I find it more and more difficult to continue expressing these fundamentals without resort to identifying the Christian God, the God revealed in Scripture, as the basis of my pursuit. It is, after all, entirely obvious that this is where I have already arrived; that He is in fact possessed of those qualifications that have been laid out; that those essential characteristics which describe god-ness describe Him; that He Is, in short, the One with whom we have to deal. But, before I pursue the exercise of describing Him as He has revealed Himself, I still find it necessary to lay this fundamental groundwork. We must have a firm basis for recognizing Truth, else we cannot recognize God Who Is Truth. At the same time, we cannot have a firm basis for recognizing Truth unless we recognize that God IS Truth. You see the conundrum.
But, here is the point I would make at this juncture. Those essential characteristics which define God (I think I shall just give in and refer to Him with conviction) are not a menu of attributes from which He selects in choosing one to display. No. They are all of them equally in evidence in Him, perfectly in harmony in Him, and expressed as One in Him. This may probe the limits of our capacity to understand, but it holds. God does not cease to be Love when He expresses Justice. God does not cease to be Mercy when He expresses Wrath. He cannot. They are of His essence, and He cannot, for the briefest moment, cease to be all of these things. He is always Holy. He is always True. He is always Jealous. Bet you didn’t expect that! But, these are attributes He assigns to Himself, attributes He declares as His. Who are we to deny that it is so?
As concerns Truth, then, we must expect that Truth is in perfect harmony with these other essential characteristics of God. That being the case, since God is orderly (God is not a god of chaos, but of order, to roughly paraphrase 1Co 14:33), we must not only expect that Truth is expressive of Order, but must insist upon it. God being a God of Law, binding Himself to His people, as it were, by lawful covenant, acting as Law-giver to His people, we must insist that Truth is expressive of His inherent Lawfulness. Truth will not admit of deceptiveness, for deceptiveness is, at root, an attempt to abrogate Law, to repeal that Law, at least as it effects the immediate situation. Truth will not deceive, nor accept deceit. It cannot. Deceit must, by its very definition take away from Truth, and Truth is essential. It cannot be diminished and remain True.
