LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Divine Revelation: God Making Himself Known
Submitted to Dr. James Sulfridge
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN 500
Discipleship Ministries
By
Anthony Bean
Definition
God’s makes himself known as Lord through divine revelation, which is given to all people
through creation and human nature and to specific people through events, inspired human
words recorded as Scripture, and Jesus Christ himself.
Summary
God makes himself known to his creatures because he first knows himself perfectly as a
personal, speaking God. Although all people suppress the knowledge of God in their sin, he has
clearly communicated about himself to his creatures through the creation and through human’s
being made in the image of God. On top of this general revelation, God communicates about
himself to particular people in special revelation, which includes the events of nature and
history, human words that are inspired by God and recorded for us in Scripture, and through
the person of Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate image of God. In all of these different ways, God
reveals himself as Lord, which is comprised of his control, presence, and authority over all
things.
The God of the Bible is a personal being, in contrast with the gods of many other religions
and philosophies who are abstract or impersonal forces. The doctrine of the Trinity underscores
this fact, for the biblical God is not only personal but a society of persons, existing eternally in
mutual love and deference (John 17).
So, whatever God does he makes known. The persons of the Trinity know one another
exhaustively, and each understands the thoughts and actions of the others. In human beings,
there are hidden depths in our nature so that we cannot fully understand our own actions and
motives. But God is fully known to himself. Much about God is mysterious to us, but not to him.
One way Scripture describes God’s exhaustive self-knowledge is by saying that he is a
speaking God or, simply, that he is Word:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John
1:1)
God is not only eternal, holy, all-powerful, and so on, but he expresses and shares those
qualities through something like human speech. In his eternal nature, he has the power to
speak (the “Word”), and that power to speak is who he is: his Word is eternally with him, and
his Word is his very nature. John identifies this Word with Jesus Christ in John 1:14. In Jesus, the
Word became flesh. So the existence of the Word did not begin with Jesus’s incarnation. There
are hundreds of references to the divine word in Scripture, in both testaments, as the means by
which God reveals himself.
Moreover, God reveals himself to himself, each Trinitarian person to the other two, and his
revelation extends beyond his own being. It comes also to the world he has created, and
especially to the intelligent creatures of that world: angels and human beings. Because self-
revelation is his nature, he wants all his creatures to know him.
The creatures of the world cannot know God exhaustively. One cannot know God
exhaustively unless one is God. But creatures receive great benefits from knowing God; indeed,
they cannot live without knowing him, for he is the author of life. This is true both of our
natural lives and our spiritual lives. Adam came alive when God breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life (Gen. 2:7). And Jesus says that the great benefit of eternal life, his salvation from
sin, is the benefit of knowing God:
And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you
have sent. (John 17:3)
In one sense, all human beings, even the wicked, know God:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For
his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly
perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made (Rom. 1:18–
20).
But many reject this revelation, people who, Paul says, “by their unrighteousness suppress
the truth.” (Rom. 1:18). Though God is clearly revealed to all, fallen people prefer to deny that
they know him, as Adam hid from God in the Garden (Gen. 3:8). When people say they do not
know God, it is not because God has failed to reveal himself, or that God’s revelation is not
clear enough. Rather, their ignorance of God is something they have done to themselves. They
are lying to themselves, trying to convince themselves that God does not exist or that he is
obscure, while all the time God is staring them in the face.
God Reveals Himself as the Lord
God’s personal name is Lord, which translates the mysterious name I AM which God
revealed to Moses in Ex. 3:14–16. His lordship connotes particularly his control, authority, and
presence in relation to the world he has made (see John Frame, The Doctrine of God, pp. 21–
240, and The Doctrine of the Word of God, pp. 3–14, 47–68). Everything he does reflects his
lordship in these ways, including his revelation. Scripture describes God’s word-revelation in
terms of his control as a powerful force:
Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in
pieces? (Jer. 23:29)
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the
division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and
intentions of the heart. (Heb. 4:12)
It also makes clear that God’s word of revelation has supreme authority:
The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have
spoken will judge him on the last day. (John 12:48)
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every
good work. (2 Tim. 3:16–17)
And God’s word, his revelation, is also his presence, the place where he meets with his
people. God’s nearness to Israel is the nearness of his word (Deut. 4:7–8, 30:11–14). And God
comes to be “with us,” Immanuel, in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, his living word to us
(John 1:1–14).
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of
the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
It was mentioned earlier that the biblical God is personal, not an abstract force like the
gods of the nations. His revelation is particularly a personal encounter between him and his
people. When we hear revelation, we hear God himself. Our response to it should be a
response appropriate to supreme power, to ultimate authority, and to an intimate Father.
General and Special Revelation
Theologians make various distinctions among types of revelation. The most common is
between general and special revelation. General revelation is revelation of God given to
everybody. It is the kind of revelation described in Romans 1. It tells us that God exists, what
kind of God he is, and his moral standards. In revealing God’s standards, it shows us that we
have not measured up to them. Paul says of general revelation that it reveals God’s wrath on
sinners (Rom. 1:18). General revelation comes to us through the natural world (what is called
natural revelation) and through our own nature. For we ourselves are revelation, the image of
God according to Genesis 1:26–27.
On the other hand, special revelation is revelation God gives to selected messengers,
charging them to bring the message to others. Those messengers may be angels, prophets, or
apostles. The message may be presented orally or may be consigned to writing, as when the
apostles wrote authoritative letters to the churches (see 1 Cor. 14:37–38). The Bible as a whole
is a special revelation of God in written form (2 Tim. 3:15–17). The messages of special
revelation typically contain one or both of two different kinds of contents: threats of judgment
and promises of grace. The gospel is a special revelation of grace, a message of supremely good
news:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).
Media of Revelation
Another way to distinguish between types of revelation is to distinguish the different ways
in which revelation comes to us, the media of revelation. There are basically three types of
media: events, words, and persons. These three categories correspond roughly to our earlier
distinction between control, authority, and presence. But both these threefold distinctions are
perspectives on the whole of revelation. The events of revelation not only manifest God’s
control, but also his authority and presence; similarly the words and persons.
Events
God reveals himself in the events of nature and history. We learn of him from the changing
seasons, from the power of nature, from the sun, moon, and stars. We also learn of him
through history, the particular events that shape the fortunes of human beings. He is the one
who gave to all the nations their boundaries (Acts 17:26) and brought Israel out of slavery in
Egypt to possess the land of promise. In his plan, general history becomes redemptive history,
the events by which God arranges to redeem his people from sin by the coming of Jesus.
Words
In one sense, all of God’s revelation is word-revelation, because it proceeds from God’s
own speech, the Word of John 1:1–14. But sometimes God gives us word-revelation in a further
sense: revelation in which the medium is human words. But God does not leave us to figure out
for ourselves what he is doing in history. He enters our experience and speaks to us in human
words. In this way, the words of the prophets are the very words of God himself. God defines
prophet to Moses in this way:
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my
words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I commend him. And whoever will not
listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the
prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak,
or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your
heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in
the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the
LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of
him. (Deut. 18:18-22)
When a prophet or apostle writes down God’s words, the document is Holy Scripture, a
document to be received as the Lord’s power, authority, and presence (2 Tim. 3:15–17, 2 Pet.
1:19–21).
Persons
Since God is a tri-personal being, his revelation is particularly vivid when it takes the form
of persons. God made Adam and Eve in his image to be revelations of himself (Gen. 1:26–27).
And it should not surprise us that the highest, deepest divine revelation is the incarnate Lord
Jesus Christ, God in person. Jesus displays his Father’s control over all things (Mark 4:41),
speaks his Father’s words (John 3:34), and appears as the Father’s glorified presence with his
people (Matt. 17:1-8).
Conclusion
If we are to know God, it is important for us to seek knowledge in God’s own way. Many
have tried to gain knowledge of God through their unaided reason, or through some kind of
subjective intuition. But the God of the Bible has told us not only who he is but also how we
should seek knowledge of him. That knowledge comes as we attend to his created world, not
repressing the truth in unrighteousness, but accepting his own guidance, his special revelation
in Scripture and in Jesus. Only through these appointed means can we come to know him as
Lord and as our Savior from sin.
