A Little Dose Of Pink

From the pen of Arthur Walkington Pink:

The Godhood of God!  What is meant by this expression?  Ah, sad it is that such a question needs to be asked and answered. And yet it does: for a generation has arisen that is well nigh universally ignorant of the important truth which this term connotes.  That which is popular today in the colleges, in the pulpits, and in the press, is the dignity, the power, and the attainments of man.  But this is only the corrupt fruit that has issued from the Evolutionary teachings of fifty years ago.  When Christian theologians (?) accepted the Darwinian hypothesis, which excluded God from the realm of Creation, it was only to be expected that more and more God would be banished from the realm of human affairs. Thus it has proven.  To the twentieth-century mind God is little more than an abstraction, an impersonal “First Cause,” or if a Being at all, One far removed from this world and having little or nothing to do with mundane affairs.  Man, forsooth, is a “god” unto himself.  He is a “free agent” and therefore the regulator of his own life and the determiner of his own destiny.  Such was the Devil’s lie at the beginning—“Ye shall be as God” (Gen. 3:5).  But from human speculation and Satanic insinuation we turn to Divine revelation.

The Godhood of God!  What is meant by the expression?  This: the omnipotency of God, the absolute sovereignty of God. When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that God is God. We affirm that God is something more than an empty title: that God is something more than a mere figure-head: that God is something more than a far-distant Spectator, looking helplessly on at the suffering which sin has wrought.  When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that He is “King of kings and Lord of lords.”  We affirm that God is something more than a disappointed, dis-satisfied, defeated Being, who is filled with benevolent desires but lacking in power to carry them out.  When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that He is “the Most High.”  We affirm that God is something more than One who has endowed man with the power of choice, and because He has done this is therefore unable to compel man to do His bidding.  We affirm that God is something more than One who has waged a protracted war with the Devil and has been worsted.  When we speak of the Godhood of God we affirm that He is the Almighty.

To speak of the Godhood of God then, is to say that God is on the Throne, on the Throne as a fact and not as a say so; on a Throne that is high above all. To speak of the Godhood of God is to say that the Helm is in His hand, and that He is steering according to His own good pleasure.  To speak of the Godhood of God is to say that He is the Potter, that we are the clay, and that out of the clay He shapes one as a vessel to honor and another as a vessel to dishonor according to His own sovereign rights.  To speak of the Divine Despot doing “according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him what doest Thou?” (Dan. 4:35). Therefore, to speak of the Godhood of God is to give the mighty Creator His rightful place; it is to recognize His exalted majesty; it is to own His universal scepter.

The Godhood of God stands at the base of Divine revelation: “in the beginning God”—in solemn majesty, eternal, un-caused, self-sufficient.  This is the foundation doctrine, and upon it all other doctrines must be built, and any other doctrine which is not built upon it will inevitably fail and fall in the day of testing.  At the beginning of all true theology lies the postulate that God is God—absolute and irresistible.  It must be so.  Without this we face a closed door: with it we have a key which unlocks every mystery.  This is true of Creation; exclude an Almighty God and nothing is left but blind and illogical materialism.  This is true of Revelation: the Bible is the solitary miracle in the realm of literature; exclude God from it and you have a miracle and no miracle-Worker to produce it.  This is true of Salvation. Salvation is “of the Lord,” entirely so; exclude God from any aspect or part of salvation, and salvation vanishes.  This is true of History, for history is His story: it is the outworking in time of His eternal purpose; exclude God from history and all is meaningless and purposeless.  The absolute Godhood of God is the only guaranty that in the end it shall be fully and finally demonstrated that God is “All in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

“In the beginning God.”  This is not only the first word of Holy Scripture but it must be the firm axiom of all true philosophy—the philosophy of human history, for example. Instead of beginning with man and his world and attempting to reason back to God, we must begin with God and reason forward to man and his world. It is failure to do this which leaves unsolved the “riddle of the universe.”  Begin with the world as it is today and try to reason back to God, and what is the result?  If you are honest of heart and logical of mind, this—that God has little or nothing at all to do with the world.  But begin with God and reason forward to the world as it is today and much light is cast on the problem.  Because God is holy, His anger burns against sin.  Because God is righteous, His judgments fall on those who rebel against Him.  Because God is faithful, the solemn threatenings of His Word are being fulfilled.  Because God is omnipotent, no problem can master Him, no enemy defeat Him, and no purpose of His can be withstood.  It is just because God is who He is and what He is that we now behold what we do—the gathering clouds of the storm of Divine wrath which will shortly burst upon the earth.

“For of Him, and through Him and to Him, are all things” (Rom. 11:36).  In the beginning—God.  In the center—God.  At the end—God.  But as soon as this is insisted upon men will stand up and tell you what they think about God.   They will prate about God working consistently with His own character, as though a worm of the earth was capable of determining what was consistent and what was inconsistent with the Divine perfections.  People will say with an air of profound wisdom that God must deal justly with His creatures, which is true, of course, but who is able to define Divine justice, or any other of God’s attributes?  The truth is that man is utterly incompetent for forming a proper estimate of God’s character and ways, and it is because of this that God has given us a revelation of His mind, and in that revelation He plainly declares, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher then your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Is. 55:8, 9). In view of such a scripture as this it is only to be expected that much of the contents of the Bible conflicts with the sentiments of the carnal mind which is “enmity against God.”  And further: in view of such a Scripture as the above we need not be surprised that much of human history is so perplexing to our understandings.*

*Pink, A. W. (1999). The Godhood of God. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.