Theopedia

God

“God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’”

— Exodus 3:14

Definition

God is the one, infinite, eternal, self-existent Creator and Sovereign of all things, existing eternally as three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — sharing the one undivided divine essence rather than as three separate beings or as one person under three names.1

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession opens its doctrine of God with his self-existence and infinite perfection: “the Lord our God is but one only living and true God; whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection.”1 It then names the Trinity directly as belonging to this same one God: “in this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided.”2

Biblical Basis

When Moses asks God’s name, God answers with his own self-existence: “I am who I am… Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Exod. 3:14). Paul describes this same God to the Athenians as the Creator who needs nothing from his creatures yet is not far from any of them: “the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything… Yet he is actually not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:24-27). Scripture’s opening words already presuppose his eternal, sovereign existence prior to and over all things: “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), and Paul identifies Christ as this same God made visible: “he is the image of the invisible God… by him all things were created” (Col. 1:15-16).

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 1. ↩ ↩2

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 3. ↩