WHO Before Why, How, What, When, and Where
When life hurts, most of us want an explanation.
Why did this happen? What is God doing? When will He answer? How is this going to work out? Where is He in all of this?
Sometimes what we are really asking is, Can I make enough sense of God and this situation to feel safe, certain, or in control again?
Scripture gives us plenty of room to ask those questions. Job questioned. Jacob wrestled. David lamented. Habakkuk cried out. Jeremiah grieved deeply. God is not threatened by our questions.
But throughout Scripture, God does not always answer the question we are asking. Sometimes, instead of giving us the why, He brings us back to Who He is.
And there is something deeply relational about that. God does not simply want us to understand what He is doing. He wants us to know Him. Throughout Scripture, He reveals Himself, calls His people to Himself, and pursues their hearts.
When We Try to Explain What We Cannot See
The book of Job is one of the clearest examples. Job and his friends spend much of the book trying to make sense of his suffering through their limited human perspective. His friends are convinced there must be an explanation they can understand. If Job is suffering this much, surely he must have done something wrong.
Their theology became a formula: righteous people are blessed, wicked people suffer, therefore Job's suffering must reveal hidden sin.
But they were wrong.
The reader knows something Job and his friends do not. Job 1–2 gives us a glimpse into a spiritual reality they cannot see. We often do something similar. We look at a painful circumstance and build an explanation from the tiny portion of context available to us. Maybe God is punishing me. Maybe I made the wrong decision. If God really loved me, He would have prevented this. If God were good, He would answer differently.
Sometimes our explanations reveal more about the limits of our understanding than they do about God.
Job wanted answers too. He wanted to understand why this had happened and wanted God to explain Himself. Then God finally speaks in Job 38.
But He does not begin with “because.”
He begins with Who He is.
“Where were you when I established the earth?”
Job 38:4
God points Job to creation, His wisdom, His authority, His power, and the vast limits of human understanding. Job wanted an explanation of his circumstances. God gave him a revelation of Himself.
By the end, Job says:
“I had heard reports about you, but now my eyes have seen you.”
Job 42:5
Job's suffering did not suddenly make sense. Instead, Job came face to face with how much greater God was than what he could see or understand. He moved from knowing about God to encountering Him more deeply.
That matters because Christianity is not ultimately about mastering an explanation of God. It is about knowing Him.
And our tendency to reshape God according to our understanding is not new. From the beginning, the serpent's question was, “Did God really say...?” (Genesis 3:1). When we lose sight of Who God has revealed Himself to be, our sinful nature is quick to question His Word, reinterpret His character, or make Him fit what seems right to us.
“We Do Not Know What to Do”
I love the contrast in 2 Chronicles 20. King Jehoshaphat receives word that a vast army is coming against Judah. He is afraid, and he genuinely does not know what to do.
But notice how he begins his prayer. He does not start with the army. He starts with Who God is.
Jehoshaphat does not begin by trying to explain God. He begins by remembering Him.
“LORD, God of our ancestors, are you not the God who is in heaven, and do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in your hand, and no one can stand against you.”
2 Chronicles 20:6
Then he says:
“We do not know what to do, but we look to you.”
2 Chronicles 20:12
That may be one of the clearest pictures of faith in Scripture. Faith is not pretending we are not afraid. It is not having every answer or knowing exactly what God is going to do. It is knowing where to look because we know Who He is.
I may not know what. I may not know when. I may not know why, how, or where this is going.
But I can know Who.
And notice where knowing Who God is leads Jehoshaphat: toward God. That is the heart of relationship. God is not merely giving us facts about Himself to memorize. As He reveals Himself, He calls us to trust Him, seek Him, worship Him, love Him, and give Him our hearts.
Who Has God Revealed Himself to Be?
This is where we have to be careful. We are all capable of emphasizing the parts of God's character that feel most comfortable to us. Some want a God of grace without truth, holiness, or judgment. Others emphasize truth and judgment while barely resembling the compassion and mercy God repeatedly reveals.
But God is not ours to edit.
When Moses asked God to show him His glory, God did something remarkable. He proclaimed His own name and character:
“The LORD—the LORD is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished.”
Exodus 34:6–7
God tells us Who He is.
He is compassionate and holy. Gracious and just. Patient and opposed to evil. He forgives sin, yet He does not call evil good. His mercy does not cancel His justice, and His justice does not diminish His love.
Because God is just, sin could not simply be ignored. And because God is loving and merciful, He provided what we could never provide for ourselves. The Father sent the Son, and Jesus willingly gave His life for our sin. Romans 3:26 describes God as both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
The cross is not God choosing between justice and love. It is where we see both displayed perfectly. He did not compromise His holiness to save us. In Christ, sin was dealt with, mercy was extended, and God's love was demonstrated toward sinners (Romans 5:8).
This is Who God is.
And the gospel reveals something even more relational: God did not save us merely to solve the problem of sin from a distance. He reconciled us to Himself. First Peter 3:18 says Christ suffered for sins, “the righteous for the unrighteous,” so that He might bring us to God.
That phrase matters: To bring us to God.
God wants more than outward religious behavior. He wants our hearts. He calls His people to love Him with all their heart, soul, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5). Through the prophets, He confronts people who honor Him outwardly while their hearts remain far from Him. And in the new covenant, He promises transformed hearts that know and follow Him (Jeremiah 31:33–34; Ezekiel 36:26–27).
His attributes are not competing sides of God that He switches between. They belong together perfectly in Who He is.
That is why reducing God to only the attribute we prefer gives us a distorted picture of Him. If we make Him only “grace,” grace can become permission. If we make Him only “truth,” truth can become condemnation. Scripture reveals neither distortion.
John tells us that when the eternal Word became flesh in Jesus, He was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus did not soften truth in order to be loving, nor did He abandon compassion in order to be holy. In Him, we see God's character perfectly revealed.
God is Yahweh, the great I AM. Elohim, Creator. El Shaddai, God Almighty. The LORD of Armies. He is holy, righteous, merciful, faithful, sovereign, patient, compassionate, and just. Scripture tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but biblical love is defined by Who God is, not by whatever our culture, experiences, or feelings happen to call loving.
We do not begin with our definition of love and then ask whether God measures up to it or put Him in a box that fits our understanding.
We begin with God and understand love through Who He has revealed Himself to be.
When We Become More Certain About Our Framework Than About God
We see the danger of doing otherwise in the life of Jesus, and the irony is hard to miss. The people who should have been among the most prepared to recognize Him were often the very people who did not.
These were not people who knew nothing about God. They included priests, scribes, Pharisees, and teachers of the law. They studied Scripture, taught the people, debated the law, guarded religious tradition, and had strong expectations about what the Messiah should look like and how God should work.
And yet when Jesus stood in front of them, many could not recognize Him.
They became so focused on the Why, How, What, When, and Where that they missed the Who.
Why did He eat with tax collectors and sinners? (Mark 2:16). How could He forgive sins? (Mark 2:7). What sign would He give them? (Matthew 12:38). When would the kingdom of God come? (Luke 17:20). Where was His Father? (John 8:19).
The questions themselves were not necessarily the problem. The deeper issue was what happened when Jesus did not fit the framework they had already built.
When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, some were more disturbed by what they believed He had done wrong than amazed by the mercy and authority of God happening right in front of them. Mark tells us Jesus looked at them with anger, “grieved at the hardness of their hearts” (Mark 3:5).
Jesus later told them:
“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me.”
John 5:39
That is sobering.
They were searching the very Scriptures that pointed to Jesus, yet many became so confident in their own understanding that they could not recognize the One those Scriptures revealed. They knew a great deal about what God was supposed to do, but missed Who God the Son was standing before them.
Their resistance eventually became more than intellectual. Some of the chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, and other leaders became leading voices in opposing Jesus and seeking His death.
That should humble us.
It is possible to know Scripture, speak confidently about theology, and participate deeply in religion while becoming so attached to our own interpretations and expectations that we resist God when He does not fit them.
The problem was not that they cared too much about truth. Many became more committed to their own framework than to receiving the One to whom the Scriptures pointed.
And this warning is not only for first-century religious leaders. It is for us.
We can become so consumed with what God should do, how He should respond, when He should act, where He should lead, and why He would allow something that we stop asking the most important question:
Who is He?
This becomes especially difficult when our experience seems to contradict what Scripture says about God. People can absolutely misrepresent Him. Job's friends did. Religious leaders did. Many people today have also been deeply hurt by distorted teachings about God.
But our pain can also tempt us to create a version of God based on what we believe He should have done: If God loves me, He should have prevented this. He should heal this person. He should restore this relationship. He should answer the way I asked. He should tell me why.
Scripture does not ask God to fit our definition of love. God Himself defines love because love flows from Who He is.
And ultimately, if we want to know what God is like, we look to Jesus:
“The one who has seen me has seen the Father.”
John 14:9
In Jesus we see extraordinary grace and a call to repentance. We see Him welcome sinners and confront hypocrisy. We see tenderness toward the broken and righteous anger toward hardened hearts. We see the Lamb who gives His life for sinners and the King before whom every knee will bow.
And Jesus did not come merely to give us a clearer theological description of God. He came to reconcile us to Him.
Jesus prayed:
“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.”
John 17:3
That is the heart of it.
God reveals Who He is because He wants us to know Him.
Not simply know facts about Him. Not merely receive things from Him. Not just understand why He allows certain things.
Know Him. Trust Him. Love Him back.
So yes, ask the why. Bring Him the what. Cry out about the when. Tell Him you cannot see the how or where this is going.
But do not stop there.
Come back to the deeper question:
Who is God?
Sometimes He may give us the explanation, and sometimes He may not. But faith is not built on always understanding what God is doing. It is built on learning to trust Who He has revealed Himself to be when we do not.
An Invitation
Maybe you are in a season where you do not understand what God is doing, or you have been asking why for a long time and the answer still has not come. You do not have to stop asking. But perhaps there is another invitation here too.
Instead of only asking, Why is this happening? begin asking, Who are You, God, in the middle of this? Open Scripture. Look again at His character. Let God tell you Who He is rather than reshaping Him around what you wish were true. And most importantly, look at Jesus.
If you are not sure where to begin, I love The Bible Recap's Names and Attributes of God resource. It gathers names and attributes God reveals throughout Scripture along with the passages where they are found. Use it as a starting point and ask, What is God showing me about Who He is?
And remember, the goal is not simply to arrive at the right answer about God. It is to draw nearer to Him. God reveals Himself because He wants to be known. He wants your heart. He wants you to know Him, trust Him, love Him, and walk with Him.
You may not receive every explanation you want, but you can continue to know the One who holds what you cannot understand.
A Prayer
God, I do not always understand what You are doing, and sometimes I desperately want answers. Help me bring You my questions without allowing my disappointment, fear, or limited understanding to redefine Who You are. Keep me from reshaping Your truth into what I want it to say. Give me humility to know You as You have revealed Yourself. More than simply understanding what You are doing, help me know You, love You, trust You, and give You my whole heart. When I cannot see the why, how, what, when, or where, teach me to trust the Who. Help me look to You, know You more deeply, and follow You even when I cannot see what comes next.
In Jesus' name, Amen.