Do You Have the Right View of God?

“Being God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” Acts 17:29

Paul is standing on the Areopagus, surrounded by altars. His point is sharper than “idols are silly.” We were made from God, so we are not free to make him. Offspring do not design the parent. The moment we shape the divine being by our art and our imagination, we have stopped relating to God and started relating to a reflection of ourselves. An image of gold cannot answer you. It also cannot contradict you.

That is why the Psalms send us to meditate on the law of the Lord, and not merely on whatever in the Word happens to warm us. Tim Keller pressed this in a sermon on Psalm 1. Powerful people, he said, often surround themselves with yes-men. “They never push back. They may have a different opinion, but they’re going to hide that different opinion. They’re never going to contradict the big dog, because they don’t want to lose their position.”

Then he turned the illustration toward worship: “If you don’t have a Bible in which you accept all of it as authoritative, how can your God ever offend you? How can your God ever contradict you? Sounds to me like you have surrounded yourself with a yes God.”

Someone has said that God created us in His image, and we returned the favor. A yes-God is that favor returned. He is formed by the art and imagination of man.

We were not made for that. We were made for a relationship with the living God, and real relationship has two persons in it. Keller put it plainly: biblical meditation “is a dialogue with another person, the personal God,” so “you don’t empty your mind of rational thought, you fill your mind with God’s thoughts.” You want to hear from him so you can speak to him. “That’s how the dialogue works.” Friendship with God is part of what we were made for.

Abraham was called the friend of God. The psalmist says the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him (Psalm 25:14). Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you,” and then, “I have called you friends” (John 15:14–15). A friend who only agrees with you is not a friend. He is an audience.

Wanting a God who would not cross us is what led to the fall. The serpent’s offer was a divine being reshaped by human imagination: you will be like God, knowing good and evil on your own terms. Eve and Adam did not want a Friend who could say no. They wanted His place. Every yes-God since is a smaller version of that grasp. We keep the language of relationship and remove the other Person.

The truest Friend would not leave us there. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus did not flatter us into the kingdom. He told us the truth about ourselves, bore the contradiction we deserved, and gave his life to bring us back. The cross is not God agreeing with us. It is God refusing to agree with our sin and refusing to abandon us to it. That is friendship. On the far side of it, he does not become a yes-man. He becomes the cornerstone the builders rejected, and he still speaks.

So let the Bible be how you talk with your Friend. Prayer is a two-way conversation, and an open Bible is how you let God start it. If you begin with your own words, you will usually pray to someone who already shares your opinions. If you begin with his Word, he gets the first word. He can unsettle you. He can also say what you would never have dared to say over yourself: you are my beloved child.

Keller said it powerfully: “Unless the scripture is a word of law, it’ll never be a word of love to you.” The God who will not be reduced to gold or silver or stone is willing to be known. Open the Book. Let him contradict you. Then answer. That is not religion arranged by our imagination. That is friendship with the God whose offspring we are, restored by the Son who laid his life down for his friends.