Ask a room full of Christians to describe God in one sentence, and you will get very different answers.
Some will reach for power.
Some will reach for love.
Some will reach for holiness, or justice, or mystery.
None of them are wrong, exactly.
But most of them are incomplete in the same way, describing one facet of God as though it were the whole picture.
Scripture actually gives three different, related answers to the question of what God is like.
Most confusion about God comes from mixing them up.
There is God’s nature, what He is in His essence, apart from anything He does.
There is God’s character, the moral qualities He consistently displays.
And there is God’s ways, the patterns by which He actually acts, which are not always what His character alone would predict.
Keeping these three apart is not a theological technicality.
It is the difference between a God you can trust and a God you merely admire from a distance.
God’s Nature: What He Is, Not Just What He Does
When Moses stood in front of the burning bush and asked God who was sending him, he was asking for a name.
In the ancient world, a name told you what kind of being you were dealing with.
“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.’”
Exodus 3:14
ESV
This is not evasion.
It is the most precise answer possible.
Every other being in the universe derives existence from something else.
God alone simply is, without derivation, without beginning, without dependence on anything outside Himself.
That single claim means God’s existence is not the same kind of thing as your existence or mine.
He is not the biggest being in a universe full of beings.
He is the reason there is a universe of beings at all.
From this self-existence flow the attributes theologians usually list.
God is eternal, without beginning or end.
He is omnipresent, not contained by space.
He is omniscient, not limited by time or perspective the way we are.
He is immutable, meaning He does not develop, mature, or change His mind about who He fundamentally is.
“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”
Malachi 3:6
ESV
Notice what that verse actually connects to God’s unchanging nature.
It is not an abstract philosophical point.
It is Israel’s survival.
A being who could change His mind about His own character could not actually be trusted for more than a moment at a time.
God’s Character: The Moral Qualities Scripture Actually Shows Us
Nature answers what God is.
Character answers what God is like to deal with.
The clearest single statement of God’s character in the Old Testament comes right after Moses asks to see God’s glory.
“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”
Exodus 34:6-7
ESV
Notice that both mercy and justice sit in the same sentence, spoken by God about Himself.
Neither one softens the other.
This is not a contradiction Scripture is embarrassed by.
Later writers return to this exact formula again and again, almost like a creed.
“The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
Psalm 145:8
NIV
The most theologically loaded single statement about God’s character comes from the apostle John.
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
1 John 4:8
NIV
That is not “God is loving,” which would describe one of His actions among others.
It is “God is love,” which locates love inside His essence rather than His behavior.
This means God cannot have an off day toward the people He has made.
But character in Scripture is never one attribute standing alone.
Holiness sits alongside love.
Justice sits alongside mercy.
Faithfulness sits alongside patience.
The biblical writers seem uninterested in resolving this tension into something simpler.
God’s Ways: Why His Actions Sometimes Surprise Us Anyway
If God’s nature is fixed and His character is consistent, why do His actions in the Bible so often catch people off guard?
Why does Job get no direct answer to his suffering?
Why does Habakkuk have to wrestle with God’s timing?
The Bible has a specific word for this gap, and it treats God’s ways as genuinely distinct from His character, not identical to it.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.”
Isaiah 55:8-9
ESV
This passage gets quoted constantly, almost always to explain away confusion.
But notice what it does not say.
It does not say God’s character is unpredictable.
It says His methods are.
A perfectly loving, perfectly just God can still choose a path toward His goals that looks nothing like the path we would have picked.
This is the difference between trusting who God is and understanding what God is doing.
Job never gets an explanation for his suffering.
He gets a confrontation with the sheer scale of God’s wisdom, and that turns out to be enough for him.
“He is the Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice.”
Deuteronomy 32:4
ESV
The writer does not claim to understand every one of God’s ways.
He claims that whatever those ways turn out to be, they will be consistent with a character already established as just and faithful.
Why the Distinction Actually Matters
Most confusion Christians experience about God does not come from bad theology in the technical sense.
It comes from collapsing nature, character, and ways into one category.
If you quietly assume God’s ways should always feel comprehensible, unanswered prayer starts to feel like evidence that His character has shifted.
But the Bible never promises comprehensible ways.
It promises consistent character.
Those are not the same guarantee.
“Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.”
Jeremiah 9:23-24
ESV
The confidence Jeremiah describes is not confidence that you can predict God’s methods.
It is confidence that you know His character well enough to trust His methods even when they surprise you.
There is also a New Testament payoff that ties nature, character, and ways together in one place.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
Hebrews 13:8
ESV
Jesus does not simply reveal facts about God’s nature.
He embodies the character Exodus 34 describes.
And He walks through ways that looked like abandonment on Friday and looked like victory on Sunday.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is God’s character the same in the Old and New Testaments?
Yes, the perceived difference usually comes from focusing on different actions rather than different character. The same God who executes judgment in the Old Testament shows patience toward Nineveh in Jonah, and the same Jesus who shows compassion in the Gospels also speaks the strongest warnings about judgment found anywhere in Scripture.
If God’s ways are higher than ours, can we ever understand what He is doing?
Sometimes, and sometimes not, and Scripture is honest about that gap rather than pretending it does not exist. What the Bible offers instead of full understanding is a settled confidence in God’s character, which Job, Habakkuk, and the psalmists all eventually land on even when their specific questions go unanswered.
How is God both loving and just at the same time?
These are not competing qualities that need balancing, according to Exodus 34:6-7. They are both fully present in God’s character simultaneously, with His justice ensuring His love is not indifferent to wrong and His love ensuring His justice is not divorced from mercy.
A Closing Thought
Understanding God through these three lenses does not resolve every hard question a believer will face.
It gives you a way to sort your questions correctly.
When life feels confusing, the question worth asking is rarely whether God’s character has changed.
It is almost always whether you can trust a way of working you do not yet understand, coming from a character you already have good reason to trust.
References
Grudem, W. (2020). Systematic theology: An introduction to biblical doctrine (2nd ed.). Zondervan Academic.
Tozer, A. W. (1961). The knowledge of the holy: The attributes of God, their meaning in the Christian life. Harper & Row.