16 Truths Every Believer Should Know: God Has Spoken

This is the first in a series of posts explaining foundational Christian truths. I first posted this series several years ago, and now I’m revising it and posting it again. Because nothing I write is ever really finished.

I’m know almost all of my neighbors. Some neighbors I know only by name and occupation, but there are others I know much more about. I know how old they are, how many times they’ve been married, what surgeries they’ve had, and what their political beliefs are—all because they’ve told me. The neighbors I know best are the ones I’ve chatted with the most. There’s really no better way to learn about someone than to listen to them talk about themselves.

This principle applies to God, too, only more so. The only way to know God is through his personal disclosure. “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 (Deuteronomy 29:29). If I were a snoop or a gossip, I might be able to find out things about my neighbors that they would rather keep hidden. But I am never going to discover God’s secrets, not because he doesn’t have them, but because I can’t find them out. We are entirely dependent on his revelation of himself to know anything about him. We can only know God because he speaks to us, and we can only know as much as he chooses to tell.

General Revelation — Impossible to Miss

The way God speaks to us is different from the way we speak to each other. We know that Moses heard God’s voice, but I don’t expect him to communicate with me that way, and neither should you.

The first way God speaks is through the universe he made. You might say that creation is his announcement that he exists (Romans 1: 20). Just as a musical score points to the existence of a composer, and a painting to the existence of an artist, creation points to the existence of a Creator. The world we live in is evidence that there is a God. 

According to Psalm 19, the created universe is also telling us what God is like. Anyone who has seen a spectacular display of the northern lights in the night sky—which, after last fall, might be almost everyone in the northern hemisphere—ought to know that the one who created them must be even more glorious than they are. Or think about the sun, moon, stars, and planets, which anyone living anywhere can see. Wouldn’t it require enormous power to form them and set them in place? Don’t they sing of an almighty Creator?

And when God sends us sunshine and rain, he is showing his goodness (Matthew 5:44-45). We eat because the natural processes God designed and implemented grow our food. The wild berries we gather, the game we hunt, the vegetables we grow, and the groceries we buy all ultimately come from him. How could anyone deny that the God who upholds all the natural cycles that keep us alive is a loving God?

God’s work in the universe—his creation and preservation of it—is called general revelation. It’s “general,” because everyone can see it, and it’s “revelation,” because it reveals important truths about God and our obligation to him. General revelation is a world-wide proclamation that there is one God who is glorious, powerful, and good—and we should all worship him.

General revelation also includes what God reveals about himself through each person’s inborn sense of right and wrong. The moral code we know “by nature” is a reflection (albeit an imperfect one) of God’s own character. Our consciences, although flawed, still testify to his holy standards. Everyone knows enough about how they should act to be held accountable to the one who wrote his law “on their hearts ” (Romans 2:14-15).

But God’s general revelation isn’t enough because as fallen people, we rebel against it. We know, deep down, that what it tells us is true, but we still convince ourselves that it isn’t. We are like obstinate children holding fingers in our ears to avoid hearing what we would rather not hear. What creation and our consciences tell us about God may be impossible to miss, but that doesn’t keep us from refusing to see or hear it. 

What’s more, even if we were to understand and acknowledge it, general revelation can only go so far. It shows us the problem, but it doesn’t give us the solution. It tells us that we ought to love God and obey him, and it also tells us that we haven’t. It condemns us, but it doesn’t reveal the way to escape our condemnation. General revelation can’t unlock the secret to God’s forgiveness.

Special Revelation — Sufficient to Save 

To know God’s forgiveness, we need his special revelation, which is found in the Bible. The Scriptures, Old and New Testament, include God’s whole message to humankind. Yes, the Bible has many authors, but they were all moved by God’s Spirit to write what they did (2 Pet. 1:21). The process was mysterious, but the bottom line is that when they wrote, they spoke from God. They repeated what everyone should have known from the witness of general revelation, and they added to it. Everything we need to know from God is found in the Bible.

Unlike general revelation, God’s special revelation has never been universally accessible. Everyone can see the universe God made, but not everyone has a Bible to read or someone to explain what it says. God gave Scripture first to the Jews, then to the Christians scattered around the Roman Empire, and, as it has been translated to various languages through the ages, to people around the world. Although more people have access to a Bible now than ever before, there are still those who don’t. 

The centerpiece of special revelation—the focus of all of Scripture—is the unfolding story of God’s work to deliver people from condemnation. The special revelation contained in the Bible gives the solution to the problem general revelation reveals, because it tells us 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 people who haven’t honored or obeyed him. This is why the apostle Paul writes that God’s special revelation contained in scripture is able to “make [people] wise for salvation … ” (2 Timothy 3:15). Creation tells us enough to condemn us, and the Bible reveals enough to save us from that condemnation.

Ultimate Revelation — Incarnate Son

God also reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ his Son. “In these last days,” Hebrews1:2 says, “God has spoken to us by his Son.” As Jesus healed, taught, died, and then rose from the dead, he showed what God is like. “Whoever has seen me,” Jesus said, has seen the Father” (John 14:9 ESV). As the incarnate Son of God, Jesus is God in form we can see—or at least in a form those who were with him during his earthly life could see, and in a form those who live afterward can see described in the New Testament. 

God’s special revelation in scripture and his ultimate revelation in the Son can’t be separated. How could we know of Jesus the incarnate Son through whom God fully and finally speaks except through the witness of the Bible? The Old Testaments sets the stage for him to be revealed, and the New Testament documents his life and explains him to us. The Bible is the only way to know him.

God’s Revelation — Foundation of Truth

Do you want to know God? Look to his revelation of himself in creation, in Scripture, and in Jesus Christ. Human imagination can be a wonderful thing, but it can’t help you know God. No, all true knowledge of God comes from his own self-disclosure. 

Can you see why the first truth in this series of truths every believer should know is that God has spoken? We only know who God is, what he has done, and who we are as his creatures because he is a talking God. All true theology is based in his revelation. His speech is the foundation of all Christian truth.