The doctrine of divine essence — we must see who found us.

1. God is one in essence. The oneness of God’s essence is the glory of God. Whenever the glory of God is found in the scripture it refers to the essence of God. All the characteristics of divine essence are resident in each member of the Godhead. However, all of the characteristics of God are not manifest at one time.

2. The relationship of essence to the Trinity. Each member of the Trinity or the Godhead is a separate person having the same essence as the other members. Even though a separate person He is still one in essence with the others. The fact that there is more than one person in the Godhead is taught in 1 Peter 1:2; 2 Corinthians 13:14; John 10:30 cf Psalm 110:1; Isaiah 48:16.

3. Examples of how various characteristics are manifest include: a) Salvation, where you see God’s love and eternal life; b) Judgement, God’s righteousness and justice is seen; c) Faithfulness, you see immutability plus veracity; d) In God’s plan is seen omniscience plus sovereignty. So each aspect of life brings out a different characteristic in the essence of God.

4. The sovereignty of God.

a) God is the supreme being of the universe — Deuteronomy 4:39; 1 Samuel 2:6-18; 1 Chronicles 29:11; 2 Chronicles 20:6; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 45:5,6; Acts 17:24.

b) God is also said to be king of heaven and earth — Psalm 47:2; 93:1; Matthew 6:13b; Hebrews 8:1; Revelation 4:2,3,11.

c) God as sovereign is also eternal — Psalm 93:2; God is infinite — Psalm 8:1; Acts 5:39; Self-determining — Job 9:12; Psalm 115:3; 135:6; Proverbs 21:1; Daniel 4:35.

d) Expressions of divine volition — Isaiah 46:10b; Ephesians 1:5 — resulting in a plan for humanity — Psalm 24; Hebrews 6:17.

e) But as a part of the sovereignty of God, God is a gentleman. That means He will not coerce or violate the volition of any member of the human race. He will not use His absolute will against the volition He gave man — John 7:17; Revelation 22:17.

f) As far as the believer is concerned God has a will for our life. We can choose to go against that will of the intake of doctrine, GAPing it to supergrace. We can wind up in reversionistic revolt. The believer in reversionism repudiates God’s will, God’s person, and God’s plan.

5. The righteousness of God.

a) God is righteous or absolute holiness — Leviticus 19:2b; 1 Samuel 2:2; Psalm 22:3; 47:8; 111:9; Isaiah 6:3; John 17:11; Revelation 3:7; 4:8; 6:10. God’s righteousness is absolute, it cannot be destroyed, contaminated, compromised.

b) There are passages which say that God is good, a goodness that stems from His righteousness — Psalm 25:8; 34:8; 86:5; 119:68; Luke 18:19.

c) God’s righteousness is free from sin — 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 1:5.

d) The righteousness of God is perfect, so that His character is perfect, so that His person is perfect. It is impossible to have perfect righteousness without having perfect character and a perfect personality. They key to personality is righteousness. Deuteronomy 32:4b; Psalm 7:9; 11:7; 97:6; 111:3; 119:137a; Jeremiah 23:6; John 17:25a; Romans 1:17; 10:3; 1 John 2:29.

e) He is righteous in His attitudes and His actions — Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Samuel 22:31; Psalm 119:37; 145:17; Daniel 9:14; Revelation 19:2.

f) God’s perfect righteousness rejects human standards of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness galls, but true righteousness in the believer is pleasing. That is why salvation cannot be attained by human righteousness — Titus 3:5. God regards our righteousness as filthy rags — Isaiah 64:6.

g) The righteousness of God is available to all who believer — Romans 3:22 for imputation of righteousness.

6. The concept of divine justice as a part of the essence of God .

a) God is fair, this is a part of His justice. In fact, it is impossible for God to be unfair. God’s judgements are perfect and God is always fair, therefore God is eliminated as a patsy in anyone’s life. It is impossible to make God the object of bitterness or any mental attitude sin. His fairness is total. His justice also operates in the field of punitive activity. God must express His love through His justice to His reversionistic believers. He is always just and as a part of His justice He is no respector of persons. Therefore God has only two avenues through which He can express His love to believers. He expresses His love to supergrace believers through blessing; He expresses His love to reversionism through the function of divine justice and/or discipline. Justice administers the penalty which righteousness demands. Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Chronicles 19:7; Job 37:23; Psalm 19:9; 50:6; 58:11; 89:14; Isaiah 45:21; Jeremiah 50:7; Romans 3:26; Hebrews 10:30,31; Hebrews 12:23.

b) Justice not only is an expression of the fairness of God, not only an expression of the punitive operation of God, but justice means that God in vindicating any believer as a part of the angelic conflict cannot have a compromise to that characteristic. That is why we have the cross and that is where the doctrine of propitiation fits in. Were it not for the ministry of Jesus Christ on the cross, were it not for the doctrine of propitiation we would be in serious trouble because God would have to compromise His justice in order to save us; and God cannot compromise any part of His character. Immutability means that God’s character remains inviolate, it cannot be compromised. The Lord Jesus Christ through His vicarious efficacious spiritual death on the cross (1 Peter 2:24) transferred the guilt of the sinner (Romans 5:12) in Himself. This propitiated the justice of God the Father so that the Father is not only free to pardon and to justify each person who accepts Christ, but He is free with His justice to condemn forever those who reject Christ. So the work of Christ on the cross not only liberated the justice of the Father for total expression in eternity but also made it possible for the Father’s justice to remain intact in the plan of God. His justice in the basis for the unbeliever going to the lake of fire.

7. Divine love.

God is eternal and therefore has unchangeable love in the same quantity as he had billions of years ago. The quantity of God’s love and the quality of God’s love remains the same — Jeremiah 31:3. Each member of the Godhead is somewhere related to love. For example, the Father’s love is described in John 3:16; 1 John 2:15; 3:1. The Son’s love is described in Romans 8:35. The principle that the love of God will not permit separation, that no believer can be separated from the love of God, is found in Romans 8:38,39. No matter how a believer fails, no matter what he does, no matter who says what about him, no matter what he has actually done, he can never be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. This means that the Father has a love which is not in any way related to emotion. Emotion does not exist in any member of the Godhead. Emotion is not a part of the essence of God, it is strictly a human function in order to become an appreciator of what we have in the right lobe of the soul. In the function of the soul emotion is the responder to the various functions of the right lobe or the heart. God doesn’t need an emotion to appreciate what He has in the mentality if His essence — omniscience, and God does not function on emotion as we do. Emotion is a prop so that what you have in your right lobe will be a source of stimulation to you. But God is not emotional. An occasional emotional type verb will be used as an anthropopathism merely to express a divine attitude but not to indicate a true condition of God’s essence. So it is important to understand that God’s love is infinitely superior to any human love because it needs no props. For example, one of the props in human love is to get a response. Very few people have the ability to love someone consistently when all they ever get from them is to be ignored or antagonism.

God’s love is so great that no strings are involved. He will love us when we are in reversionism just as much as when we are heroes in supergrace.

It is possible for a member of the human race to love God. However, it must be regenerate mankind, a member of the family of God, first. Then the capacity for it is something totally unrelated to props. Doctrine is not related to props; doctrine is not emotional. We appreciate doctrine and emote often when we learn principles of doctrine. But doctrine in itself has not emotional content. Doctrine is designed to have a strictly mental content. God’s love is a part of the ECS, in which case it becomes reality. 1 John 2:5 tells us about God’s love and the ECS. God’s love is first a reality to us when we are controlled by the Spirit — Romans 5:5.

8. Eternal life. God is absolute existence — Exodus 3:14; John 8:58; Psalm 90:2. Jesus Christ is eternal life and has always existed with the Father — John 1:1-3. He is eternal life and shares His life with us at the point of salvation — 1 John 5:11,12; John 10:28; 20:31. Always existent as eternal life is a characteristic of essence.

9. Omniscience. God is all-knowledge. It is related to eternal life in this way. God’s knowledge is total and God’s knowledge is not related to time. God’s knowledge is outside of time because He is eternal life. 1 Samuel 2:3; Job 26:6; Jeremiah 16:17; Psalm 139:1-6; Ezekiel 11:5; Matthew 10:29,30; Hebrews 4:13. God, therefore has infinite wisdom and understanding — 1 Samuel 16:7; Psalm 44:21; 147:5; Proverbs 3:19; 5:21; 17:3; Isaiah 40:13,14; Jeremiah 17:10; 51:15; Nahum 1:7; Romans 11:33; 1 John 3:20.

It is God’s intention for each one of us as a believer to understand everything in the Bible — in time!

10. Omnipresence. God is ever present, He is not limited by space or time. This means He is both imminent and transcendent. Jeremiah 23:24; Acts 17:27. Heaven is His throne, the earth is His footstool — Deuteronomy 4:39; Isaiah 66:1. Furthermore, where His omnipresence is concerned the heavens cannot contain Him — 1 Kings 8:27; Acts 17:24b.

11. Omnipotence. God has a power totally devoid of human props. Omnipotence means not only strength as we understand it but ability as well. God has unlimited ability, unlimited strength — Genesis 17:1; 18:14; Job 26:7; 42:2; Psalm 24:8; 93:1; 147:5a; Isaiah 40:26; 50:2; Jeremiah 27:5; 32:27; Matthew 19:26; Mark 14:36; Luke 1:37. The only limitation God ever has on His strength is human negative volition — Revelation 4:8. God also has unlimited authority — Psalm 33:9; Romans 13:1; Hebrews 1:3; Revelation 19:6.

12. Immutability. God is also perfectly stable. Immutability is total stability. Immutability means unchangeability. God cannot change — Psalm 102:26,27; Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 1:12. God is absolute stability — Isaiah 40:28; James 1:17. God’s Word and God’s works are unchanging. That is why through GAP God gives us one immutable thing — doctrine is immutable. God gives us something of Himself when he gives us Bible doctrine. When we have doctrine in the soul we have the only stabiliser in life. His words and His works are unchanging — Psalm 119:89; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Isaiah 40:8. From His stability comes His faithfulness. He is faithful in keeping His promises — Numbers 23”19; 1 Kings 8:56; 2 Corinthians 1:20; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 10:23; 11:11. He is faithful to forgive — 1 John 1:9. He doesn’t forgive because we feel sorry for our sins, He forgives because Christ died for our sins. He is faithful in keeping us saved — 2 Timothy 2:12,13. He is faithful to deliver us from and in pressure — 1 Corinthians 10:13; 1 Peter 4:19. He is faithful in stabilising the believer — 2 Thessalonians 3:3. He is faithful in the administration of His plan — 1 Corinthians 1:9. He is faithful in His provision — 1 Thessalonians 5:24.

13. Veracity: truthfulness. He is absolute truth — Deuteronomy 32:4b. His veracity manifests itself in His ways; He has ways of communication — Psalm 25:10; 86:15; Revelation 15:3. His truth is manifest in His Word — 2 Samuel 7:28; 1 Kings 17:24; Psalm 19:9; 119:142; 138:2, 150:1; John 8:45; 17:17; 2 Corinthians 6:7.