The Attributes of God

Aseity

Divine aseity is God's complete nondependence on anything outside Himself for His existence, life, goodness, or divine perfection. Creatures can contribute genuinely valued goods, relationships, and experiences to God's relational history without supplying a deficiency or completing God.

Key Scripture — Acts 17:24–25

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”

Authority

Divine authority is God's rightful rule over creation as its Creator and God, including His right to command, govern, judge, and delegate authority, always exercised consistently with His good character.

Key Scripture — Psalm 24:1–2

“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
for he founded it on the seas
and established it on the waters.”

Compassion

Divine compassion is God's genuine concern for creatures in suffering, misery, weakness, vulnerability, or need, oriented toward their good.

Key Scripture — Psalm 103:13–14

“As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.”

Constancy

Divine constancy is God's unwavering continuity in His character, identity, and perfection, while allowing genuine change in His actions, responses, affections, and relational history as circumstances and relationships genuinely change.

Key Scripture — Malachi 3:6

“I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

Eternity / Divine Time

God exists eternally, independent of and uncontained by the created order of time. His life and activity include genuine succession—real before-and-after ordering—without requiring that He experience time in the finite, measurable, or dependent manner of creatures.

Key Scripture — Psalm 90:2

“Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

Faithfulness

Divine faithfulness is God's unwavering reliability in remaining true to His character and fulfilling the commitments He has made.

Key Scripture — Deuteronomy 7:9

“Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.”

Forgiveness

Divine forgiveness is God's willing choice to release a person from the condemnation their sin deserves because Christ bore its judgment on their behalf.

Key Scripture — Psalm 86:5

“You, Lord, are forgiving and good,
abounding in love to all who call to you.”

Generosity

Divine generosity is God's readiness to give good freely and abundantly.

Key Scripture — Romans 8:32

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

Goodness

Divine goodness is the perfection of God's character by which He is and acts according to what is morally right and genuinely good, such that goodness is grounded in who God is rather than in an external standard or arbitrary will.

Key Scripture — Psalm 119:68

“You are good, and what you do is good;
teach me your decrees.”

Grace

Divine grace is God's freely given favor or gift, bestowed because He chooses to give rather than because the recipient has earned it or can claim it as owed.

Key Scripture — Ephesians 2:8–9

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Holiness

Divine holiness is God's inherent moral purity and unique sacredness, by which He is utterly opposed to moral corruption and set apart from what is common or profane.

Key Scripture — Habakkuk 1:13a

“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.”

Jealousy

Divine jealousy is holy protection of goods and relationships that rightly belong in a particular order. It is not envy, insecurity, or possessive fear of losing what God lacks.

Key Scripture — Exodus 34:14

“Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

Justice

Divine justice is God's consistent treatment of persons and actions according to what is morally fitting, in accordance with His good character and all morally relevant circumstances.

Key Scripture — Isaiah 30:18

“Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!”

Love

Divine love is God's genuine relational and affective regard for another, in which He wills and seeks that person's good.

Key Scripture — 1 John 4:8–10

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Mercy

Divine mercy is God's compassionate treatment of creatures in guilt, suffering, weakness, vulnerability, or need, directed toward their genuine good.

Key Scripture — Psalm 78:38–39

“Yet he was merciful;
he forgave their iniquities
and did not destroy them.
Time after time he restrained his anger
and did not stir up his full wrath.
He remembered that they were but flesh,
a passing breeze that does not return.”

Omnipotence

Divine omnipotence is God's unrestricted power to accomplish whatever He wills that is genuinely possible and consistent with His own character and nature.

Key Scripture — Jeremiah 32:17

“Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.”

Omnipresence

Divine omnipresence is God's unrestricted presence, access, activity, and reach throughout creation, such that no place contains Him and no place excludes Him, while allowing for different manifestations and modes of relational presence.

Key Scripture — Jeremiah 23:23–24

“‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the LORD, ‘and not a God far away? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?’ declares the LORD. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the LORD.”

Omniscience

Divine omniscience means that no truth or reality lies outside the perfect knowledge and understanding of the Triune God, including all actual past, present, and future reality and every genuine possibility. This exhaustive divine knowledge does not require every item of knowledge to be possessed independently or identically by the Father, Son, and Spirit; Scripture may reveal genuine personal differences in knowledge without implying any deficiency in the knowledge of the Triune God.

Key Scripture — Psalm 147:5

“Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.”

Key Scripture — Matthew 24:36

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Patience

Divine patience is God's willing restraint of a warranted adverse response, allowing time or opportunity for a fitting response or purpose before He acts more fully.

Key Scripture — 2 Peter 3:9

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Relationality

Divine relationality means that God genuinely initiates, sustains, values, and responds within relationships with creatures. His interactions with creatures are real experiences for Him, not merely appearances or changes experienced only by creatures; yet they do not supply a deficiency in God or change His character.

Key Scripture — John 15:15

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Sovereignty

Divine sovereignty is God's unique authority and power over the whole created order, by which He can govern creation and bring about His intended purposes without requiring that every creaturely choice be authored or determined by Him.

Key Scripture — Isaiah 46:9–10

“Remember the former things, those of long ago;
I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the beginning,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say, ‘My purpose will stand,
and I will do all that I please.’”

Spirituality

Divine spirituality means that God's divine nature is spirit rather than a creaturely body of flesh and bone. He is not bodily contained or dependent, yet can genuinely be present, act, and manifest at particular locations; and the Son can assume genuine embodied human existence without making a physical body part of the divine nature itself.

Key Scripture — John 4:24

“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Truthfulness

Divine truthfulness is God's perfect reliability in communicating what corresponds to reality, without falsehood or intentional deception.

Key Scripture — Titus 1:2

“in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time,”

Wisdom

Divine wisdom is God's perfect understanding of truth together with His ability to order purposes, judgments, means, and actions appropriately toward the ends He wills, in accordance with His good character.

Key Scripture — Isaiah 28:29

“All this also comes from the LORD Almighty,
whose plan is wonderful,
whose wisdom is magnificent.”

Wrath

Divine wrath is holy, governed opposition to evil because evil violates, corrupts, destroys, neglects, or disorders genuine goods that require protection.

Key Scripture — Romans 1:18

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”

All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version (NIV).