God’s Self-Revelation
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
Humans know God only where God has chosen to make Himself known. Thus, from this fact, we must think in terms of God’s self-disclosure, if we mortals are to know anything about God. We might begin with the assertion that God has revealed Himself in His handiwork of creation. The starting point of the Bible identifies the earliest fingerprint of God in its opening sentence: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
The famous declaration of Romans 1:20 points to God’s creation as a means of His self-revelation, “For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” The phrase “things that have been made” tells us that in some way every created thing bears witness to God’s divine nature and power. Our Creator God is self-revealed in His work. This truth about God’s self-revelation through His creation lies behind the statement of Acts 14:17: “He did not leave Himself without witness, for He did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
The Old Testament also attests to the created order as a channel through which God has given revelation about Himself. Psalm 19:1–3 contains this poetic testimony: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.”
The sky in the light of day or in the majesty of a clear night is declaring without the use of human language God’s self-display in the beauty, orderliness and sheer greatness that speaks universally of a God who has revealed Himself as a powerful and careful Creator. One does not have to just look up, but also to look around at plants and animals, at rivers and lakes, at oceans and islands, at mountain grandeur to get God’s message that He possesses “eternal power,” and seeks to communicate to all people in all places without the use of words. We also can look within at the intricacies and marvels of a human body to perceive divine wisdom in what God has made. Whatever the human language or dialect, the created order speaks of God’s existence and creative power.
The tragedy is that sin blinds and deafens people to God’s self-disclosure in His creation. God’s self-revelation itself remains in what He has made but fallen human nature and sin act like blinders over human hearts, preventing seeing God through His handiwork. Only God’s later work of saving grace can enable one to receive what God discloses about Himself through creation. As a result, while God’s self-revelation in nature remains, in human experience it cannot save but serves only to bring condemnation.
Exchanging glory for a lie
The Bible explains the condemnation that follows the human response to what God discloses in creation as exchanging “the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” To reinforce the seriousness of the human response to natural revelation, two verses later, the Bible concludes, “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:23–25).
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