Where It All Begins
1 – Who God Is
A Note Before You Start
This is not written for people who already know the language of church. It is written for someone who has never opened a Bible, never sat in a service, and has no idea what words like "sin," "grace," or "saved" are actually supposed to mean. Every one of those words will be explained here, plainly, the first time it is used.
This series is short on purpose. It is not trying to cover everything. It answers one question as plainly as I can: what separates a person from God, what God did about it, and what a person must do in response. Six short parts. Read them in order.
Before anything else can make sense, one thing has to be settled first: this conversation does not start with you. It starts with God. That may sound like an obvious place to begin, but it is worth saying plainly, because most people, without realizing it, start somewhere else — with their own life, their own questions, their own sense of what is fair or unfair. None of that is wrong to think about. It is just not the starting point.
God is not a concept, a feeling, or a force. He is a Person — the one who made everything that exists, including you, and who has been actively present in the world since before you were born and will be long after. He did not start existing when someone believed in Him, and He does not stop being real when someone doesn’t. That is simply what it means to say He is God: He is not dependent on anyone’s opinion of Him, including yours.
Two things about Him matter most for what follows.
He Is Holy
Holy means set apart, entirely different in kind, without flaw. It is not a comment about God being strict or hard to please. It is a description of His actual nature. There is nothing dishonest in Him, nothing cruel, nothing selfish, nothing hidden. He does not lie, and He is not confused. That matters, because it means when He calls something wrong, it actually is wrong — not because He is offended by it personally, but because it genuinely does not belong in a universe He made to reflect who He is.
He Is Love
At the same time, His defining posture toward people is not distance or suspicion. It is love — the kind that acts, not just the kind that feels. Everything covered in the rest of this series, including the hardest parts, comes from that love, not in spite of it. God is not looking for a reason to reject anyone. What follows will make clear exactly what He has already done to avoid that outcome.
“God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:3)
Hold both of those together as you keep reading. A God who is only holy and not loving would be terrifying with no way out. A God who is only loving and not holy would have no reason to take what is wrong seriously. He is both, fully, at the same time. That is what makes the rest of this story possible.