A traveler stood in the midst of the Areopagus overlooking the city of Athens. As those who spent their time on nothing other than telling or hearing something new, the Athenians turned and directed their attention toward the unfamiliar man. If they were hoping he would say something memorable, they were not disappointed. Opening his mouth, Paul of Tarsus addressed the assembled company with words that have resonated within the collective consciousness of humankind to this very day:

Men of Athens, I observe that in every way you very much revere your deities. For while I was passing through and carefully observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore you worship without knowing, this I announce to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, this One, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands as though He needed anything in addition, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things. And He made from one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, determining beforehand their appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwelling, that they might seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, even though He is not far from each one of us.¹

Since the beginning of time, humankind has sought the answer to one question more than any other. Regardless of race, culture, or place in time, all of humanity contains within itself the desperate desire to know the answer. Try as we might to ignore it, the question doesn't seem to go away. At each turn in our lives, the question manifests itself in different ways. In childhood, we wonder at the color of the sky and the occurrence of death. As we grow up, these seemingly simple questions do not disappear; rather, our search for their answers only magnifies in scope. We desire to know where everything came from and what our own source is. We wonder at the beauty of nature, the perfection of the human body, and how we got here in the first place. While science has answered many questions, there is a gap that remains that no amount of scholarly research can fill. With each discovery made, we find that within us the mystery remains unsolved. The desire to know our source only increases. And so in the end, we return to the beginning. "Who is God?" we ask.

An Unknown God
In the search to answer the question—perhaps the greatest ever asked by humankind—we have responded in innumerable ways. We instinctively think in grand and majestic terms, understanding God as the Creator, as some force infinitely larger than ourselves. In our minds, we place Him in heaven, perhaps in outer space, and yet sometimes really wonder if maybe He isn't everywhere and all around us. Some of us choose to leave the issue at that—that God is an impersonal and ambiguous force, responsible for the world around us, but not relevant in any other way. Yet abandoning the matter only leaves our question—the cause of our searching in the first place—unanswered. Our desire to genuinely know who God is still burns with undiminished intensity.

In another attempt to solve the mystery, humanity has responded by creating various religions. Despite the fact that these religions have given God a name and perhaps even a more definite place in our lives, for the most part, God—His location, His person, and His relationship to us—remains unknowable. Our attempts to worship Him illustrate religion's inadequacy in helping us know God. In the same spirit of those gathered at the Areopagus so many centuries ago, we go to temples or cathedrals where we listen to people speak of a God whom they nor we really know. We attend prayer services where we seek to commune with God. While we may be rewarded for our efforts with an emotional experience, whether or not we have truly reached God is questionable. Depending on one's taste for organized religion, many of us may have read various "holy" texts in which the underlying theme is one of following certain rules or living in a certain manner. Accordingly, we attempt to control our behavior with the hope that by doing so, God will seem less remote. Yet, more often than not, even these efforts are in vain. Religion by any name leaves us unable to meet each requirement and banishes God to an even more distant realm.

Often, it seems that there is no solution to the mystery, no answer to the question. We suspect that there is a God, but He seems unattainable and incomprehensible. Nothing—not nature, not education, not personal seeking—has given us a real way to know Him. He remains far from us, at once immensely desirable and deeply hidden. This struggle has caused many of us to "create" the god that best suits us and fits our concept of who God should be. Whether desperation or exasperation sparks this impulse, we figure that maybe God is just whoever we want Him to be and is therefore different for each person. Such a conclusion, however, is hardly satisfying. As we lie in bed at night and wonder about the god we have fashioned for ourselves, something deep within still searches for the truth. There is an inner conviction—sometimes strong and persistent, other times faint and nagging—that there is an answer, that God is real, and that there is only one God—the God who desires that we know Him.

Unapproachable
Our instincts are right. There is one God and one alone. But as experience confirms, God is fundamentally unapproachable. The Bible says that God is He "who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen nor can see."² God is our source, our Creator—the One who stretched forth the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him.³ He is the Father—He who is infinitely greater than anything our minds can conceive. He is the Other, the Distinct, the One dwelling in a realm apart from us in power and majesty. As such a one, He is the mystery we cannot explain, the puzzle we cannot solve. He is God—the eternal "I AM WHO I AM."⁴ Self-existing and ever-existing, the God of the heavens exists on the far side of an untraversable divide. It appears that He whom we want to know is He whom we cannot know.

"God with Us"
God does not, however, desire to remain in the heavens, separate and detached from those He has created. Rather, He wants to approach us and make a way for us to approach Him. Though dwelling in inaccessible light, the immortal and invisible God became a man.⁵ Conceived in a virgin's womb, He who existed outside of the confines of time stepped out of eternity and into time; He who was unconstrained by space took on human flesh. He became Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was completely God and genuinely man. Just as the Hebrew prophets had foretold long before His birth, He was called Immanuel—Hebrew for "God with us."⁶ God the unapproachable became God the man. As a man, He experienced our sorrows and our joys; He endured the same trials and felt the same weaknesses. As God, He conveyed the Father's loving care and compassion for His children. He gave sight to the blind and life to the dead. Even the incurably ill could approach this humble man and He would heal them. It would have been impossible for Him as a man in the flesh to be any more near us, for He was truly one of us.

Jesus the Son brought God the Father to man. When we contemplate the life and work of Jesus, we cannot but marvel at how approachable He as God became to humankind. Yet even as a man, it is hard to know Him. If God was unreachable before becoming man, it seems that as a man beside us, much less a man locked in history, He still remains too far from our grasp. Although God in Jesus Christ was so approachable, a very real separation yet remains between Him and us. So the question persists. Who is God, that we might really know Him?

Receivable
To answer our question finally and forever, our eyes must be opened to see something most critical. Just as God the Father did not remain apart from us but came to us in His Son, Jesus Christ, so also His Son did not merely stay among man. Rather, He took another step—a step that put Him so near us that even the word "with" fails to describe the relationship. After living just over thirty-three years on this earth, He submitted Himself to death on a cross at the hands of those whom He had created. He died such a death for two reasons. First, He did it to shed His blood on the cross for our sins—sins which had become a great wall of separation between us and the holy and righteous God.⁷ Great though this fact is, we must realize that Christ died for another, equally important reason. Christ died in order to become yet closer to us. How can this be? Who can be closer to us than another person? The Bible clearly says that in His resurrection, Christ became the life-giving Spirit.⁸ As the Spirit, God is able not only to be with us or among us; He can now be in us.

As the Spirit, God in Christ is like the air we breathe. And as human beings, we have a spirit—the deepest part of our being—which God made for us to receive and contain Him.⁹ If we allow Him, He can be God not only outside of us or beside us; He can be God within us. Only when God as the Spirit enters into us can we truly know Him. God, who came to the earth as the man Jesus Christ, is the Spirit. When we receive Him as the Spirit into our spirit, God and we are joined to be one spirit.¹⁰ Today, two thousand years after the birth of Jesus Christ, God is real to all who desire to know Him because He is the Spirit, the One who can live in us and mingle His Spirit with ours. Regarding the Creator, at best we know of God. Regarding the man Jesus, we could say that in Him we know about God. But as the Spirit, God flows out of the dry realm of speculation and contemplation to dwell within us, bringing us into the real experience of who He is.

Not Far from Us
Who is God? In our search for the answer to this, the most mysterious question of the universe, we want to know the God whom our innermost being convicts us is real. We want to understand Him, worship Him, and know Him. But more than that, we want to receive Him into our spirit. Within ourselves, we know that He cannot be the ambiguous god of our own creation or the unattainable one whom we fail to find genuflecting at altars or meditating in temples. The reason most of us have never stopped asking the question is because we have never found the answer.

We can find the answer in the two processes through which God has passed. First, He became flesh—He became a man. Then, He became the Spirit. As the Spirit, God is real to us today. All that God the Father is is expressed in the Son, and all that God the Son is is realized in God the Spirit. God first became approachable when He became a man. He then became receivable when He became the Spirit. Now He is not only able to be with us; He can even enter into those who believe into Him and receive Him. Our groping and searching for the "unknown God" whom Paul announced to those assembled at the Areopagus can come to an end. We can truly find Him because He, by passing through these processes, has found us. Who is God? He is Christ; He is the Spirit. Through these processes, He has made Himself infinitely near us so that He can reach us, be real to us, and dwell within us. Like Paul told his audience at the Areopagus, God is not far from us. He is simply waiting for us to open up and receive Him.

1 Acts 17:22-27 (back) 2 1 Timothy 6:16 (back) 3 Zechariah 12:1 (back) 4 Exodus 3:14 (back) 5 John 1:1, 14 First Timothy 3:16 (back) 6 Isaiah 7:14 (back) 7 Hebrews 9:22 (back) 8 First Corinthians 15:45; Second Corinthians 3:17 (back) 9 Second Timothy 4:22 (back) 10 First Corinthians 6:17 (back)

If you would like to know God in a real way, all you must do is believe into Him and pray the following with a sincere heart:

"Lord Jesus, I am a thirsty sinner who needs You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins and resurrecting as the Spirit so that You could come into me. Forgive me of all my sins and false ideas of who You are. I receive You right now and drink of You. Thank You for flowing into me to be my life."