PDF of modern english i’m using

http://www.gospelofgracechurch.com/images/The_WCF_in_Modern_English_with_Prooftexts.pdf

(borrowed from ARP; 90% like ours)

Most modern ears hear “without passions” as synonymous with “emotionless,” meaning something like “without feeling,” and again it’s important to understand the terminology. Both “passion” and “impassibility” are related to the word “passive.” In the tradition, “active” is the opposite of “passive;” an “agent” (cognate with “active”) is one who acts, a “patient” (cognate with “passive” and “passion”) is one who is acted upon. To be passionate in this sense is to be controlled by forces (including what we now think of as emotions) stronger than our wills; to be a patient is to be governed by the will of another. But God’s will cannot be overruled; He will not be ruled by another. To say that God is “without passion,” therefore, properly means that God is not passive, not acted upon or overruled by any other power or influence; He is the Supreme Free Agent; all of His actions are free; none of His actions is constrained.

To say that God is “without passion” should not be understood as a denial that God feels or a denial that He has emotions in something like—though also different from—our usual sense of the word. Scripture clearly affirms that God feels love, compassion, pity, hatred, and anger. Because our emotions are unreliable, inconsistent, and always affected (or infected) by our sinfulness and fallibility, our experience of emotion is only a very imperfect indicator of God’s experience. For example, when we feel hatred, it tends to overrule our feelings of love, so that we don’t fully experience both at the same time, we experience both as fluctuations, and we register our emotions as changeable.

–from a brief article by William Tate

If you want to read more on what we covered in chapters 1 & 2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith–these articles by JI Packer are a great follow-up.

1. Revelation – Scripture is the Word of God
2. Interpretation – Christians can understand the Word of God
3. General Revelation – God’s reality is known to all
4. Guilt – The effect of general revelation
5. Inward Witness – Scripture is authenticated by the Holy Spirit
6. Authority – God governs His people through Scripture
7. Knowledge – True knowledge of God comes through faith
8. Creation – God is the Creator
9. Self-disclosure – This is My Name
10. Self-existence – God has always been
11. Transcendence – God’s nature is spiritual
12. Omniscience – God sees and knows
13. Sovereignty – God reigns
14. Almightiness – God is omnipresent and omnipotent

Tomorrow at 6pm in the Sanctuary I will begin teaching an 8-week series on the foundational doctrines of Christ Community. The first week we will begin to answer the questions:
Has God spoken?
What is God like?

Come on out and join us in this journey.

Below is the language of the Gospel Coalition documentson these questions.

The Tri-une God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Revelation
God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God’s truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God’s revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.

How and why did God create us?

God created us male and female in his own image to know him, love him, live with him, and glorify him. And it is right that we who were created by God should live to his glory.

Genesis 1:27

For additional teaching and prayers tailored to this question:
–>  go to the online catechism tool

–> Creation by JI Packer

–> Humanness by JI Packer