If you see him as God in a body, the incarnation of the invisible God. If you see him that way, he's not just speaking for God in that moment, he's speaking as God. And he says, Father, forgive me. I don't know what they're doing.

Welcome to What is God Like? My name is Michael Martin. I'm your host on this journey. Thank you for taking the time to join me today. Let's dive into the episode.

As I was reflecting on the Easter holiday this weekend, especially we had a service at church on Friday night. We went to like an Easter interactive experience. I know a ton of other churches do something like that. Where you walk through these interactive experiences, you see Jesus cross, you nail your own sins to a cross. Take communion together. It's just a really neat experience. And anyway, I did that on Friday night and I felt more emotional than normal about that experience. It felt really good. It felt like I was very connected to the suffering of Jesus and the mission of Jesus. Anyway, it was just a good experience.

And then we went to our Saturday night service so that we didn't crowd the auditorium for Sunday morning with Saturday night service. And again, it was good. And then Sunday morning, because we weren't going to church because we went on Saturday, they even had the history channel on and it's of course talking about Jesus, the story of Jesus, the history behind it all. It really resonated with me. It made me start to think about this podcast and what is God like?

Bill Johnson says, if you want to know what God is like, he says Jesus is perfect theology. Jesus even told his followers, he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. There's a thing that really stood out to me because we have lots of images of God. We have lots of ways that we like to think about God and that he is the judge. And depending on how you see the incarnation of Jesus and depending on how you think about the Trinity can really change this perspective on Easter.

So think about this. If God is Jesus's father, as we know, fatherhood, it was somewhat cruel for him to allow his son to be crucified. If Jesus is voluntarily stepping onto the cross as God's son, makes it somewhat offering himself as martyr, sacrificial. But even better still, if Jesus is the incarnation of God, not just he is the son of God and that's how he described himself, but he is God.

Theologians would say he was fully God and fully man. And so when we see Jesus hanging there, he's not the offspring of some deity who has cruelly demanded his death, but he is the incarnation, the embodiment. He's God in a body, God in a human body, and he's on that cross.

And at any moment, he has the power to end it. At any moment, he has the power to step aside and end it, to stop the suffering, to punish the wrongdoers, to silence the naysayers. But he does it. And Pilate, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the Judean province at the time, says, Don't you realize the authority that I have? That I could have you crucified or I could set you free.

And Jesus calmly looks at him and he says, The only authority you have is the authority that's been given to you from above. So many things Jesus could have done or said in that moment. But I feel like even in that moment, Jesus was being redemptive.

We want to vilify Pontius Pilate, and I'm not trying to defend the man, but he did have a tough choice in front of him. But then I see the image of Jesus on the cross. He's been beaten, he's been tortured, he's dying. The Roman soldiers are at his feet gambling for his clothes. The people who had followed him in the streets when he was doing miracles are now ridiculing. They're mocking, saying, Son of God, save yourself. So if you said you could rebuild the temple in three days, now you can't even get yourself off this cross.

And Jesus says, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Think about that. Father, forgive them. They don't know. They don't know what they're doing.

If ever humanity deserved judgment, that was a horrific. And Jesus was crucified, not for some crime, but for political reason. He was a political prisoner, and it was an injustice for him to even be arrested. It was an injustice for him to be beat, and it was a travesty for him to be executed.

If you see him as God in a body, the incarnation of the invisible God, if you see him that way, he's not just speaking for God in that moment. He's speaking as God, and he says, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.

So can you see the ultimate humility that plays out? When God enters into this world in human form, and he willfully lays himself out on a cross, and he willfully allows himself to be executed, to be tortured and executed for the sake of those.

So how does that compare with the image of God that you have in your mind? When you think about God, do you see him as sitting on a throne in judgment of you for even the slightest differences of opinion? Do you see your sins as exceedingly small and his wrath as exceedingly great, and you wonder why he's picking on you?

Instead, think about Jesus. Instead, think about Jesus hanging on the cross, saying, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.

Earlier in the Gospels, it says that when Jesus saw the crowds, he saw them as sheep having no shepherd. If we look through the eyes of Jesus, and we can imagine that we're in that moment looking through the eyes of God, there is a depiction of the way that God sees humanity as sheep having no shepherd, as people who are doing evil things without fully understanding the consequences of those things. And God is interceding with God on behalf of us, saying, Forgive them, forgive them, Father.

See, I think that's what the Gospel is about. A lot of people want to talk about God's judgment when it's externally focused, but they want to talk about his grace and his mercy when it's internally focused. But I believe the truest presentation of the Gospel is when people begin to show love and compassion and mercy the same way that God shows love and mercy and compassion. That is the Gospel, that we are being transformed into his image, transformed into his likeness.

So today take some time and reflect. Reflect on what Jesus endured on the cross, but then ask yourself, what is God like? When I see Jesus in the Gospel, if I can assume that he is God, what is God like? And what does that mean for me? Do I need to have the same mercy and compassion and forgiveness of Jesus?

What about when someone offends you?

What about when someone hurts you?

Do you say, I forgive them because they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know how much it was going to hurt. Or do you say, that's the end of that friendship. That's the end of that relationship. I'll never talk to that family member again.

No. If we are going to be Christ's followers, we must do as he did. We must walk as he walked. We must learn to forgive.

So Father, forgive us for so often we don't know what we're doing. We don't know the consequences of our sin. We don't know the great price of our disobedience. We don't know. We don't even begin to understand the absurdity of disobeying and rebelling against you. But forgive us Father, as Jesus prayed on the cross over 2000 years ago. Forgive us because we don't know what we're doing. But send your Holy Spirit to give us insight. So that we do begin to see what we're doing and we do begin to become like you.

Amen.

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In the Bible, there’s this short but troubling passage from Jesus near the end of his famous Sermon on the Mount. He’s just given several examples of how to tell the difference between good and evil. Then he says, “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Ok, Jesus, you have my attention. He explains how some people will protest, “Didn’t we do miraculous things in your name?” Then, Jesus says four words that terrify me. 

“I never knew you.” 

Let that sink in. Despite the miracles. Even though these people have apparently been speaking as his representatives, Jesus says, “I never knew you.” 

Is it possible that I could spend my life doing good things – good Christian things that I claim to be doing for God – and miss him entirely? 

It could’ve happened to Philip, one of Jesus’ closest followers. Jesus told him, “Have you been with me so long and still don’t know me?” Wow. Think about that. Philip was right there with Jesus almost every day for three years. If he missed it, do we even have a chance? 

Can you and I really know God?

What is God like? What does he think about? Even better – what’s going through his mind when he thinks about himself? Is it even possible for us to know? Are our human minds capable of thinking God's thoughts? 

Honestly, I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. 

Let me ask a few more.

Does God want us to know him? How much of his inner thought-life is he willing to reveal?

I think he does want us to know him. Not only does he want it, I believe that’s why he created us. But to what extent is he willing to pull back the curtain and let us in? How much of himself is he ready to reveal? That I’m not sure about.

These are the questions that I want to explore. But that’s only half of our journey. I am deeply curious about what it means for me that God wants me to know him. How does that help me answer the question, “What should I be like? What kind of person should I be?”

If God is down here in our reality, trying to give us a glimpse of what he’s really like, then I want to ask, “Why? What’s his purpose?” Does he want something from me?

Even if we do our best to understand God, the puzzle is still incomplete. But we have enough to get us started – to whet our appetite and awaken our desire to know more about this alien God — a being so foreign that our highest words and ideas can only paint pale shadows of his reality. Throughout the Bible, we can trace a thin thread of mystery about the nature of God. But that same thread runs throughout history and even into science. Let’s delicately grasp the fragile thread together, careful not to stain it with our oily fingerprints. We must approach the idea of God with awe and reverence, precision and humility. Sometimes, God’s spirit whispers through our instincts and intuition, revealing more truth. Other times, our experiences and emotions drive us to the wrong conclusions. 

The Bible has stories to help us with the question, “What is God like?” Moses and the Burning Bush shows us how God miraculously introduces himself to an unsuspecting man in the desert. Zaccheus, a tax collector for the Roman Empire, abruptly stops his dishonest business practices after one conversation with Jesus. There are so many stories in the Bible to help us follow this thread, but this podcast… this isn’t really a Bible study.

Expanding our search, we can see that God has left his fingerprints throughout the history of humankind. Even Science wrestles with tough questions about where we came from and where we’re headed as a species. 

Was there an uncaused cause that precipitated the creation of the universe? 

Why does it appear that specific attributes of our physical world are fine-tuned for human life? 

But this podcast… it isn’t just a historical or scientific exploration of these questions. 

And this is absolutely not a course in Christian apologetics!

This is a study of God, or more accurately, how to think about God. We’ll learn to ask questions and be curious. But this won’t be a purely intellectual pursuit. I believe the more we understand who God is and what he’s like, the more we will be compelled to change who we are. And I hope we will learn that we can’t do anything without God’s help.

God isn’t just dropping clues and hoping we’ll find him like a cosmic game of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? God’s Spirit is our guide and teacher, revealing God's mysteries. He gives us the power to understand, allowing our finite minds to pierce the shroud of mystery. Like Jesus standing on the rough seas, gesturing to a bewildered but curious Peter to join him, God has invited us to investigate and explore. 

It seems like everyone has an opinion about what God is like and whether he even exists at all. If you spend enough time scrolling through social media, you’ll find folks with well-formed opinions and arguments. But I’m not interested in winning debates. I can’t get that image of Jesus out of my head. I keep hearing those haunting words echo in my head.

“I never knew you.”

I don’t ever want to hear them. That’s why I want to follow the thread of God’s mysterious revelation. If you’re curious. If you want to see where this thread leads us, come along with me. In every episode, we’ll examine the questions, “What is God like?” and “In light of that, what should I be like?”

We will begin our exploration with A. W. Tozer’s book, The Knowledge of the Holy. Tozer was a self-taught theologian whose timeless teaching has awakened hungry minds for decades. His inspired words bring us closer to God. In Knowledge of the Holy, he studies the attributes of God, reacquaints us with his majesty, and reminds us what it means to be in awe of him.

We’ll go chapter by chapter exploring God’s omniscience and omnipotence, his transcendence and immutability, and more. 

If your soul is hungry for a more accurate image of God – if you are disillusioned with stale religion – if you find it hard to trust a church, but God is genuinely compelling – then let’s go on this journey together. Follow. Subscribe. I’ll see you in the next episode.

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