16 Truths You Should Know: God Has Spoken

This the first in a series of posts on foundational Christian truths. This series was originally posted at Out of the Ordinary. I plan to revise the series and post it here over the next few months.

The best way to truly know someone is to get them to tell you about themselves. As you learn what they think, what they love, what they hate, what they are doing, and what they plan to do, you understand them better. Their honest self-disclosure reveals who they are. 

This principle applies to God, too, only more so. The only way to know God is through what he discloses about himself. It’s possible for us to pry into another person’s life and find secrets they would rather keep hidden, but we can’t do this with God. “What can be known about God,” Romans 1:19 tells us, is known “because [he] has shown it.” And anything beyond what he chooses to reveal remains his secret forever (Deut. 29:29). We are entirely dependent, then, on his self-revelation to know anything about him. We can only know God because he speaks to us, and we can only know as much as he tells us. 

General Revelation — Impossible to Miss

God speaks, first, through the universe he created. Creation announces that God exists, and it also tells something of what he is like. God created the world; he cares for it; he directs its history—and these acts teach us about him. The sky, Psalm 19 says, declares God’s glory and power, and all the earth hears it. And when God sends rain and sunshine to grow crops, he is revealing his existence and goodness by providing the food we all eat (Acts 14:17). These acts of God are called general revelation because everyone can see them. They send a message around the world, proclaiming everywhere that there is one God and everyone should worship him.

General revelation also includes what God reveals about himself through each person’s inborn sense of right and wrong. “The law written on [our] hearts” (Rom. 2:14–15) is a reflection of God’s own character. Our consciences, then, gives us knowledge of God’s holy nature, and also knowledge of our obligations to him.

But God’s general revelation isn’t enough for us because as fallen people, we rebel against it. We do our best to stifle this message. What creation tells us about God may be impossible to miss, but that doesn’t keep us from trying to convince ourselves we can’t see it.

What’s more, in our moments of clarity, when we can’t continue to ignore the message of general revelation, we see that we have duty to obey God—and we know we haven’t. General revelation can show us our problem, but it can’t tell us the solution to it. It can (and does) condemn us, but it can’t tell us how to excape our condemnation. It can’t unlock the secret of God’s forgiveness.

Special Revelation — Sufficient to Save

To know God’s forgiveness, we need his own words. We need his special revelation, which is found in the Bible. The authors of the Bible were moved by God’s Spirit to write what they did (2 Pet. 1:21). The process is mysterious, but the bottom line is that when they wrote, they spoke from God. They explained again the truth we should already know from general revelation, and they added more. They revealed God’s entire message to us.

The centerpiece of special revelation—the focus of all of scripture—is the unfolding story of God’s work to deliver people from condemnation. Scripture is the story of Jesus Christ, who came from God as the Old Testament promised, and gave himself to free us from condemnation as the New Testament explains. The Bible teaches us that because Christ died for sins, God can offer forgiveness to disobedient people. Knowing God’s story as explained in scripture will “make [us] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). 

Son Revelation — The Story of Scripture

It is Jesus Christ himself who is God’s final revelation. “In these last days,” says Hebrews 1:2, “God has spoken to us by his Son.” Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son, shows us God in a form we can see—or at least in a form those who were with him during his life on earth could see, and in a form those who live afterwards, like we do, can see described in the New Testament.

God’s special revelation in scripture and his ultimate revelation in the Son are entwined. They can’t be separated. The Old Testament sets the stage for the revelation of the Son, and the New Testament is a record and explanation of him. The Son through whom God fully and finally speaks can only be known as God reveals him to us in scripture.

God’s Revelation—Source of Truth

Since we could know nothing about God, his works, or ourselves in relation to him unless he disclosed it to us, God’s own revelation must be the source of all theology. That God has spoken is the first truth in this series of truths you should know because it is foundational to all the rest. 

Do you want to know God? Look to his revelation of himself in creation, in scripture, and in Jesus Christ. The God who speaks has spoken to us, telling us what we need to know about him, and what we need to know about ourselves, too.