One God, the God of Israel. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Holy, faithful and love itself. And for anyone who wants to know what He is actually like, the answer has a face.
So who is God according to the Bible? He is the one living God of Israel, the Creator of everything, who exists eternally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
He is holy, faithful, just and full of mercy, and Scripture sums Him up in three words: God is love. And He is seen fully and finally in Jesus, who said that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father.
The rest of this page walks through each piece, because every one of them changes how you live on an ordinary Tuesday.
Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema. Jewish families have prayed it for thousands of years, and Jesus called it the first and greatest commandment in Mark 12:29.
Isaiah 45:5. “I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.” Israel lived surrounded by nations with many gods, and Scripture refuses to add Him to the list.
Genesis 1:1. Everything else that exists was made. He was not. The sun and moon that the neighbors worshiped are, in Genesis, simply lamps He hung up.
He is not introduced as a force or an idea. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the One who brought slaves out of Egypt. He is known by what He has done.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Deuteronomy 6:4That last card matters. The Bible does not open with a definition of God. It tells you what He did and lets you learn who He is from that, the way you know a person who kept every promise to you.
A word on other faiths, because people ask. Our Jewish neighbors pray the same Shema, and Muslims also confess one God. That shared conviction deserves respect. But we will not pretend every religion is saying the same thing, and they would be the first to tell you so. The Christian claim is specific: the one God of Israel has made Himself known in Jesus of Nazareth.
If your question comes one step earlier, whether there is a God at all, we work through that separately in does God exist.
When Moses asks who is sending him, God answers with a name. That alone tells you He wants to be approached.
The personal, covenant name, given in Exodus 3. Most English Bibles print it as LORD in small capitals. It is connected to the verb to be, which is why the “I am who I am” of Exodus 3:14 sits right beside it.
The ordinary Hebrew word for God, the one in Genesis 1:1. It is plural in form, yet with Israel's God it takes singular verbs. It can also refer to the gods of the nations, so context decides.
Lord, or my Lord. A title of respect. Out of reverence, Jewish readers came to say Adonai aloud wherever the sacred name YHWH was written, a practice English Bibles still reflect.
My Jewish Learning notes that “by the third century BCE the consonants were regarded as so sacred that they were never articulated”. The name Jehovah, which many of us grew up with, came much later, from Christian scholars blending the consonants of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai.
One folklore correction, on our own side of the aisle. You will hear that the plural Elohim proves the Trinity from Genesis 1:1. It does not. Hebrew uses plural forms for majesty, and the same word can mean pagan gods. We believe in the Trinity for better reasons than a grammar trick.
Each name has its own page if you want to go further: what Yahweh means, I Am Who I Am, Elohim and Adonai.
Here is the short version in kitchen table words. The fuller study lives at the attributes of God.
God has no beginning and no end. Psalm 90:2 says from everlasting to everlasting You are God. He does not need anything from us to keep existing.
John 4:24. God is not a large man in the sky, and He is not confined to a temple or a mountain. He can be worshiped anywhere, in Deer Park or in a hospital room. More at God is spirit.
Psalm 139 is not a threat. David writes it as relief: there is nowhere he can go where God is not already there, and nothing about him God does not already know.
Isaiah 6:3, holy, holy, holy. Holy means set apart, utterly unlike anything broken. His goodness has no shadow in it.
Deuteronomy 7:9 calls Him the faithful God who keeps His covenant of love. He does not change His mind about the people He has chosen to love.
1 John 4:8. “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” John does not say God has love. He says God is love. See God is love.
Power without love would be terrifying, and love without power would be sweet but useless. The God of the Bible has both, and that is the only reason His promises are worth leaning on.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Here is the part people find hardest, and we will not soften it.
Sound of Heaven believes in one God in three distinct Persons, each fully God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. And there are not three gods. That is our position and it is the historic faith of the church.
The word Trinity is not in the Bible, and we say that up front. What is in the Bible is the material the word was coined to describe. The Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). The Spirit who can be lied to, which Peter calls lying to God (Acts 5:3 to 4). And Jesus sending His followers to baptize in the name, singular, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).
The strongest objection deserves a fair hearing. Jewish and Muslim believers say three Persons sounds like three gods, a step away from the Shema. We hear that, and we disagree. The first Christians were Jews who prayed the Shema daily. They did not abandon it. They found that Jesus and the Spirit belonged inside it.
One God wearing three masks, playing Father, then Son, then Spirit in turn. Or three separate gods working as a team. Both are old errors, and both break the text.
At the baptism of Jesus the Son stands in the water, the Spirit descends and the Father speaks (Matthew 3:16 to 17). Three, at once, and still one God.
The egg, the shamrock and water as ice, liquid and steam all end up teaching one of those errors, which is why we have retired them. The longer case is at the Trinity in the Bible, and the Spirit's part is covered in is the Holy Spirit God.
In Matthew 28:19, how does Jesus describe baptism?
One name, three Persons. Jesus does not list three deities, and He does not rank the Son and Spirit beneath the Father. He places all three inside the single name of the one God.
If you only had one sentence to answer the question of who God is, the New Testament would hand you this one.
“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 1:18When Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus answered, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Hebrews 1:3 calls the Son “the exact representation of his being.” Not a partial glimpse. Not a hint. The exact representation.
That is why we read the whole Bible through Jesus. Scripture is God-breathed, and it was written through real people in real cultures who saw God truly but in part, over many centuries. Some passages show God's people acting, fighting and judging in His name in ways Jesus would later refuse, like the disciples who wanted fire from heaven in Luke 9 and were rebuked for it. Revelation in Scripture is progressive, and it reaches its full clarity in Christ.
So when a picture of God from somewhere else in the Bible seems to clash with the One who touched lepers and forgave the men nailing Him to a cross, Jesus gets the final word. We work through those harder passages in the true nature of God, and the person of Jesus Himself in who is Jesus.
It means you are not trying to get the attention of a distant power. God is spirit and He is present, so prayer is talking to Someone already in the room. It means His faithfulness is the floor under you on the weeks your own faithfulness runs thin. It means holiness is not a mood swing waiting to go off, because the holy God looks like Jesus at a dinner table full of people the religious crowd had written off.
It also means the Kingdom is not a waiting room. Jesus announced that the Kingdom of God had come near, and it has. The Spirit lives in believers now, the gifts are active now, and you get to take part in what God is already doing on Long Island and wherever you are reading this.
If what you believe about God leaves you anxious, ashamed and afraid of Him, check it against Jesus. The real God leads people toward peace, confidence, love, purpose and freedom.
The most surprising thing about the God of the Bible is not His power. It is that He wanted to be known, by name, by people who had nothing to offer Him.
He told Moses His name. He gave Israel the Shema. And then, in the fullness of time, He stopped speaking through messengers and came Himself. Jesus is not one more description of God on the pile. He is God showing up in person, so that the answer to the question on this page could be held, heard and followed.
You do not have to have all of this sorted to start. You just have to be willing to look at Jesus and keep looking. If you want company doing that, plan a visit and come as you are, or read what we believe in full. If something on this page stirred up a hard question or an old hurt, our team would be glad to pray with you.
God is the one living God of Israel, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, eternal, holy, faithful and love itself, who gave His name to Moses and showed His face in Jesus.
That is a good question to be carrying. Send it in and somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you and talk it through.
According to the Bible, God is the one living God of Israel, the Creator of everything that exists, who has no beginning and no end. He is spirit, holy, faithful, just and merciful, and 1 John 4:8 says simply that God is love. The New Testament reveals that this one God exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Above all, Scripture says God is seen fully in Jesus, who told Philip that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father.
The personal name God gives Moses in Exodus 3 is written with four Hebrew letters, YHWH, often pronounced Yahweh. It is linked to the verb to be, which is why it sits beside the words I am who I am in Exodus 3:14. Out of reverence, Jewish readers said Adonai, meaning Lord, instead of pronouncing it, and most English Bibles print it as LORD in small capitals. Jehovah is a later blend of YHWH with the vowels of Adonai.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all confess one God, and that shared conviction deserves respect. Christians share the Hebrew Scriptures and the Shema with our Jewish neighbors. But the religions do not describe God the same way, and it would be disrespectful to all of them to pretend otherwise. The Christian claim is specific: the one God of Israel is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and He has made Himself fully known in Jesus of Nazareth.
The Bible insists there is one God, as Deuteronomy 6:4 says. It also calls the Father God, the Son God and the Holy Spirit God, and shows all three present at once at the baptism of Jesus. The church uses the word Trinity to hold those truths together: one God in three distinct Persons, each fully God. It is not one God wearing three masks, and it is not three gods. It is a mystery, but not a contradiction.
Yes. That is the point of the whole story. God gave His name to Moses, made covenants with His people, and then came in person in Jesus so that He could be known rather than guessed at. Through Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives in those who trust Him, so prayer is real conversation with a God who is present. You do not need to have everything figured out to begin. Start by looking at Jesus in the Gospels.