We all need to see what characteristics of God are shown in creation. The universe as a whole is not dark but very bright. Because it is bright it is very pleasant. If God had created a universe full of darkness, it would not be a very pleasant place in which to live. Light makes us pleasant and makes everything pleasant to us. The entire universe being so bright and full of light denotes that the Creator is also like this. Brightness is one of God’s characteristics. The entire universe is also full of beauty. No one can say that the universe is something ugly. This indicates that beauty is also one of the divine characteristics.
In addition to this, the universe is in a good order. Everything in the universe is orderly. Orderliness is another characteristic of God. Our God as the Creator is not One of confusion, but One of orderliness. He keeps everything in order.
When the Lord Jesus was going to feed the five thousand, we can see the orderliness of God. He firstly ordered the crowd “to recline by companies on the green grass. And they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties” (Mark 6:39-40). After the feeding of the five thousand, there were many leftovers. Our thought might have been to forget about the fragments of bread and the pieces of fish which were left over. But when the crowds were fully satisfied, the Lord said to His disciples, “Gather the broken pieces left over that nothing may be lost” (John 6:12). The Scriptures record that the disciples took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces of bread and of the fish (Mark 6:43). This shows us that the Lord performed a marvelous miracle which signified the bountiful and inexhaustible supply of His divine life, but this miracle also shows us that one of the major characteristics of God is orderliness.
Also, in His creation we see the characteristic of love. “He makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45).
Light, orderliness, and love are some of the characteristics of God, and actually they are characteristics of God’s divine nature. Characteristics always come out from the nature. If there is no nature, no characteristics will be shown or exhibited. Romans 1:20 refers to the characteristics of the divine nature shown in God’s creation.
In Colossians 2:9 the Greek word for “Godhead” is theotes. The only difference between the Greek word for divinity in Romans 1:20 and the Greek word for Godhead in Colossians 2:9 is the letter i. Divinity in Greek in Romans 1:20 is theiotes. Theotes, however, in Colossians 2:9 refers to the Godhead, God the Person. What dwelt in Jesus Christ was not merely the divine characteristics but God the divine Person, the Godhead. As believers we should have the divine characteristics of the divine nature and even the divine nature itself, but we cannot have the Godhead. In the Godhead, though, the divine nature is implied. In Colossians 2:9 the Godhead implies the divine nature because the divine nature is one of the constituents of God.
In God’s creation, man was made only in the image of God, without the divine nature (Gen. 1:26a, 27). If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that the ten commandments were called God’s testimony (Exo. 16:34; 25:16, 21). God’s testimony simply means God’s description. The ten commandments were a description of God. The law that a person makes reflects the kind of person he is. If you were a bank robber, you might make a law legalizing bank robbing. When we read the ten commandments, we can see that God is love, that God is light, that God is holy, and that God is righteous. This describes the very Lawgiver, the Legislator in the universe, who made the ten commandments. Man was made in the image of God, in the image of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Unless God comes into man and becomes man’s contents, of course, man has merely the image with no reality. Love, light, holiness, and righteousness are the virtues of human morality. Every human being has a natural love and a natural tendency to seek after light; every human being is seeking to be something higher, something uncommon, which is holiness; and every human being seeks to be right and to do the right things with others. This proves that man was made in such a way.
As we have seen, God created man in such a morality of love, of light, of righteousness, and of holiness. These are the virtues of the human morality created by God, but in God’s created man there was no divine nature. Man only had the image, the form, of God. When we believed in the Lord Jesus, however, we received a Person as our content and reality. Most Christian teachers would say that we received salvation, forgiveness, justification, reconciliation, and many other items, but very few Christian teachers stress that when we received the Lord Jesus we received a Person. After Peter preached the gospel at Pentecost he told the ones to whom he was preaching to repent and be baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, that they might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). This gift is the Holy Spirit Himself, as the realization of Christ, given by God to the believers in Christ. When we believed in the Lord Jesus we received Him, the Person, as our salvation.