The Foundation
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD."
Deuteronomy 6:4
Everyone carries a picture of God about with them, whether they believe in Him or not. For one person it is a stern face from childhood, quick to be displeased. For another it is a benevolent vagueness — a warmth in the universe with no particular opinions. For a third it is a force, an energy, a something rather than a someone. And a great many people who say they do not believe in God will tell you, if you ask patiently, exactly which God they do not believe in — and quite often He is not the God of the Bible at all.
So the first question is not whether you believe in God. It is which God you have in mind, and where that picture came from. If it came from your upbringing, or your disappointments, or the general atmosphere of the age, then it is a portrait painted by men. The only way to know what God is actually like is for God to tell us. And He has.
Begin here, because everything else depends on it. Men cannot reason their way up to God the way one might work out a proof. He is not an object in the universe to be located, measured, and described. If He is to be known at all, it must be because He has chosen to make Himself known.
Every religion man ever invented begins with men reaching upward. Scripture begins the other way round.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
The Bible opens without an argument for God’s existence. It does not prove Him; it announces Him. He is simply there before anything else is, and the first sentence assumes a reader who will have to deal with that.
And He has not left us guessing. Scripture says He has spoken in two ways — in what He made, and in what He said.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." (Psalm 19:1)
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." (Hebrews 1:1-2)
Creation tells you there is a God and something of His power. It cannot tell you His name, His character, or what He thinks of you. For that He had to speak — and He has.
Every religion men have built runs the same direction: upward. Man reaches, guesses, climbs, imagines. And what he arrives at is always recognisably himself — larger, angrier, or more indulgent, but himself.
Scripture runs the other way. It opens not with men searching but with God speaking, and it never once presents Him as a conclusion we reached.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
No argument for His existence is offered there. The Bible does not begin by proving God any more than a man begins a letter by proving he can write.
"Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" (Job 11:7)
The answer expected is no — and that is not despair, because He has not left us to searching.
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." (Hebrews 1:1-2)
And that is precisely the claim of the Bible: not that men searched and found God, but that God spoke. He spoke to Abraham, to Moses at a burning bush, to prophets over many centuries — and at last He spoke in His Son. Every genuine thing we know about God has come to us this way. The rest is guesswork.
This is a relief, if you think about it. It means that knowing God is not reserved for the clever or the philosophical. A farmer with a Bible knows more about God than a brilliant man with only his own reflections, because one of them is listening and the other is speculating.
The first thing God says about Himself, and the thing He says most insistently, is that He is one and there is no other. This is the foundation of Israel's faith, recited daily for thousands of years:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." (Deuteronomy 6:4)
"I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me." (Isaiah 45:5)
"Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any." (Isaiah 44:8)
That last line is worth pausing over. God says He does not know of another. If there were rivals anywhere in the universe, He would be aware of them, and He says plainly that He is not.
This is not one religion’s preference among many. It is a claim that excludes all others by its nature, and Scripture never softens it.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3)
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." (Deuteronomy 6:4)
"I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me." (Isaiah 45:5)
"Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me." (Isaiah 43:10)
Read that last one carefully, because it closes the door at both ends. None before. None after. It is not merely that other gods are inferior; the claim is that they do not exist.
And yet the same Scriptures that insist on one God speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as distinct, each addressed as God, without ever suggesting three Gods. The plurality is there from the first chapter — "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26) — and it is never presented as a contradiction of the oneness.
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." (1 John 5:7)
We are not asked to explain this. We are asked to believe what is written, and to refuse the two errors that men reach for — collapsing the three into one Person, or dividing the one God into three.
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." (Deuteronomy 6:4)
This was said in a world crowded with gods — a god for the harvest, a god for the storm, a god for the city, a god for war. Into that crowd God speaks, and He does not say that He is the greatest. He says He is the only one.
Through Isaiah He makes the claim in terms that leave no room whatever for a second:
"...and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." (Isaiah 45:21-22)
Notice two things packed together there. First, the exclusivity: there is none else, repeated as though God will not permit us to slide past it. Second — and this is the surprise — the God who insists on being the only One immediately opens His arms to the whole earth. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. His uniqueness is not the jealousy of a tyrant guarding a title. It is the reason no one need look anywhere else: there is one Saviour, and He is offering Himself to everybody.
There is a hard edge to this, and honesty requires naming it. If there is one God, then not all religious paths lead to Him, however sincerely they are walked. Sincerity is a fine thing, but it does not create truth. A man may take the wrong road with his whole heart, and his whole heart will not move the road.
Our age is comfortable with a divine something — an energy, a ground of being, a universal consciousness. That God makes no demands and asks no questions. But the God who actually spoke did not introduce Himself as a something.
A great many people today believe in something — an energy, a force, a universe with intentions. That is not what Scripture describes.
The God of the Bible speaks, decides, is grieved, rejoices, remembers, and loves. A force does none of those. You cannot offend a force, and it cannot forgive you.
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." (Genesis 1:3)
"And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." (Exodus 33:11)
"And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." (Genesis 6:6)
This matters enormously in practice. A force can be tapped, aligned with, harnessed. A Person must be reckoned with. One you use; the other you answer to.
This matters more than it first appears, because a force cannot be sinned against, and a force cannot forgive.
The God of Scripture speaks, wills, loves, is grieved, and remembers. He has a name and He gives it:
"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (Exodus 3:14)
I AM. Not I was or I will be — a name in the continuous present, belonging to One who simply is, and who depends on nothing for it.
"And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." (Genesis 6:6)
An impersonal energy is not grieved at the heart. Whatever else that verse means, it means we are dealing with Someone.
When Moses stood before the burning bush and asked what name he should give, the answer was not a description of power but a declaration of being:
"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (Exodus 3:14)
I AM. Not it is. A self-existent Person, who depends on nothing, who was not made, who does not become — who simply is, and always was, and always will be. Everything else in existence is derived; He alone is underived. Ask what caused a tree, a star, a man, and there is an answer. Ask what caused God, and the question dissolves, because He is the One who has being in Himself.
And because He is a Person, He can be known — not merely known about. A force cannot be loved, cannot be grieved, cannot be disobeyed, cannot forgive. A Person can do all four. The whole Bible is the story of a relationship, which would be impossible if God were an it.
He is also Spirit — not confined to a body, not located in one place, not visible to the eye. He does not live in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything. He gives life and breath to all things and needs nothing from any of us. And He does not change. What He was a thousand years ago, He is; what He promises, He does not later reconsider. Men change their minds because they learn things they did not know, or because their circumstances shift. Neither happens to God.
If we had to choose one word for what God is, the Bible would give us this one. When the prophet Isaiah was granted a sight of the throne, the creatures around it were not crying powerful, powerful, powerful, nor loving, loving, loving, but Holy, holy, holy — the only attribute Scripture repeats three times over.
"And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory." (Isaiah 6:3)
Scripture repeats a word three times only rarely, and it does it here. He is not called loving, loving, loving or mighty, mighty, mighty. He is called holy, holy, holy — and that is the attribute the seraphim name when they cover their faces.
Holiness means separateness. He is not a larger version of us. He is other — in purity, in kind, in being.
"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." (Habakkuk 1:13)
And notice the effect on the man who saw it. Isaiah did not feel uplifted. He fell apart:
"Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." (Isaiah 6:5)
Every man in Scripture who saw God clearly had the same reaction, and none of them were the worse for it afterwards.
"And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory." (Isaiah 6:3)
Nothing else in Scripture is repeated three times like that. He is not called love, love, love or mighty, mighty, mighty. Holiness is the attribute the seraphim press.
And note what it did to the man who saw it. Isaiah was the best man in Judah — a prophet, and by any human measure the most upright person in the room. His response was not admiration:
"Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." (Isaiah 6:5)
"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." (Habakkuk 1:13)
This is why sin is not a small matter to Him, and why the cross was not an overreaction.
Holiness means separateness — that God is entirely other than we are, in a category by Himself, without flaw and without the slightest shadow of wrong. It is not merely that He does not sin. It is that He cannot, any more than light can be dark.
"...God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5)
Weigh that last phrase — no darkness at all. Not a little. Not in the corners. Nothing.
Now this is the attribute that our generation finds hardest, and it is worth saying why. A holy God is not adjustable. He does not revise His standards when the culture revises its own. And it is precisely His holiness that creates the problem the rest of the Bible sets out to solve — because if He is like that, and we are like this, then something must be done about the distance between us, and we cannot be the ones to do it.
And here is the truth that the same Scripture places right beside the last one, in words as simple as any in the Bible:
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." (1 John 4:8)
Read that carefully, because it is one of the most misused verses in the Bible. It says God is love. It does not say love is God.
The difference is enormous. If love is God, then whatever a man happens to feel becomes sacred and nothing can be called wrong. If God is love, then love has a shape, and it is His shape rather than ours.
And Scripture defines the love it means immediately, so it cannot be mistaken for sentiment:
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10)
Not a feeling. A sending, and a cost.
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." (1 John 4:8)
Mark the construction. It does not say God has love, as He has power or knowledge. It says God is love — that this is what He is in Himself, and was before there was anyone to love.
And Scripture never leaves the word floating. It defines it by an act:
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
While we were yet sinners. Not once we improved. Not on condition of anything. That is the direction of it, and it is the reverse of every religion men invent.
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." (1 John 4:8)
Note that it does not say God is loving, as one might say a man is generous — one quality among others. It says God is love. Love is not something He has; it is something He is. He did not begin to love when there was somebody to love; love is His own eternal nature.
But we must be careful here, because this is the verse the modern world quotes most and understands least. God is love is not the same as God is indulgent. It does not mean He approves of everything, overlooks everything, or has no standards. Real love is not the absence of standards; a father who does not care what becomes of his son does not love him more, but less.
And the Bible never leaves the word floating as an abstraction. It always points to an event. God's love is not a mood; it is something He did, at a particular time, at enormous cost — while we were still in the wrong, and had done nothing to deserve it.
People often set these two against each other, as though God were divided — stern in the Old Testament, kind in the New; holy in principle, loving in practice. But God is not made of parts, and He does not have moods. His holiness and His love are one and the same nature.
This is where most people stumble, and it is worth setting out plainly.
Many carry two half-gods in their heads: a stern God of the Old Testament and a kind one of the New. Scripture knows nothing of it. The same book that says God is love records the flood; the same Lord Jesus Christ who blessed children spoke more about hell than anyone else in the Bible.
"The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." (Exodus 34:6-7)
One sentence, spoken by God about Himself. Merciful, gracious, longsuffering, forgiving — and will by no means clear the guilty. Both, without embarrassment, without contradiction.
And the place where the two meet is not a compromise between them. It is a cross.
"Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." (Psalm 85:10)
Here is where most people quietly give up on the God of the Bible. They keep the love and let the holiness go, or they keep the holiness and lose the love, and end with a God who is either indulgent or terrifying.
Scripture holds both without apology, and it does not resolve the tension with an argument. It resolves it with an event.
"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past... that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." (Romans 3:25-26)
Just, and the justifier. Both, in one clause. The holiness was satisfied and the love was expressed at the same moment, in the same act, at His own expense.
"Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." (Psalm 85:10)
They meet at one place only, and it is not a doctrine. It is a hill outside Jerusalem.
See how the two hold together. Because God is holy, sin must be judged — He cannot shrug at evil without ceasing to be good. Because God is love, He desires to save the very people who committed it. Those two facts create the deepest problem in the universe. How can a perfectly just Judge acquit the guilty without ceasing to be just?
The answer is the cross, and it is the only answer that satisfies both. At Calvary, God did not lower the standard, and He did not abandon the sinner. He took the penalty upon Himself. Justice was fully served — the wage of sin was paid in full — and mercy was fully extended, because the One who paid it was the Judge Himself, in the Person of His Son. Holiness and love meet there, and neither is compromised by an inch.
This is why no other picture of God will do. A God who is only holy would condemn us and be right to. A God who is only loving would ignore evil and would not be worth worshipping. The God of the Bible is both, entirely, at once — and the cross is where you see it.
All that has been said so far a man might learn and still remain at a distance. But God did not stop at telling us about Himself. He came.
"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." (John 1:18)
The word translated declared is the word from which we get exegesis. The Son is the explanation of the Father — not a messenger about Him, but the setting-forth of Him.
"Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (John 14:9)
"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." (Colossians 1:15)
"Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person." (Hebrews 1:3)
So if you want to know what God is like, you are not left to speculate about the character of an infinite being. You may watch Him weep at a grave, touch a leper, refuse to condemn a woman everyone else had condemned, and die for the men who killed Him.
"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 2:9)
"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." (John 1:18)
He hath declared him. The word carries the sense of setting something out in full — not a hint, not a partial likeness, but the exposition of God in a human life.
"Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (John 14:9)
"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." (Colossians 1:15)
"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 2:9)
So the question what is God like? has a plain answer, and it is not a list of attributes. Read the Gospels. Watch how He treats a leper, a widow, a thief, a woman caught in adultery, and the men driving the nails. That is what God is like.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)
Read that slowly, because every clause is doing work. In the beginning was — He did not begin; He already was. The Word was with God — a distinction of Persons. And the Word was God — and yet not a second God, for we have already seen there is only one. Here is the deep mystery of the Godhead, stated without apology and without explanation, because it is revealed rather than reasoned.
And then the astonishing thing:
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)
The eternal God entered His own creation. He who made the eye was seen with eyes. He who made the hand was touched with hands. He did not send a message; He came Himself. And the Bible names this plainly as the central mystery of the faith:
"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." (1 Timothy 3:16)
God was manifest in the flesh. That is the answer to our question, and it is the highest answer there is. You wanted to know who God is. Look at the Lord Jesus Christ — how He dealt with the leper nobody would touch, the woman everybody had written off, the thief dying beside Him. That is not a picture of God. That is God, in the flesh, among us.
Knowing who God is settles nothing by itself. The question is what you will do about Him.
Because He is holy, we have a problem, and it is not a small one:
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
Because He is love, He has already acted about it, and at His own expense:
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
And because He is one, there is no second place to look, and no other terms available:
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
That is the whole of it. The one true and living God, holy beyond our reach and loving beyond our deserving, has come near in His Son and asks to be received.
Some things are true of God alone, and they are worth knowing because they are the ground of every promise He makes.
Some of what Scripture says about Him has no parallel in us at all, and these are worth knowing because they are the ground of everything else.
He had no beginning and will have no end.
"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Psalm 90:2)
He does not change. This is why a promise made three thousand years ago is worth as much today.
"For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." (Malachi 3:6)
He is everywhere, and there is nowhere to go from Him.
"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." (Psalm 139:7-8)
And He knows everything, including what we have not said.
"Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off... For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether." (Psalm 139:2,4)
That is either the most frightening fact in the world or the most comforting, and which it is depends entirely on the next section.
He does not change. Everything you have ever trusted has altered — people, health, circumstances, your own convictions.
"For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." (Malachi 3:6)
Read the therefore. Our survival is tied to His constancy, not to ours.
He is everywhere. Not thinly spread, but wholly present.
"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." (Psalm 139:7-8)
That is a terror to a man running and a comfort to a man alone, and it is the same verse in both cases.
He knows everything. Including what you have never told anyone.
"O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off." (Psalm 139:1-2)
And the astonishing thing about that Psalm is where it ends. Having been searched out completely, David does not ask to be left alone. He asks to be searched further — which only a man who knows he is loved would do.
He has no beginning.
"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Psalm 90:2)
And He needs nothing. This is the one most often missed, and it changes how a man comes to Him.
"Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." (Acts 17:25)
He is not short of anything you could supply. You cannot put Him in your debt, and you cannot make yourself necessary to Him. Which means that when He receives a sinner, it is not a transaction. It is a gift.
Nobody worships nothing. Every man has something at the centre, and it is worth naming the substitutes, because most people are holding one.
Very few people in Montreal would say they worship an idol. Almost everyone has one.
An idol is not primarily a statue. It is anything that occupies the place God should hold — the thing you would not give up, the thing that decides your calendar and your spending, the thing whose loss would end you.
"For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens." (Psalm 96:5)
And Scripture makes a bitter observation about them: you become like what you worship.
"They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not... They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them." (Psalm 115:5,8)
Worship a thing that cannot hear, and you grow deaf. Serve something with no heart, and yours hardens. That is not poetry; it is observable.
There is also the subtler idol: a god of one’s own design, assembled from the parts of the true God one finds agreeable. It is the commonest religion of our day, and Scripture names it plainly:
"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes." (Psalm 50:21)
Altogether such an one as thyself. That is the whole error in six words — a God shaped like the worshipper, who conveniently disapproves of everything the worshipper already disliked.
A god of pure indulgence. Kind, permissive, endlessly understanding, offended by nothing. He is popular because he asks nothing, and useless for the same reason. He cannot forgive, because he never regarded the offence as real.
A god of pure severity. Watching for failure, impossible to please, remembered from a harsh upbringing more than from Scripture. Many who have fled religion were fleeing this one, and they were right to flee it — it was never God.
A god who is a force. The universe, energy, fate, the way things are. It cannot be sinned against and cannot love, and in a hospital corridor at three in the morning it has nothing to say.
And the gods that are not called gods at all. Money, reputation, work, a child, a cause. Anything that sits where God should sit is functioning as one, whatever we call it.
"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not... They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them." (Psalm 115:4-5,8)
Note the sting in the last line. They that make them are like unto them. We become like what we worship, which makes the choice of God the most consequential a man ever makes.
Everything above can be held accurately by a man who has never once spoken to God, and Scripture treats that as a serious condition rather than a good start.
"Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble." (James 2:19)
The demons are perfectly orthodox about the doctrine of God. It has never done one of them any good.
And eternal life is defined not as correct belief about God but as acquaintance with Him:
"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17:3)
So the question this article has been circling is not can you define God. It is whether you know Him — and He has made that possible at a cost that ought to end the discussion.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
The God who needs nothing gave the only thing that could not be replaced. Not because He was under obligation, and not because we were worth it — but because that is what He is.
Set the pictures side by side. The stern face of childhood is not Him — that was a caricature, and it has kept people away for a lifetime. The benevolent vagueness is not Him either; that God has never said anything and never asked anything, and He is a projection of our own comfort. The impersonal force is not Him; a force did not say I AM, and a force did not go to a cross.
The God who is actually there is one, and holy, and love, and a Person — and He has spoken, and He has come, and He is not hiding.
If your picture of God has been wrong, you are not required to defend it. You are invited to put it down and look at the One who has revealed Himself, and to hear what He says to all the ends of the earth: Look unto me, and be ye saved.
"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."Isaiah 45:22
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Your presence.
We thank You for Your beloved Son, and for Him who declared You, whom no man has seen at any time. We praise You for Your preserved Word, which declares "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before You that we have made You small enough to be comfortable. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech You for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Your Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Your Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Your people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to show every reader the God who is, and not the god he imagined, for Your glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to You, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to You just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Your law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring You nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Your Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).