Everything begins with God. Before we can rightly understand sin or salvation, heaven or the church, we have to know the One we are dealing with. The trouble is that men are quick to make a god of their own liking, soft where they want Him soft and silent where they want Him silent. The Bible does not let us do that. It shows us God as He is, in His works and in His word, and it calls us to know Him on His terms and not our own. Let the Scriptures tell us who He is.
There Is One God
The first thing the Bible says about God is that there is only one. To Israel the LORD declared, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4). He will not share His glory with another. "I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me" (Isaiah 45:5). Paul said the same to the church, that "there is none other God but one" (1 Corinthians 8:4). The idols of the nations were nothing. The living God is one, and there is no other.
One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Yet this one God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the very beginning God said, "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26). When Jesus was baptized, the Son stood in the water, the Spirit descended like a dove, and the Father spoke from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:16-17). Jesus told His apostles to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19). The Bible calls this the Godhead (Colossians 2:9). One God, and these three are that one God. We will not explain it past what is written, but we will believe what is written.
What God Is Like
God has told us what He is like. He is eternal, with no beginning and no end. "Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God" (Psalm 90:2). He is almighty, and nothing is beyond Him. "there is nothing too hard for thee" (Jeremiah 32:17). He is holy, set apart from all evil, so that the angels cry "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts" (Isaiah 6:3). He is just and right in all He does (Deuteronomy 32:4). He does not change His mind to suit the times, for He said, "I am the LORD, I change not" (Malachi 3:6). He knows all things and is present everywhere, so that there is nowhere a man can hide from Him (Psalm 139:7-10). And He is a Spirit, to be worshipped "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24).
God Is Love, and God Is Holy
Two truths about God must be held together, or we will make Him into something He is not. The first is that "God is love" (1 John 4:8). He loved a world that had turned from Him, and "gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16) to save it. The second is that He is holy and will not wink at sin, for "our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29). Paul tells us to behold both, "the goodness and severity of God" (Romans 11:22). A god who is only soft would never have sent His Son to die, and a god who was only severe would never have wanted to. At the cross His love and His justice meet, and there we see Him truly.
God the Creator
This God made everything that is. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). He did not wind the world up and walk away, for "in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28), and by His Son "all things consist" (Colossians 1:17). The creation itself testifies of Him. "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Psalm 19:1), and His power and nature are so plainly seen in the things He made that men "are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). No one will stand before Him and say he had no way of knowing there was a God.
Knowing God, and What He Asks
God did not reveal Himself so that we could study Him at a distance. He means to be known and obeyed. Jesus said, "this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). And He can be known only on His terms, through His Son, for Jesus said, "no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). What God asks of us is summed up simply. "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13), and "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart" (Mark 12:30).
So God is not a force, an idea, or a comfortable notion we may shape as we please. He is the living God who made you, who will judge you, and who has made Himself known so that you may come to Him through His Son. The only fitting response is to bow before Him, to take Him at His word, and to obey. Will you know Him as He is, or go on with a god of your own making?