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Bible Studies Core Christian Beliefs
Who Is God?
What Scripture says about God’s character — holy, near, just, patient — and what Christians mean by the Trinity.
Scripture never argues for God’s existence; it introduces him. This study follows how he presents himself and what the church has concluded from it.
What you’ll explore
- 01 God introduces himself: “I AM”
- 02 Holiness, and why it is not the same as strictness
- 03 Nearness: the God who is not distant
- 04 Justice and patience held together
- 05 What Christians mean by the Trinity
- 06 What we are not given to know
- 07 Knowing about God and knowing God
God introduces himself: “I AM”
Read Exodus 3:1-15
Moses asks for a name and is given one that is barely a name — I AM WHO I AM. It refuses to define God by anything outside himself. Everything else in this study is downstream of that refusal.
Holiness, and why it is not the same as strictness
Read Isaiah 6:1-5; Leviticus 19:2
Isaiah sees the throne and says "woe is me, for I am lost" — the reaction is not guilt over a specific sin but exposure. Holiness in Scripture means set apart, other, wholly unlike us. It is closer to the difference between a candle and the sun than to a rulebook.
Nearness: the God who is not distant
Read Psalm 139:1-12; Acts 17:27-28
The psalm has God knowing when you sit down and hemming you in behind and before, and there is nowhere to flee from his presence — which the psalmist finds both wonderful and slightly overwhelming. Paul tells the Athenians he is not far from any one of us. Transcendence and nearness are held together, not traded off.
Justice and patience held together
Read Exodus 34:6-7; 2 Peter 3:9
The self-description God gives Moses is the most quoted sentence about God in the Old Testament: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love — and by no means clearing the guilty. Peter says his apparent slowness is patience. Scripture will not let either half go.
What Christians mean by the Trinity
Read Matthew 28:19; John 1:1-3; 2 Corinthians 13:14
No single verse states the doctrine; it is the church’s summary of the whole New Testament witness — one God, named as Father, Son and Spirit, in the same breath and on the same level. It was worked out in the fourth century in response to serious alternatives and has been held since by Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians alike. It is named here as historic Christian belief, which is exactly what it is.
What we are not given to know
Read Deuteronomy 29:29; Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 11:33
The secret things belong to the Lord; his thoughts are not our thoughts; Paul breaks off mid-argument into "how unsearchable are his judgments". A doctrine of God that leaves no room for not knowing has stopped describing the God of the Bible.
Knowing about God and knowing God
Read Jeremiah 9:23-24; John 17:3; James 2:19
Jeremiah says the thing to boast in is knowing the Lord. Jesus defines eternal life as knowing the Father and the Son. James notes drily that the demons have their theology right. Information is not the same as acquaintance.
Questions to sit with
- Which of these — holiness or nearness — do you find easier to believe?
- Where has your picture of God been shaped more by experience than by Scripture?
- Is there something about God you have decided you ought to understand and do not?
Every passage in this study
Go deeper
Where this connects
This study sits inside a larger story. Read the passages above in their own books, and follow the thread back through Scripture as a whole.