3 Mistakes People Make About God

(To watch 3 Mistakes People Make About God instead of reading, click here.)

How do we come to know God? What mistakes do people make when wanting to know God?

Welcome to Session 1 of Discovering Good News in John.

You can read or watch this 11-session video/blog series, which is a companion to the Bible study, Discovering Good News in John. The book, John’s Gospel, and this video/blog series together will show you the hope of eternal life, assure you of God’s deep love, bolster your faith, and confirm your confidence that you can have eternal life.

I became a Christian through reading the Gospel of John. I tell the story in the book. And since that time, I’ve met others who also became Christians through reading John’s Gospel. That’s why I was so excited to write Discovering Good News in John with Pam Farrel and Karla Dornacher.

When I started reading John for the first time at age 14, I had a lot of mistaken notions about God and Jesus. For example, I pictured God as a mostly bald man who peeked through clouds periodically to see what people were doing. I didn’t think he knew my thoughts unless I was silently praying. I thought Jesus was a shepherd who liked children but couldn’t get along with adults, so the adults killed him. And I certainly didn’t think he was God.

John’s Gospel changed all that. It tells us much about who God and Jesus are and what they’re like. So to prepare us for that, today I’ll describe 3 Mistakes People Make About God.

Each mistake hurts people’s faith and keeps them from fully knowing God. That’s why it’s important to discard those mistakes. Each mistake also denies an attribute of God that the Bible teaches, so we’ll also look at a total of seven of God’s attributes and what the Bible says about them.

The first mistake about God is that feelings are the best way to know God.

Mistakes About God: 1) Feelings Are the Best Way to Know God

This mistake about God denies that God has revealed himself in a way that is knowable.

Once when I was leading a group Bible study, two new Christians started chatting about what they thought God was like. The first woman said, “I feel that God is like this…” and she continued with some thoughts that clearly contradicted Scripture. The second woman said, “I think the same thing.”

I explained that we don’t look to our feelings to know what God is like but rather to what God has revealed about himself in Scripture. The second woman nodded and said that made sense. But the first pressed her lips together in a way that made it plain she disagreed. Indeed, she soon abandoned our Bible study, church, and Christianity.

Believing this mistake—that feelings are the best way to know God—hurts faith because one’s faith is not in the true God but in an imaginary one.

The gal who thought that her feelings were the best guide was a huge fan of Oprah Winfrey, and I suspect that she got much of her theology from Oprah. Oprah has said things like:

“There are millions of ways to be a human being, and many paths to what you call God.”

And also:

“Well, I am a Christian who believes that there are certainly many more paths to God other than Christianity.”

https://christianpodcastcentral.com/wwutt-oprah-said-there-are-many-ways-to-god/ (accessed 7/14/2022)

What People Say

Here are two things people say when they believe their feelings are the best way to know God.

1) “I don’t think this is wrong, so God must not either.” In other words, my feelings about morality are a better guide than the Bible. This stunts spiritual growth because God’s commands help us grow spiritually.

2) “God wants me to be happy so he doesn’t care whether I obey the Bible’s commands.” Actually, God wants to bless us through our obedience, and he promises to eternally reward obedience. Believing God wants our happiness more than our obedience results in unhappiness because God’s commands are designed to bless us. It can eventually result in falling away from God when things happen that cause unhappiness.

When we believe our feelings are the best way to know God, in our minds we create…

A God in Our Own Image

When we think, “This is what I think is best; therefore, this is what God thinks is best,” we’ve created a god in our own image.

Let’s look at two Scriptures in which God responds to people who think God is like what they imagine him to be.

“You Thought I Was Exactly Like You”

The first is Psalm 50:21. It reads,

When you did these things [theft, adultery, deceit, slander]
   and I kept silent,
   you thought I was exactly like you.
But I now arraign you
   and set my accusations before you.

Psalm 50:21 (NIV)

Here, God tells people that when they thought he was just like them, they were just plain wrong. Actually, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to think that God is like whatever people think he should be. After all, people think contradictory things about God, and they can’t all be right.

“My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts”

The second Scripture is Isaiah 55:7–9.

Let the wicked forsake their ways
   and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
   and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
   neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
   so are my ways higher than your ways
   and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:7-9 (NIV)

“He Makes a God”

Creating a god in our own image is not new. The Bible calls it idolatry. But instead of fashioning an idol from wood and silver, we fashion it from our imaginations.

Isaiah 44:17 addresses idol making:

From the rest [of the wood] he makes a god, his idol;
   he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
   “Save me! You are my god!”

Isaiah 44:17 (NIV)

And here’s what the Apostle Paul said in Acts 17:29-31:

We should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.

Acts 17:29-31 (NIV)

Paul here is sharing the gospel with Gentiles (that is, non-Jews) and he says that the resurrection is evidence that the God of the Bible exists and that Jesus will judge the world. John’s Gospel will argue that the resurrection is evidence that God sent Jesus and that we can trust Jesus’s words. In John 10:35, Jesus called Scripture the “word of God” that “cannot be broken.” If Jesus calls Scripture God’s Word, then we should pay attention to what it says.

The mistake that feelings are the best way to know God denies an attribute of God that the Bible teaches; namely, that God is knowable.

Mistakes about God Deny God Is Knowable

Jeremiah 9:23-24 reads:

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

Jeremiah 9:23-24 (ESV)

Notice that God here reveals through the prophet Jeremiah what he is like and says that knowing him is better than intelligence, strength, and wealth.

Here’s what Jesus said about knowing God in John 1:18 and 17:3:

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

John 1:18 (NIV)

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

John 17:3 (ESV)

In other words, God is knowable through Jesus.

Now, Scripture also says that some things about God are beyond our full grasp. For example, Psalm 145:3 reads:

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,
   and his greatness is unsearchable.

Psalm 145:3 (ESV)

But the key point here is that one of God’s attributes is that he is knowable through what he has revealed about himself in Scripture. Knowing God is too important to leave to fickle feelings.

Another mistake about God is that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament.

Mistakes about God: 2) The God of the Old Testament Differs From the God of the New Testament

This denies at least five of God’s attributes: that he is love, just, unchangeable, perfect, and a unity.

One morning I visited a women’s small group that happened to be studying the passage in the Bible where God tells Moses he cannot enter the promised land because of a sin he committed. A woman spoke up saying, “Why was God so harsh with Moses? I don’t understand. I guess the God of the Old Testament is really different than the God of the New Testament.” Another woman replied, “Yes, I heard that too. I think that’s why we need Jesus to protect us from God’s wrath.”

Sadly, the group leader started to close the meeting down, so all I could slip in was, “God is a God of love who never changes.” Thankfully, I had the email address of the questioner and I was able to answer her questions to her satisfaction by explaining the harm Moses’s sin caused and why God holds leaders to a higher standard.

The mistake that the God of the Old Testament differs from the God of the New Testament comes from the early church heretic Marcion. Atheists frequently throw around the phrase, “God of the Old Testament” to mock God, and perhaps that’s why some Christians today are hearing the phrase and are accidentally taking on Marcion’s heresy. The heresy causes people to be afraid of God and afraid of reading the Old Testament. They think the Old Testament is all about judgment and the New Testament is all about grace. But they don’t know the Bible well enough to have seen God’s grace in the Old Testament and God’s judgment in the New Testament.

What Scripture Actually Teaches

We’ll look at three passages that show consistency between what the Old and New Testaments teach about God and judgment. The first is God’s self-description. The second is Jesus speaking. And the third is Jesus quoting the Old Testament.

Exodus 34:6-7 gives God’s self-description in the Old Testament.

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”

Exodus 34:6-7 (ESV)

So we see the Old Testament describes God as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, loving, faithful, and forgiving. Now let’s read what Jesus says about himself in John 5:27–29.

And he [God] has given him [Jesus] authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

John 5:27-29 (ESV)

Jesus said he will be the one to execute judgment. In our third passage, Mark 9:47-48, Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:24.

And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where “the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

Mark 9:47-48 (NIV)

So we see that God is love and God is righteous and good. That God is love doesn’t mean he’s like a grandfather who is blind to imperfections. He sees our failings and he desires to change us for the better.

When people sin against those he loves, it rightly angers him—just as we’re angry when we hear of horrific injustices. But God also offers grace to the repentant. He showed the greatness of his love through the self-sacrifice that paid sin’s penalty for us.

Earlier I said that the mistake that the God of the Old Testament differs from the God of the New Testament denies five of God’s attributes. Let’s look at them.

Mistakes about God Deny God Is Love, Just, Unchangeable, Perfect, and a Unity

1) God Is Love

This is clearly stated in 1 John 4:8:

God is love.

1 John 4:8 (ESV)

God has also demonstrated that he is love through his actions. 1 John 4:10 reads:

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation [or atoning sacrifice] for our sins.

1 John 4:10 (ESV)

And here’s Romans 5:8:

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8 (ESV)

So God is love. But part of love is desiring justice when those you love are wronged. That leads us to the next attribute of God,

2) God Is Righteous And Just

God’s perfect righteousness and justice is described first in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 32:4 reads:

The Rock, his work is perfect,
   for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
   just and upright is he.

Deuteronomy 32:4 (ESV)

When we’re wronged or when we see someone wronged, our hearts long for justice. Yet we know God offers forgiveness. How can God forgive sins and still be just? God showed in the Old Testament sacrificial system that sin brought death, but another creature’s life could pay the penalty due someone. Still, the blood of animals could not suffice enough to provide eternal life, so God had to provide a surpassing ransom. Psalm 49:7-9,and then verse 15 explains this:

Truly no man can ransom another,
   or give to God the price of his life,
for the ransom of their life is costly
   and can never suffice,
that he should live on forever
   and never see the pit.

Psalm 49:7-9 (ESV)

Here’s the next verse, verse 15.

But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
   for he will receive me. Selah

Psalm 49:15 (ESV)

The New Testament makes clear that Jesus is that ransom. In fact, just as a shadow shows the shape of a greater reality, so the Old Testament sacrifices were a shadow of Jesus’s sacrifice, as Hebrews 10:1-5 explains:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.”

Hebrews 10:1-5 (ESV)

Romans 3:25–26 sums it up:

God put forward [Jesus] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Romans 3:25-26 (ESV)

The third attribute is that

3) God Is Unchangeable

God is unchangeable in his being, his attributes, his purposes, and his promises. Let’s look at four verses on God being unchangeable.

First, in Malachi 3:6 God says,

I the LORD do not change.

Malachi 3:6 (NIV)

Second, Psalm 33:11 reads

The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.

Psalm 33:11 (ESV)

Third, Numbers 23:19 reads

God is not man, that he should lie,
   or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
   Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

Numbers 23:19 (ESV)

Fourth, James 1:17 tells us this:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

James 1:17 (ESV)

So God is unchangeable.

4) God Is Perfect

For the God of the Old Testament to differ from the God of the New Testament would mean at least one of them would be imperfect. But Jesus in Matthew 5:48 said,

Your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:8 (ESV)

5) God Is a Unity

This means that God is not part unchangeable, part perfect, part love, and part light. He is not one of his attributes at 1:00 PM and another of his attributes at 2:00 PM. He is at all times all of his attributes.

So mistake #1 is that feelings are the best way to know God. Mistake #2 is that the God of the Old Testament differs from the God of the New Testament.

Mistakes about God: 3) God Forgets Sins When We Confess Them

This mistake denies that God is omniscient; that is, all knowing.

When I was a young Christian, I heard other Christians say if you confess your sins a second time, God says, “What sin? I didn’t know you did that.” It was a cute way of encouraging people to accept forgiveness, but it’s based on a faulty interpretation of a couple of passages.

This mistake trivializes sin and sows doubts about rewards for perseverance. For instance, when a Nazi who persecuted Corrie Ten Boom in a concentration camp turned to Christ, did God forget all the wrongs he did against Corrie and her sister, thus causing them to lose their rewards for persevering through severe persecution? No, God knows their sufferings and he will reward them.

Additionally, according to 2 Samuel 12:13, God forgave David of his adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. When a pastor preaches on David and Bathsheba, does God say, “I didn’t know David sinned”? After the sermon, does he promptly forget about it again? No, indeed, in the days of David’s great-great-grandson, God guided the hand of the writer of 1 Kings 15:5 to record this:

David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

1 Kings 15:5 (ESV)

So in the days of David’s great-great-grandson, God still knew about David’s sin, even though God had forgiven David.

Scriptures That Are Sometimes Misunderstood

The verse that’s often misunderstood is Jeremiah 31:34. It reads:

For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

Jeremiah 31:34 (NIV)

The problem is a misunderstanding of how the Bible uses the words forget and remember. When it says God “remembers sins,” it means he will act on and punish them. When it says he will “forget sins,” it means he will not act on or will no longer punish them.

We’ll look at two passages that will help make this clear. Exodus 2:23–24 reads:

During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.

Exodus 2:23-24 (NIV)

Here “remembered” means he acted on his covenant with Abraham. He never forgot his covenant.

Jeremiah 14:10 reads:

Thus says the LORD concerning this people:
“They have loved to wander thus;
   they have not restrained their feet;
therefore the Lord does not accept them;
   now he will remember their iniquity
   and punish their sins.”

Jeremiah 14:10 (ESV)

Clearly God never forgot the people’s sins in the sense of not knowing they happened. But since the people ignored his calls to repent from bloodshed, child sacrifice, theft, idolatry, and oppression of the poor, he was no longer going to delay punishing their sins.

Don’t Misunderstand

Forgiveness is total and complete, so much so that it is as if sin is forgotten. 1 John 1:9 promises:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9 (ESV)

The attribute of God that this mistake denies is that God is omniscient.

Mistakes about God Deny God Is Omniscient

That is, he is all knowing. Here are three passages about God’s omniscience.

God… knows everything.

1 John 3:20 (ESV)

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Hebrews 4:13 (esv)

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar…
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.

Psalm 139:1–4 (ESV)

Yes, God knows everything, even our thoughts. But out of his great love, he sent his Son to die to pay the penalty for our sins.

John 3:16 reads

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16 (ESV)

In Conclusion

Today we looked at three common mistakes about knowing God and the seven attributes of God that these mistakes deny:

1. God is knowable
2. God is love
3. God is righteous and just
4. God is unchangeable
5. God is perfect
6. God is a unity
7. God is omniscient

Please answer the discussion questions below in the comments to get to know your fellow Bible study friends. This week in Discovering Good News in John, complete chapter 1: The Word Was God. We’ll answer the question, Who is Jesus?

Join the Discussion

1. Which of the seven attributes of God we discussed today comforts you the most? Why?
2. Where are you studying from and what drew you to join us for this online Bible study?