The Bible opens the door to understanding God and ourselves as we live daily. Much is said in the Bible as to God and humanity (please understand this makes it impossible to cover all aspects on our question in our limited space) which lays the grounding for seeing more of God and ourselves. Needless to say, what we are uncovering is exciting and wonderful information while also challenging and utterly important.
Starting at the very beginning of the Bible, God is active in this universe as he creates the universe and sustains it. Genesis 1 describes God as speaking all things into existence, including not only the earth but also with its animals and plants. God’s completes his creative actions in the making of humankind. Genesis chapter 1:26 says that God made humanity in his image in his likeness. Genesis 1 and 2 continue to describe humanity as He gives various tasks that require both physical and mental skills so that we may care and rule over the fish in the waters and the birds in the sky, the livestock and all wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. Immediately, we see that God is creative and powerful and that these qualities can in some partial way described in terms of image and likeness. The statement that God created us his image and likeness is truly amazing statement. From the very beginning, God intended us as humans to have dignity and value and creative abilities which are described as having a controlling place in his creation of the earth. It also implies that humans will have qualities, in a much lesser degree, that God possess such as ability to think and have knowledge, creatives skills, along with an ability to make decisions moral decisions.
The Genesis account continues with a declaration about the relationship between male and female humans that he created; namely that the man leaves his father and mother and that he should marry and that they should become one flesh. The creation of male and female clearly shows that God intended humanity to be fully engaged in relationships to each other. We are designed by God to be social beings who care for each other and relate to each other not only in family relationship but also in helping each other provide for themselves and for others. Their relationship comes out of God’s creative action and reflect God’s intention to be active in his creation through human beings which is seen in the Genesis account as he gave them different task to do including even naming all the plants and animals–meaning we are able to understand the God created nature of this earth. Our human nature therefore includes the abilities of many types and also designed to be relational with God and with other humans.
The earth at the time of its creation was good and the relationship between humans was good and caring toward each other. However, at some point this good condition of the earth and of humanity was radically changed by the introduction of evil into this world. In God’s creative action in making humans, he did so with the intention that they would be able to act in ways that are good for each other and reflect the image and likeness of God. But, as described in chapter 3 of Genesis, the humans Adam and Eve took action against God’s plan which included that they should not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Since God sought relationship with humans on the basis of their free will and their innate dignity as humans created in the likeness and image of God, God gave humans the ability to reject God’s care and love for them. Once they took this action of rejection of God ways, a host of new possibilities entered the human situation. Namely, now evil actions and evil consequences and difficult living conditions were now possible. Our connection with God was undermined because now we took actions and had thoughts and heart attitudes that at times result in evil actions and thoughts. Now the human condition was plagued with not only with all types between people tensions but also by the fact that we now faced issues of health and and death. More importantly, our relationship with God have been greatly altered for the worse.
Now that human nature included a strong bias toward evilness and self-centeredness, we found ourselves in situations that were difficult and trying and which also produced fears and anxieties along with hatreds and all types of other malevolent conditions of the human heart and actions. At the same time, we retained some knowledge of what is good and we also continued to possess qualities of character and abilities that had creative and positive possibilities–we retained qualities that could make conditions better. (see Genesis 4: 1-15 about Cain; 6: 1 to 7: 1 about Noah)
Because the creator God is not only powerful and all-knowing and eternal and spirit but also holy and loving, he desired to provide a way for a full restoration of a relationship between Himself and humankind. Because of the human condition, one way to describe the Bible story is God’s quest to restore the relationship between himself and humanity. The Bible story thus relates some of the ways God has acted to restore his relationship and he has also provided various ways for humanity to relate itself back to God. God is the initiator in all this process, but since humans have free will, humans must respond to God’s efforts for the restoration of our relationship. ( see the Bible passages that show God acting to restore relations: Genesis 15 about Abraham and Exodus 1-20 about Moses, the escape from Egypt, and the Ten Commandments and Mark 1: 1-2; John 1: 1-18 about Jesus’ coming). In one sense, the best way to describe God’s nature and human nature is in terms of God’s action to restore the original relationship intended for humanity. On the one hand, God is taken a variety of actions to reunite humanity to him, and on the other hand humanity has chosen in various ways to resist God’s efforts. Yet, human needs and desires and plans and dreams create in us an awareness that we are not whole and that we need something much more than just each other.
The Bible in both the Old and New Testament paints a vivid picture of humanity in all our shinning moments and all its destructive, violent, greedy actions while looking intently at the human heart and mind.
Thus, as we move through the Bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament, we will gain many insights about our behavior and also God’s. We will see that our behavior and condition only thrive when there is deep recognition of God’s love and his loving commands for our heart, mind and actions (see I Corinthians 13 and Matthew 22: 34-40). This is true because our mind and heart tell us that it is important to do justice and to treaty each other rightly, while we also have a deep sense there’s something more about life than just the physical but rather there is also a spiritual dimension to our existence; and further, we are very much relational beings and we seek to have good relationships with other people but frequently mess these relationships up in one way or another, while our nature also tells us that there are simply many wonderful and beautiful aspects about life and about the creation in which we exist. Unfortunately, at the same time we are frequently overwhelmed by distresses of emotional and mental concerns, and economic and social issues and needs and we frequently act in a way that says I’m the primary person or my group is the primary group and therefore I will ignore the interest and needs other people. These trigger negative reactions to our distresses and our misdeeds resulting in selfishness which makes it difficult for us to listen to our real nature and to take positive actions to right things.
Not to oversimplify or ignore the good in us, our nature, in fact, is not capable of really and deeply moving in a way of care and love for other people let alone even of our own selves. This is where the magnificent nature of God intrudes upon us and make it possible for us to see life in a completely different and better way. God’s nature is one of three personalities that are fully divine and fully unified and can be called a Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Our Trinitarian God deeply cares about us and has expended great amounts of effort to connect to us yet we are still resistant. The greatest form of God’s love was expressed when God the Son became Jesus of Nazareth and lived among us and showed us real life. At the same time, he also showed the extent of our need by his teachings, his actions, and above everything else is sacrificial nature for our condition and our sins. On the cross, where Christ died for us we can see that we are incapable of the kind of love that God has for us yet at the same time if we accept Jesus’ death for our sins, we can walk into a new creation, a new nature and self that will be full and enriched because we now have a nature influenced and directed by our connection to Christ. Knowing that humans are very much physically oriented, God so acted in history that we would not failed to see his love for us which he did through Jesus Christ. Our skeptical nature which seems to reject good things and may more likely take and believe bad things was confronted by not only the fact of Jesus’ death on the cross but also by his actual physical resurrection from the dead. His action on the cross and his resurrection proclaim loudly the nature of God, and we are the direct benefices of this great wonderful nature of God that is so loving toward us. Our human nature puts many obstacles in the way of hearing God’s message to us, but God’s love for us is so great and he extends his grace to us to such a degree that we can make a decision, a positive decision, to follow Jesus and to have a new relationship with God, one that is full and complete to the point that will nurture our souls while we also will do much good. (see Romans 1-8).
Our real nature therefore is to seek God and to be in relationship to him and to allow this relationship to carry us toward consideration and love of all people. His real nature is what can we have when we, by faith, accept the great truths of the Bible and great actions that God has and is taking in history. God acted so fully thoroughly and greatly through Christ so as to influence our hearts and minds, so that if we were only to open our heart and our mind we will see the truth of God and will see that God does really care about us. Our nature longs for God and we have a deep hollow hole in our nature because we are outside of the loving action of God. God provides the means by which we can fill that void and have a life that is really worth living. We can have our nature enriched as we follow and allow Christ and thereby we obey our gracious God for his incredible love. (These last paragraphs draw on the whole New Testament but some large blocks can cover much of this picture of God and of human nature: Mathew 5-7; John 13-21; Romans 1-8; I Corinthians 1-12; Ephesians 1-6, and I John 1-5)
Discover Yourself as You Discover God 