There is a very interesting statement made in 1 Peter 1:21 about which I never remember hearing anyone comment. It says, “Who through Him are believers in God, that raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.” Have you ever considered the implications of that statement? It is only through Jesus that you can have the proper understanding of God and thus have the proper faith in Him. If you do not believe in the God that Jesus revealed, you do not believe in God in the Bible sense.
It is amazing to discover the number of persons who claim to believe in God, but they have very little concept of the God that Jesus revealed. There are those who believe in a god who overlooks sin. He would not allow anyone to be lost eternally. Many believe in a god who either has not given a revelation of his will, or he made it too difficult to understand. Others think he does not really mean what he says. For example, when he says, “Baptism doth also now save you” (1 Peter 3:21), he really means that baptism has nothing to do with salvation.
The God Jesus revealed is a God of grace. He graciously provided the way to be saved for every sinner who is willing to forsake his sin. The God that Jesus revealed is One who loves mankind enough and hates sin enough that He allowed Jesus to die to solve that problem. The God that Jesus revealed is a God so just that He cannot lie, and thus, He must allow the unrepentant, disobedient sinner to choose his own destiny and be separated from Him forever.
Of course, it would take many books to begin to do justice to the nature of God, but the purpose of this article is simply to emphasize that probably no one has ever had a proper concept or belief in God except as revealed in Christ. My judgment is that this includes even Moses, Job and Abraham. What the Holy Spirit revealed to them about God was true, but it was not as complete as that which “in these last days was spoken to us in His Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). As Jesus put it in John 1:18, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” If your belief in God is such that you are willing to take Christ as your full authority in all things, repent of every sin, be immersed in water for the remission of your sins and then so live that the life of Christ may be manifest in your mortal flesh, you have the kind of belief in God that will save you.
