by Bruce Tyson

Created on: February 05, 2010   Last Updated: February 11, 2010

God reveals His character to us in the Bible, teaching us much about Him through His words and from His interaction with His people.  Some things about God and His character are reserved only to Him. For example, He alone is omniscient; He alone is self sustaining; He alone never changes. These are parts of His character that are not shared with anyone. Still, He does make quite bit of His character available to us so that we can benefit from it by pleasing Him and being of service to those around us.

Since the days of the Garden of Eden, people have wanted to be like God, but have not always sought His character from Him. If you recall, the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden saying that the fruit of the tree would make her like God in that she would recognize the difference between good and evil (Gen. 3:5).  This method of assuming God’s character, however, did not have good results at all. The attempt to assume God’s character was through disobedience and had a detrimental effect upon the entire human race. In spite of the fall of humankind into sin, we still recognize that we want to be like God, and we still can be like Him if we seek His character through obedience to Him. God gives us His character that we benefit from through our ability to please Him and to be of service to others. Let us consider some aspects of God’s character and how they relate to us.

Wisdom

One part of God’s character that He imparts to His people is wisdom. “The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand…” (Ps. 14: 2). The bad news is that in our fallen condition, we do not have wisdom.  The good news is that we have this part of God’s character at our disposal. He gives wisdom to us in abundance with no strings attached (Jas 1:5). Sure, we can try to get wisdom on our own like they did in the Garden (Gen. 3:6), but all of our attempts to get wisdom apart from receiving it from God are evil (Jas 3:15). God is wise, and through Him we also can be wise (Prov. 2:6, Ezr 7:25). Wisdom gives us the benefit of knowing how to live peaceful, successful lives (Prov. 4:6).

Faithfulness

God ‘s character also includes faithfulness (1 Cor. 1:9). His dealings with Israel in the Old Testament demonstrate this. Time and again, the people rejected Him and tried to operate outside of His will, yet He was always ready to help them if they would repent.

As He was committed to His people

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