Simplicity of God

note then the kindness and the severity of God.

So how does that work exactly? Which one is it? How can God be all of those things at the same time? Right? Are some of them more important than others? Is He sometimes one, and then sometimes something else? Right? How does this work? God says that His name simply is, I Am. Right? He is totally and completely God, and nothing else but God. He has no parts. All of those things are true of him, but they're not parts of him. There's no hierarchy of things that are more God or less God. There's nothing in God other than God. He is so much God that he can just name himself I am. For that answer to make sense, God must be simple in his being. one and undivided in his being. Otherwise, his answer to Moses doesn't make sense. Right? So here's another way of looking at it. We learned last week that God is ase, that he possesses aseity, he's self-existent, he's independent, he's the ground of his own being, not coming from anything else, which means he's entirely self-sufficient. Nothing outside of God can affect him. Now, because Moses is limited and inadequate, he asks God, back in verse 11, well, who am I? And God's response to him is, I am who I am. Do you hear the contrast there? Right? Moses is going, who am I? And God's response is, doesn't matter who you are. Right? What matters is who I am, and I am who I am. Right? God has no lack, he has no need, he's entirely sufficient, right? But what if God had parts, right? What if we could take these attributes and add them up and the sum total of that was what made God, God? Well, God would then be dependent, not independent. He would be dependent upon his parts in order to be God. You follow that? If God has parts, then he's dependent upon his parts. But God is independent, right? See, if God is dependent and if he has parts, then that also means that he can be changed. But we know that isn't true either, right? God can't change. He's unchangeable. He's immutable. So if God isn't simple, then he isn't unchangeable and he isn't self-existent, which means that what God tells Moses isn't terribly helpful, right? He tells Moses that his name is, I am who I am. He tells him that he's the same God who keeps covenant faithfulness with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His purposes and his promises are unwavering. In Deuteronomy 32, 39, God calls himself, I am, and says,

there is no God besides me.

In Isaiah 41.4, he calls himself, I am, and calls himself the first and the last. There is no God, but God, and there is nothing in God, but God. Numbers 23.19 says that God does not change his mind. James 1.17 says that

every good gift and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

God is immutable. He is self-existent. He is simple in his being. He relies on no one but himself. His aseity, his immutability, and his simplicity all imply each other. we need this doctrine to make sense of the rest of our Bible. How we doing? We working hard enough yet? So if you're tracking with me, then this talk of divine simplicity might raise a question. If God is simple, then how can we talk about different attributes in God? Let's just go ahead and Take the bull by the horns, right? So if God is simple, then why do we talk as though he has parts, right? If God is simple, then why do we talk about different attributes? Well, first of all, let's think this through. First of all, we need to reiterate that God is one in his being without composition and without parts. There are other texts that we could mention here in addition to what we've already talked about. We could think about Deuteronomy 6.4 and what it means that

the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Or James 1.5, which is best translated that God is simple or undivided. Or 1 John 1.5, the metaphor of light, that God is light. And think about the simplicity and the purity of light. God is one and undivided in his being. At the same time, we need to affirm that the attributes, they're not illusory, they're real. That, that mercy, grace, patience, love, faithfulness, wrath, justice. These are real, right? So how do we reconcile those? Let me offer you a couple of rules of, of what I might call theological grammar. All right. First, God's attributes describe who he is in his whole being. Say it again. God's attributes describe who he is in his whole being. For example, Psalm 92.15 says that the Lord is upright or righteous and that

there is no unrighteousness in him.

So it takes the same idea and states it both positively and negatively, right? So what is being said there that what's being said is that righteousness is what God is essentially. that God in his essence is righteous. It describes his very being. And all of God is righteous. All of God is righteousness. It's his whole being, not just a part of him. Right? And we could do that with any of his attributes. We could talk about his faithfulness. You could talk about his holiness. We could talk about his wisdom. All of that, it would be true for all of them. Right? That when we talk about God's attributes, that they describe God exhaustively and essentially. Right? So God's attributes describe who he is in his whole being. God's attributes, in other words, are all ways of describing the same reality. The same being, they aren't describing different things, but the same thing, right? There is nothing that is in God that is not identical to God. I'm just going to keep saying that I could just keep saying that over and over again. All that is in God is God, right? So there's nothing that is in God that is not identical to God. Okay. So that's one rule that leads to a second rule. Because God is so abundantly God, but because we are so limited in what we can see and understand, it takes an abundance of names to praise a simple God adequately. So God is so abundantly God and we are so finite and so limited that it takes an abundance of names to praise a simple God adequately. So if you read Psalm 145 verse three, it says,

great is the Lord and abundantly to be praised.

And if you read through Psalm 145, that's exactly what it does. It's an acrostic poem. So each line of the poem starts with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet, right? And so it's rehearsing and abundance of things to praise God for. But multiple names, multiple attributes doesn't mean multiple things. Are you with me on that? Multiple attributes doesn't mean multiple things. It means multiple names for the same thing. That God is so fully God that we need more than one name to talk about him. It means one thing that is so super abundant, so great, and so marvelous that it requires different names for finite creatures to even begin to talk about it. So in one sense, from the perspective of the creature, justice and grace are not the same thing. They're distinguishable. We perceive God's greatness in different ways, in different circumstances. But when we consider God in and of himself, his justice and grace are in fact one. Because God is simple and has no parts. All that is in God is God. So we've had to work a little bit tonight, right? It is ironic that something called simplicity can feel so complicated, right? But divine simplicity, as I begin to think about, well, what does this matter? So what? Divine simplicity guards us from error in at least two ways. First, a commitment to divine simplicity will keep us from ignoring or isolating some of God's attributes, right? So when we think about God, there's always the temptation to make God in our own image, to leave out the parts of God that we don't like. So emphasizing God's faithfulness at the expense of other attributes might lead to presumption, to a failure to repent because you don't take his holiness and wrath seriously. This is what Israel does, like in the book of Jeremiah, where they presume upon God's faithfulness and as a result don't repent. Emphasizing God's love at the expense of other attributes could lead to legitimizing relationships that God very clearly declares to be sinful because love is love is love is love and what could be wrong with that? Emphasizing God's righteousness at the expense of other attributes might lead to an unwillingness to forgive or a self-righteous and angry attitude or an unwillingness to show mercy to the oppressed. His name is I am. He's simple in his being. We cannot fixate on one attribute at the expense of others and remain spiritually healthy any more than we can eat an unbalanced diet and expect to remain physically healthy. So that's one way that it matters. Here's a second. Divine simplicity keeps us from misunderstanding the gospel. The gospel's at stake. Divine simplicity keeps us from misunderstanding the gospel. You see, there are versions of the gospel that sound as though the persons of the Trinity are pitted against each other. The father was angry, but the son intervened. The father rejected his son at the cross. While we affirm that God exists eternally in three distinct persons, we also affirm that God is one in essence. The persons of the Trinity are not parts of God. So don't pit the son against the father. The father did not need to be persuaded by his son to save you. The father gladly sent the son, the son gladly took on human nature, the spirit gladly enabled the incarnate son to offer himself as a sacrifice for sins. All that is in God is God, and all of him is angry at sin, and all of him is committed to saving his elect, whom he has loved before the foundation of the world. The father didn't need to be convinced. Such an abstract doctrine can actually bring us much comfort and assurance. That's just two. I've already gone long, so if we had the time, I'm quite confident we could come up with more. Perhaps more than anything else, thinking about divine simplicity should help remind us of just how different God is from us. He's not like us. He is self-existent, simple in his being, unchangeable, and unfathomably perfect. And that should lead us to greater trust and worship of the one who calls himself I Am. So let's pray. Father, I just spent a whole lot of time teaching about this, and I'm gonna confess I don't really understand a lot of it. But I'm grateful that you reveal yourself to us and that even though we may not fully comprehend you, we can say true things. And because of what we can comprehend, we can worship you and we can trust you. So teach us to do that even now. In Jesus' name, amen.