Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed trying to comprehend the character of God? Shifting our gaze from who God is (the Trinity) to what He is like (his attributes) is quite exciting. However, we must guard against viewing these traits as cold, abstract concepts. Instead, Scripture introduces God’s perfections as dynamic, logical implications of who he is and how he reveals himself in the grand narrative of redemptive history. Theologian Richard Lints beautifully describes these as “thematic threads of divine attributes” woven directly through the biblical storyline.

Before diving into the reference charts below, I think it’s helpful to first anchor your study in the six foundational ways God displays his character across Scripture:

1. 👉Creator & King: He speaks the universe into existence from nothing (ex nihilo), exercising absolute sovereignty, preservation, and authority over creation out of an overflow of love and mercy.
2.  
3. 👉Self-Sufficient (Aseity): God possesses life in Himself. He is entirely independent, lacking nothing, and contingent on no one.
4.  
5. 👉Manifest Glory: The visible expression of His presence in creation, providence, and redemption, driving all His actions and inviting our active participation.
6.  
7. 👉Absolute Holiness: His distinct transcendence, utter incomparability, and total moral purity, which we (his image-bearers) are called to mirror.
8.  
9. 👉Righteous Judge: His necessary opposition to sin. He operates through a pattern of salvation through judgment, promising to eradicate death and usher in a new creation.
10.  
11. 👉Covenant-Keeping Redeemer: His unwavering faithfulness to his promises, perfectly fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, securing our adoption.
12.  

The Architectural Framework: How We Classify

Because God is infinite and we are finite, all biblical language about him is analogical. Human words point to infinitely greater divine realities. To organize these realities without dividing God’s singular, undivided essence, historic Christian theology helpfully distinguishes between his incommunicable attributes (traits belonging to God alone) and his communicable attributes (traits that find a limited, finite reflection in human beings).

Use the tables below as your ultimate “call sheet” to learn, memorize, and worship the God of all perfection.

Incommunicable Attributes (God is Unlike Us)

These attributes emphasize the Creator-creature distinction, inciting awe, worship, and absolute trust.

Communicable Attributes (God is Mirrored in Us)

These attributes find a finite reflection in humanity, showing us what it means to bear his image through the fruit of the Spirit.

A Personal Challenge

In your personal devotional time, consider taking one day per week to intentionally study one of the attributes of God. Engaging in this regular study habit will guard your mind against constructing a fake or hand-made version of God, anchoring you instead in the reality of who he has revealed Himself to be. Perhaps you can alternate between exploring his incommunicable attributes—such as his self-sufficiency (aseity), immutability, omnipresence, and absolute simplicity—and his communicable attributes, like His infinite wisdom, truthfulness, love, mercy, and justice.

This weekly habit has the potential to yield rich spiritual benefits: it will sharpen your discernment, anchor your soul in right worship, shape your deepest affections, and bring immense practical comfort in daily life. Our God is a loving, sovereign, unified Creator who graciously invites us to know him truly and personally, even if our finite minds can never know him exhaustively.