God the Father, Mentor's Guide, MG06

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G O D T H E F A T H E R

sections, elements, or divisions in his mighty character. When God works, his works are in perfect harmony with his will and his being. He is Lord. Not able to conceive of God as a unity, we tend to isolate parts and then speak authoritatively on the parts without reference to the other great qualities which make up his being. The result oftentimes is a skewed and unbiblical view of God which creates false and unnecessary tensions in our thinking about God, which in fact do not exist. The challenge for every true student of God is to cultivate an awareness that, when it comes to the study of the Father (or, for that matter, any member of the Trinity) the analysis is not the person . While we may analyze God through the attributes, we ought not think that God can be spliced and analyzed like a novel or a car engine. As the living Lord of all, filled with numberless attributes expressing his greatness and goodness, he acts as a unity, subsisting in three persons, working out his will for his own purposes with perfect wisdom and patience. Let us never in our arrogance think that God must conform to our analysis. Rather, may God give us the grace not to be fooled, not to deceive ourselves in pretending that God must conform to our mind. The nature of the wicked mind is to pretend that God acts and thinks just like them (cf. Ps. 50.21 - “These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.” Give God room to surprise you by his fresh revelations of his whole being, and not just the part you tend to gravitate to. He is Lord! Your procedure for covering these attributes associated with the goodness of God should correspond to what you did in covering the attributes on the greatness of God. In other words, the goal of this segment is to provide an outline that the students can use to get a “bird’s eye view” of the scholarly understanding of God’s goodness. The richness and depth that each of the attributes demands, the care and rigor, cannot be given here. What can be done, however, is to seek to enable the students to comprehend the overall picture of theological discussion regarding God’s moral attributes, and script out a direction for their future studies. Please

3 Page 113 Summary of Segment 1