What is God like?

“And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature…”   Heb 1:3

Some times it seems like a mystery to what God is really like.  We look through the bible and we see a God who does many different things for different reasons.   We read about God’s judgement and sometimes we get the idea that God is pretty upset most of the time.  But what is God really like?

Jesus is the radiance of His glory.   The amplified translation says that He is the, “out-raying of the divine.”  I like to think of this as God being the light source and Jesus is the beams that shine down upon us.   I guess it is like seeing the sun beams shine through the clouds.  The sun itself is too much for us to look at, but the beams show us the glory of the sun.

The same is true with God and Jesus.  They are one.  Jesus is simply the part that we are able to see (in the bible days people saw Him in the flesh, now we see Him in the Word of God).  The bible says that no man can look upon God’s face and live (Ex 33:20).  God wrapped Himself up in Jesus so we could see Him and still live.

Part of the reason God did this was so that we could see what God is really like.  Sometimes it is tough to wade through the whole bible to see what God’s character is really like, but He makes it easy for us now.  Now we can just look at Jesus.  We can open up Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and get a taste of the true nature and character of God.  The passage we quoted earlier says that he is, “the exact representation of His nature.”

So what is God like?  Well lets look at Jesus:

Jesus was strong, and bold, but also gentle and meek.  Jesus cared for the down trodden, and the poor.  Jesus extended mercy and forgiveness and not judgement.  He was even merciful to those who crucified Him.

Jesus loved people.  He hated it when people were hurting or sick.  He hated death.  Nobody could stay sick or die young around Him.

Jesus loved people more than His own life.  Everything He did was for others.  Even to the point of laying down His own life for us.

We see through Jesus a God of love and mercy.  A God who deeply cares about us and wants the best for our lives.  Praise God!