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It would be impossible to design a study of the Attributes of God that would encompass all His attributes. As the Psalmist proclaims in Psalm 145:3, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.” When we get to heaven, we will have a better ability to comprehend His greatness, but it will still take all of eternity to comprehend Him.

Although God is beyond our “comprehension,” which means to fully understand something, He has revealed a lot about Himself in His word, so that while we cannot comprehend Him, we can at least “apprehend” Him, which means, in one sense, “to lay hold of.”

In 1867, in his lectures On the Study of Words, Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, Ireland, talked about the difference between our inability to “comprehend” God and our ability to “apprehend” Him:

How important is it to keep in mind … the fact that we possess the two words ‘to apprehend’ and ‘to comprehend,’ with their substantives, ‘apprehension’ and ‘comprehension.’ For indeed we ‘apprehend’ many truths which we do not ‘comprehend.’ The great mysteries of our faith…the doctrine, for instance of the Holy Trinity: we lay hold upon it, (ad prehendo) we hang on it, our souls live by it; but we do not ‘comprehend’ it; that is, we do not take it all in; for it is a necessary attribute of God that He is incomprehensible; if He were not so, either He would not be God, or the being that comprehended Him would be God also. But it also belongs to the idea of God that He may be ‘apprehended,’ though not ‘comprehended,’ by his reasonable creatures; He has made them to know Him, though not to know Him [completely], to ‘apprehend,’ though not to ‘comprehend,’ Him.

Therefore, any study of the attributes of God should be designed to help us “apprehend” Him better…to know Him better than we do now, with the understanding that full “comprehension” is and ever will be beyond our reach as creatures. Such is the design of this study.

As the basis of our study, we have chosen to draw from the following works:

·      The Attributes of God, by Arthur W. (A.W.) Pink

·      The Attributes of God, Volumes 1 & 2, by A.W. Tozer

·      The Attributes of God Study, by Dr. Steven J. Lawson, via Ligonier Ministries

·      Quotes from other Christian thinkers and theologians

We pray that your participation in this study will help you to know Christ better and drive you to worship and obedience.

Finally, we hereby grant permission for this study to be shared with anyone who might benefit.