along with the psalmist, “I will sing of the mercies of the LORD forever (Psalm 89:1).” Or with Horatio Spafford when he writes in his hymn, It Is Well with My Soul:

….Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

….Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

It is because of God’s mercy that we are “born again to a living hope.” God’s mercy is a ground for our hope.

…[H]ope in the Lord;
For with the Lord there is mercy,
And with Him is abundant redemption.
(Psalm 130:7)

The Lord takes pleasure in those….who hope in His mercy.
(Psalm 147:11)