God’s Self-Revelation
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
God has chosen to reveal something about Himself both in nature and in humans whom He created in His own image and likeness. Students of theology have traditionally referred to these disclosures as General Revelation. We might describe General Revelation as God’s self-disclosure to all people throughout all time and in all places. Revelation by means of creation and human image-bearers is general in the sense that it is and has been available to all people at all times. It also is general in the sense that the perceptions about God through these means is of a general nature, namely that He exists; is powerful and wise; is a lover of beauty, symmetry and orderliness; and that He is personal, communicative and knowable. However, for people to know God in a personal way and enjoy fellowship with Him it required further revelation of God; humankind’s limitations of finiteness and sinfulness made this necessary.
Beyond all that could be known about God through General Revelation, His most complete and saving self-revelation awaited the coming of Jesus into the world. The approach of another Christmas affords an opportune time to reflect on God’s self-disclosure in the person, mission and message of Christ. In this season we do well to confess the truth of Colossians 2:9 concerning Christ: “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”
Christmas also is the time to acknowledge and reaffirm that Christ Jesus came as fully human in order that all humans might have a saving knowledge of God. This goes beyond General Revelation. It is often referred to as Special Revelation or Particular Revelation. All people need to know more about God than a general grasp of some of His attributes. We all stand in need of knowing God in a relational way, not merely gaining a mental grasp of what God is like but entering into a personal, redemptive and heart-to-heart relationship with Him. The insufficiency of General Revelation at this point of need made necessary special revelation. So if we would enjoy fellowship with God and know Him experientially, we are compelled to receive the saving self-revelation of God that He has revealed in the Savior’s coming into the world. The incarnation of God in Christ became the apex of God’s self-revelation.
Authority of the Bible
People who accept the authority and accuracy of the Bible believe that when the prophets spoke or wrote, they were declaring a message from God and about God, but when Christ spoke, it was God Himself who was speaking. Not only in His message was God being heard but also in the character of Christ, God was being revealed. God had actually come among humans and displayed His attributes to them. Christ’s utterances, attitudes, affections, actions and reactions did more than mirror the Father. They were the actual presence of God who had come to make Himself knowable to and experienced by human beings.
The Roman centurion at the cross expressed it succinctly: “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54). Elsewhere, the Bible puts it like this: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18). Jesus is on record as having said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In celebrating Christmas, be sure to include gratitude for God’s self-revelation in His Son.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
Share with others: