Practice Listing the Attributes of God

I spent four years of college creating lists. As a Biology major, I made lists of mammals, lists of bacteria, lists of plants, lists of cellular bodies. As a student, I made lists of assignments, due dates, library books to check out or return. It went on and on. Everything can be categorized and listed in one way or another. Four years and one diploma later, I discovered there is something uniquely satisfying in creating a list.

You make lists, too.

Grocery lists.
Christmas gift lists.
Home project lists.

I’m not ashamed to say it: Lists make me happy.

So, when I began studying God’s attributes, naturally, I wrote them down in lists along with scriptures that represented each attribute. Somewhere between moves and a home remodel, that list of attributes got lost. Now, I keep a list of God’s attributes in the front cover of my Bible study book or the back cover of my Bible. There are many places to keep a running list of attributes as you discover them.

What are God’s Attributes?

When we talk about the attributes of God we are describing something God is.

God is love.
God is powerful.
God is eternal.

We learn who God is through studying his Word. We also learn who God is through observing what God does, in the lives of the people of scripture and in our lives as well. Studying God’s attributes is bedrock theology. It corrects our theology, keeps us focused in Bible study, and helps us pray.

Correct Theology
Often, when I feel confused, it is because I am going through life with a misunderstanding of who God is. Scripture corrects me. Scripture shows me the true character of God, nourishing my faith and creating deeper trust in God.

This same principle is at work in your friendships. In a mutually trusting friendship, you will come to know your friend well. When you really get to know her heart, you are less likely to misinterpret her—something she says, a text, a look. You are more likely to see and understand the motives behind her behaviors. And when you both grow in understanding of each other, intimacy grows. In time, you may come to know your friends so well, you can properly anticipate her next thought. Certainly, you can know heart. Intimate friendships are a sliver of a reflection of our relationship with God.

Focused Bible Study
Reading a passage of scripture with an eye towards identifying an attribute of God helps us stay focused as we study. We become skilled at finding truths about God even in passages that do not name Him directly. This practice gives us a view of God’s providence throughout history, as he has been, is, and will continue to be acting to bring his plan of redemption to completion.

Resource for Prayer
Keeping a list or record of those attributes creates a storehouse of treasures, new and old. (Mt 13:52) You can go to your storehouse when you pray, calling out the attributes of God in adoration and praise.

My favorite example of praying the attributes of God is found in Daniel 9. Daniel, a role model of a faithful prayer life, was given a vision of future judgment for the people of Israel. In response, he confessed on behalf of God’s people and called on God’s attributes of faithfulness, mercy, and righteousness. Daniel, who saturated his life in the study of scripture and praying to God, prayed scripture back to God. What an example for us! If we want to pray like Daniel, we must first study God’s Word and learn the character of God.

Why Keep a List of God’s Attributes?

I hear you asking, Why bother? Why should we create a list of verses when we could just as easily do an internet search? Like anything else worth doing right, it’s worth doing ourselves. In this case, doing it right involves writing it down by hand. Science has proven that writing something down by hand creates neural pathways that embed the handwritten information in our memory. In other words, writing lists of attributes helps us learn and remember who God is.

To that end, here are a few ideas to help you begin keeping track of the attributes of God.

Keep an alphabetized journal. For example, under A, list attributes such as Awesome and All-Knowing (aka Omniscient). List verse references that go with each attribute.
Use personal descriptors. For example, God is faithful. You might use the word "promise-keeper" to describe the same attribute. List both or either. This is your storehouse of treasures, so make it personal.
Use names of God. God is Jehovah Jireh, which means "The Lord will provide" (Genesis 22:14), so this name describes God’s attribute, Provider.

Glossary of Attributes of God

Below is a list of God’s attributes to get you started. This is not a comprehensive list. I used A. W. Tozer’s two-volume book The Attributes of God and Rosemary Jensen’s Praying the Attributes of God to create this list.

Eternal - God has no beginning and no end. He is not limited by time.
Scriptures: Ps 90:2, Isa 57:15
Modern Language Synonyms: Eternal, Everlasting, Never-ending

Faithful - God will never be or act inconsistently. He will always be true to His character and to His creation. He will always keep His promises and fulfill His word, even when we are unfaithful. Since God is already perfect, He will never change.
Scriptures: Ps 89:1-8; 1 Jn 1:9; 2 Tim 2:13; 1 Thess 5:24
Modern Language Synonyms: Faithful, Constant, Never-changing, Promise-keeper, Trustworthy, Unfailing

Good - God is kindhearted and gracious. He wants His creation to be happy and blessed. He is good perfectly and infinitely, not partway or mostly.
Scriptures: Ps 34:8. 36:7, 119:68, 139:17; Isa 63:7; Mt 7:11
Modern Language Synonyms: Good, Kind, Kind-hearted

Gracious - Grace and mercy are similar in that they both come out of God’s goodness. One way to think of the difference is to say mercy is when God doesn’t give us what we deserve (punishment); grace is when God gives us what we don’t deserve (blessing). Because God is grace, it gives Him pleasure to bless us.
Scriptures: Prov 3:34; Jn 1:16-17; Rom 3:24, 5:15; Eph 1:6-7
Modern Language Synonyms: Grace, gracious, Giver of Blessings, Joy-giver

Holy - Holiness is purity, meaning unmixed, separate from everything. But it’s so much more than that. It means God is above everything. Far above. The New Testament word for holy means “an awful [awe-full] thing.” We, as sinful people, cannot adequately understand or describe God’s holiness because we are so far short of it.
Scriptures: Ex 15:11; Ps 22:3; Isa 6:3
Modern Language Synonyms: Holy, High and Lofty, Highest One, Pure, Set Apart

Immanent - God penetrates everything. For the believer, this attribute means we have the ability to sense God’s pervasive presence at every moment. You don’t have to go far to find Him. Tozer illustrates it as “the bucket that is sunk into the depths of the ocean is full of the ocean. The ocean is in the bucket, but also the bucket is in the ocean - surrounded by it. This is the best illustration I can give of how God dwells in His universe and yet the universe dwells in God.” (Vol 1, pg 138)
Scriptures: 1 Kings 8:27; Ps 139:7-10; Acts 17:28
Modern Language Synonyms: Creator, Sustainer, Life-Giver

Immense - God is so vast that, in comparison, everything (people, the planets, the universe) is just the size of a hazelnut.
Scriptures: Isa 40:12-26; Ps 104:1-3
Modern Language Synonyms: Immense, Big, Great, Shepherd of the Universe, Uncontainable

Immutable - God does not change. God always has been and always will be the same, in every way. God’s immutability is related to His faithfulness, holiness, and perfection. He cannot change because He cannot fail, nor can He improve.
Scriptures: Mal 3:6; Heb 6:17-18, 13:8; Jms 1:17
Modern Language Synonyms: Constant, Always the Same, Never-changing, Our Rock, Unchangeable, Unfailing

Infinite - God has no boundaries and He cannot be measured. When you think of any attribute of God, you must think of it in infinite terms. He is all-wise, all-powerful, all-good. He cannot be measured. C.S. Lewis illustrated God’s infinitude this way: “If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.” (Mere Christianity)
Scriptures: Ps 145:3, 147:5; Eph 3:19; Phlp 4:7
Modern Language Synonyms: Infinite, All we need, Limitless, Never-ending, Perfect

Just - God’s justice and righteousness are closely connected. God’s justice is based on the fact that He is perfectly righteous. God applies his justice to a moral situation and finds man either righteous (meaning “right with God”), resulting in blessing, or unrighteous, resulting in punishment.
Scriptures: Gen 18:25; Ps 19:9, 92:15, 97:2; Isa 28:17; Rev 16:5-7
Modern Language Synonyms: Just, Judge, Righteous, Decider of Rights and Wrongs

Love - Love is the desire for only good and no harm to come to another. When the Bible says “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), it means all love comes from God and God can do nothing without doing it in love. Love permeates God and colors all that He does.
Scriptures: 1 Jn 4:7-21
Modern Language Synonyms: Love, Father, Joy-giver

Mercy - “Mercy is God’s goodness confronting human guilt and suffering.” (Tozer, Vol 1, pg 85) He listens and hears our suffering and responds actively with compassion. His mercy leads Him to compassionate action, most notably, the sacrifice of his son Jesus for the salvation of suffering sinners.
Scriptures: Ex 34:4-7; Ps 103:7-17; 2 Cor 1:3; 2 Pet 3:9
Modern Language Synonyms: Merciful, Caring, Compassionate, Savior

Omnipotent - God has infinite power. He is the source of all power. Even though He gives His power to His creation, He does not run out.
Scriptures: Gen 17:1; Matt 19:26; Luke 1:37; Rev 19:6
Modern Language Synonyms: Almighty, Powerful, Strong

Omnipresent - God is all-present. He is everywhere. God is near everything and everyone. We do not need to go far to “find God.”
Scriptures: 1 Kings 8:27; Ps 139:7-10; Jer 23:23; Acts 17:27-28;
Modern Language Synonyms: Everywhere, Always with me, Find-able, Here, Near

Omniscient - God’s understanding is limitless and His knowledge is perfect. God cannot learn anything because God already knows all that can be learned. He knows it instantly and without effort. He knows it all.
Scriptures: Ps 147:5; Rom 11:33-36; Heb 4:13
Modern Language Synonyms: Incomprehensible, The Perfect Know-it-all, Smart, Knows Everything

Perfect - Perfection means having all of what is needed—the highest possible excellence. But we cannot describe God in degrees of excellence because God is incomparable. So when we apply perfection to God, we mean that He is immeasurably and fully complete. God has all He should have of everything. He has everything He should have and nothing He shouldn’t have. This applies to all God’s attributes. He is perfectly infinite, perfectly merciful, perfectly wise.
Scriptures: Ps 50:2; Isa 40:25
Modern Language Synonyms: Perfect, Complete, Everything, Incomparable

Self-Existent - God has no origin. He simply is, by His own nature. He caused all of creation to exist, yet nothing caused Him to exist. He is not created.
Scriptures: Ex 3:11-15; Ps 90:1-2; Isa 43:10, 44:6
Modern Language Synonyms: I AM, The Beginning, Creator, The Only One

Sovereign - God is supreme. Nothing is out of His control. Because God is all-powerful and has all authority, He is free and able to do all He wills to do, which is always consistent with His character.
Scriptures: Deut 32:39-40; Jer 18:6; Dan 4:3, 35; Nahum 1:3
Modern Language Synonyms: In Control, King of Kings, Mighty, Supreme, Victorious

Transcendent - God, as the self-existent Creator, is far above his creation. We are not talking physically far above, but in the ways of the heart that matter. God is high and lifted up, elevated, and lofty. God’s transcendence is related to His holiness.
Scriptures: 1 Chron 29:11; Job 11:7-8; Isa 55:8-9; 1 Tim 6:16
Modern Language Synonyms: A High God, Exalted, The High and Lofty One, Otherness

Wise - Wisdom is “the skill to achieve the most perfect ends by the most perfect means.” (Tozer, Vol 2, pg 130) When we apply it to God we add a moral connotation so that it is a skill to achieve on a high, pure, and loving level. (Keep in mind that God views things from an eternal perspective.) He never makes a mistake because He always knows what is right and does it right the first time.
Scriptures: Job 12:13; Ps 147:5; Prov 3:19; Jer 10:12; Rom 16:27; Eph 3:10
Modern Language Synonyms: Wise, Always right, Incomprehensible, Never makes mistakes

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