mdemchsak

Justice

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. (Ps 89:14)

O God Most High, You are just and justly angry at the sin you see in my heart. Teach me, as I love You, not to forget Your righteous judgments and, thus, not attempt to exploit Your kindness.

There once was a judge who presided over a county court. One day, the court tried a man for breaking into a mansion and stealing jewels worth a million dollars. Many witnesses testified against the man. Videotape showed him inside the house collecting the jewels and putting them into a bag. Fingerprints, DNA evidence, and a piece of clothing all pointed to the man’s guilt. The evidence was overwhelming, and the jury found the man guilty. However, the judge liked the man and felt that the crime wasn’t so bad after all — that this man was a good man despite his mistake — so when it came time to pronounce sentence, he let the man go.

What do you think of that judge?

I agree. I don’t see how anyone could defend the judge’s actions. The job of a judge is to administer justice. A judge who fails to do so is corrupt.

Now, I mention that story because it is a parable for how most people think of God. We like to think that we are not such bad folks. Yeah, we struggle with greed or lust or selfishness, but doesn’t everybody? I mean, we’re not any worse than the next guy. And, Oh yes, there were those times when we stretched the truth, but we had good reasons. And I almost forgot about the times when we slandered God in our minds and with our words, but He understands. And our worship of self, and our talking about our boss behind his back, and our angry outbursts, and our unwillingness to stand for the truth because our culture would laugh at us, and our desire for the praise of men instead of the praise of God, and our sharp tongue, and our bitterness for what mom did, and our failure to help the needy. We do all these things and more and justify ourselves in them. We rewrite what Scripture means to suit our desires. You know. The Bible doesn’t really condemn that behavior. It condemns only a particular expression of that behavior within a narrow context, and, of course, we do not fit that context or that expression. We are different. All of this is the human race. And when we think of God dealing with the human race, we often picture Him as a kind grandfather in the sky, someone who is there just to take us fishing or buy us donuts on Saturday mornings. God is a nice man who exists for me. And when we do admit that He is a judge, we often believe that He is the sort of judge who is quick to overlook an offense (especially our offenses, for our offenses are minor). Consequently, we too often believe that God will let us off no matter what we do.  After all, He is loving, and isn’t that what love means?

Now this view of God we must absolutely throw in the trash. This view of God rips all of His justice away but still thinks it has God. This view of God is idolatry. It creates a god to suit our desires, as if the purpose of God was nothing more than to stroke our comfort. Let’s get this straight. God. Is. Just.

I don’t think anyone has problems with that statement. What people have problems with is how to interpret it. Of course, God wants us to interpret His justice in accordance with the Scriptures, not in accordance with our personal desires. We don’t get to pick and choose what justice is or does. When we reach the point where we acknowledge that our view of justice must come from Scripture, then we are on the right path. Therefore, the next step in this discussion of God’s justice is to explain what Scripture says about it.  And since I have no more time for this week, we will have to put that off till next week.

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Everywhere

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. (Ps 139: 7-10)

“Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord. (Jer 23:24)

…though He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:27-8)

 

God is here, God is there

God is always everywhere.

You cannot run

You cannot hide

He will never leave Your side.

Blessed God who is where I am, comfort me with Your presence, challenge me with Your presence, uplift my soul with the reminder that You are always with me and are always right here for me to adore and enjoy.

There is no place you could go where God is not. Because He is infinite, He must be everywhere and in all things. He is on a busy Manhattan sidewalk and a lonely Himalayan peak. He is at the bottom of the ocean and on the craters of the moon. If we could travel to the farthest star in the farthest galaxy, we would find Him neither closer nor further from us than He is right now. Because He is infinite, He cannot be confined to a particular place and is, thus, never closer to one place than another. He encompasses all places equally, and He is accessible in all places equally.

Wherever you are God is. You cannot flee; you cannot hide. He sees what you do because He is present wherever you do it. He knows your thoughts and motives because He is present inside where those thoughts and motives are formed. In Him we have our being. When we live life, we can frequently forget that God is right with us. We may stretch the truth in talking to a customer because it never dawns on us that God is present hearing every word we say. He is the unseen party at every conversation. When man and woman meet privately, their meeting is not so private as they think. I wonder how many “secret” affairs would occur if the parties involved realized that their actions were not so secret. Make no mistakes about it: God sees everything. We might refrain from sin more often if we simply realized that fact. How we view God affects how we live life.

But God’s omnipresence has another glorious benefit. God is with us! He is Emmanuel! We can talk to Him and communicate our most intimate thoughts and feelings to Him because He is where we are. We can enjoy Him and have continual communion with Him because He is with us. We do not need to go to a special city or building or nook to enjoy God. He is with us in the office, in the kitchen, in traffic, at the lake, at a conference or a concert or a war. His presence is in the darkest prison and at the most jubilant wedding celebration. We can enjoy Him now. Wherever we are. This fact gives us instant access to the Creator of the Universe at any time. You need not wait for next Sunday church to worship God and be with Him. Of course, if where we are is in the midst of sin, or if our heart is not in the proper frequency, we may find access more difficult. But He is accessible to the heart that is ready.

Our need for God is constant. Our felt need for God waxes and wanes. There are times in life when we feel our need more acutely, when it seems as if the waters are flowing over our head. There are times in life when we need someone, when we weep and grieve, when we are angry and frustrated, when we are despondent and helpless. God is there during those times. It is for those times that we find Jesus’ reminder most comforting: “I am with you always even to the end of the age.” During those times we can derive great comfort from the fact that God is with us.

Other times, however, it feels as if He is gone. You pray but hear nothing, read Scripture but feel nothing. God seems silent, far off. Job had this experience, as did some of the psalmists. I do not wish to speak for God and say why He seems so far away. But I do wish to say that even in those times, by faith, we can remember that, despite what we feel, God has not abandoned us. He is with us even when it does not feel so. Our feelings do not change reality. You cannot escape God, even if you would like to. You are always in His presence.

 

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Life in Himself

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gen 1:26)

In the beginning was the Word. (Jn 1:1)

 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. (Jn 5:26)

Praise You, Father, for You have granted me life. I do not deserve it. I did not create it. You have made me and sustained me. You have saved me from death many times, and I am grateful to You and to You alone for the precious gift of life.

Something has always existed. To say otherwise forces the absurd notion that something popped out of nothing. Scripture says God is that something. God is self-existent. You and I are not. God exists on His own, quite apart from the universe and from you and me. God does not need us; He does not need the universe. He is and He always has been. The concept of a being who had no beginning is incomprehensible to us. Everything we see began somewhere; thus, in God, we come up against a Being to which nothing compares. In this area He is not like a watch or a house or a father or the hills or the stars. He is not like an idea or electricity or an emotion or anything else we know. All those things have beginnings and require a source or a medium. God simply is. He is the “I AM.” He is the source. Take Him away and you take away all possibilities of existence. In the beginning the Word was. He already existed when the universe began, and it owes its existence to Him. God has life in Himself (Jn 5:26); no one can give it to Him, no one can take it from Him. He is the Uncreated Creator of all. He has had no beginning, and everything that has had a beginning owes its beginning to Him. Our heart beats because God allows it to, and when our heart ceases to beat, we have no right to demand otherwise. Those decisions are not ours to make. Life is not ours to hand out. Have mercy, O God.

This places us in a particular position before God. We are but creatures and must remember that fact. The rocking chair does not get arrogant before the woodworker; the pot does not talk back to the potter. Rebellion against God is a lapse of memory. We somehow forget that He is the artist and we are the painting. But the analogy breaks down, for the artist had a beginning. When we subconsciously act as if we are the center of the universe, we creatures put ourselves in the position of the Self-existent one. The notion that the world revolves around us lies behind all sin. We subliminally claim for ourselves a throne we have no right to claim. Life comes from God. He gave it to you. He can take it any time He wishes, and when He does so, He will be just. It is His life, not yours. He simply lets you use it. So use it for Him.

 

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All Wisdom

No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord (Pr 21:30)

…to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! (Rm 16: 27)

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men …” (I Cor 1:25)

Lord, help me to trust You  to see that Your plans and Your will are wiser than mine. Sometimes I forget that. Forgive me. And open my eyes to see that Your ways are wise because You are wise.

Have you ever met a brilliant fool? A genius professor who couldn’t keep his marriage vows. A businessman who was a money-making machine but also enslaved to the money he made. A judge with a keen legal mind but no real understanding of righteousness. Sometimes we equate knowledge with wisdom. We are prone to admire the wrong things. Knowledge is the acquaintance of facts. Wisdom is the right application of those facts. Both are good things, but there do abound many knowledgeable fools. People can know facts about God without obeying God, but they cannot be wise without obeying God, for wisdom affects life. Wisdom is how we talk, how we think, how we act. It is not just what we know.

Last week we saw that God has all knowledge. This week we take another step. We see that God has all wisdom.  He knows all there is to know, but He also knows how to use His knowledge and always uses it the right way and for the best end. God cannot be anything but wise, for it is His nature that puts the wisdom in wisdom. Wisdom is what wisdom is because God is who God is. When God does something, it is wise, not because God follows wisdom but because wisdom follows God.  Wisdom is nothing more than the character of God in action.  When God acts He knows what He is doing and He is doing what is right. We may sometimes question the wisdom of God. We lose our job or our health or our daughter and cry out, “God, what are you doing? Don’t you know how I hurt?” We do not understand the path His wisdom makes us trod. We do not see now what God is doing through the circumstances and why He allows such pain. But He is wise.

Everyone must grapple with this issue at some point. You and I are very good at ordering our lives, at deciding what we should do and where we should go; but if we are to grow with God, there will come times when we will have to set aside our own wisdom and plan in order to do something we do not understand or care to do. We will have to trust God that His path is wiser than ours. We do not see how, we do not know why, but we will have to trust Him.

God said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you” (Gen 12:1). I do not believe that Abram, Sarai, Lot or any of Abram’s other relatives fully understood what God was doing. Wisdom, as they likely saw it, would dictate that Abram settle down amongst his kin in his homeland and tend flocks and live a nice, secure life. But Abram had a message from God, and Abram had to decide which was wiser — to move though he did not understand why, or to stay with everything he knew. History vindicates the wisdom of God.

Moses said to God, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it” (Ex 4:13). Moses’ plan for his life was different from God’s, and I can’t help but think that in this scene, Moses had his own questions about the wisdom of God’s plan. Moses did not care to do what God had commanded but had to decide which was wiser — to follow his own desire or God’s. History vindicates God’s wisdom in choosing that man for that task.

God still works this way with His people. He has infinite knowledge and wisdom, and He will test the followers of Jesus to see if we thoroughly believe that God is all knowing and all wise. He does not want us merely to be able to write such a thing on a piece of paper. He wants us to order our lives around it. God knows what He is doing, and He is doing the right thing. We either believe that or we don’t. If we believe it, we actually live as if God’s wisdom is true. Our faith changes how we handle money, criticism, suffering, sex, peer pressure, and the rest of life. And the people of this world may think we are crazy. They will think we are fools.  But that is OK.  After all, “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom.” (I Cor 1:25).

 

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All Knowledge

…God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (I Jn 3:20)

Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding? (Is 40:13-14)

Lord, what do I know that You haven’t known from eternity? What You know surpasses me infinitely, for You know Yourself and You are infinite. Bless You. And You are intimately acquainted with the deepest thoughts of my heart. Yet You love me. Praise You.

We live in an information age. We have more information at our fingertips than people had in all the libraries of a hundred years ago.  We worship information. We think that people who know are the people we should admire and follow. Why then do we not worship God? He has a billion billion times more knowledge than all our universities and computers combined. But we ignore Him. Sometimes we are too smart for God. We are proud of our knowledge, but next to God our knowledge is like the knowledge of a newborn. And the odd thing is that in real life newborns never think their parents ignorant, but we sometimes live as if we know more than God. We are just babies.

God knows all, and what He knows now is no different from what He knew when He formed the world. God does not, God cannot learn. He is perfect and unchangeable, and to speak of a god who has grown to be God (as Mormons teach) is to speak of no God at all. If God has grown in knowledge He is not God. Nothing is a mystery to God, nothing confounds Him, nothing surprises Him, nothing is new to Him. He knew from before the founding of the earth the inner most secrets of your heart right now — secrets which you do not fully understand. He knew then the decisions you shall make next year if, in fact, you get to live till next year. And if you do not live till then, He knew that, too. Everyone faces Him in the judgment, and when we face Him, we cannot hide.  He knows.

We do not know.  The more the sciences tell us about the universe, the more we see we do not know. We discover five facts but learn in the process that we have five hundred new questions that we have no answers for. Such is the immensity of truth. A body of knowledge as immeasurable as truth requires a capacity for knowledge that we cannot comprehend. Yet God, being infinite, can know infinitely. The things that puzzle scientists today do not puzzle God, and He knows now the answers to the questions that will puzzle science five hundred years in the future.

But He knows more than academic facts. He knows the secrets behind the important questions. Why are we here? What are we like? Where are we going? Why is there evil? The great questions of human existence neither surprise God nor stump Him. He has all knowledge about these issues and a perspective that we do not. God unchanging has always and will always know all things. You can hide secrets from your family, but you can hide nothing from God (Ps 139). He sees your secret lusts. He knows your fears of failure. He understands the real motives why you pursue the Phd you pursue. He sees your sin through and through. He knows you better than you know yourself. Might as well come straight with Him.

To the follower of Jesus, God’s knowledge is a great comfort. God loves us as we are.  When Satan accuses, what can he say? “I’m going to tell God about this lust of yours!” God already knows and forgives in Jesus. The one person in the universe that we most need to be right with is willing to be right with us even though He knows every little detail of how we turn against Him. The knowledge of God highlights the greatness of His love and mercy.

To know God is to see that God knows. When we see this, we worship.

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The Almighty

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Gen 1:3)

Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Gen 18:14)

Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea — the Lord on high is mighty. (Ps 93:4)

Lord God Almighty, let us not merely comprehend that You can do many things. Let us see Your power at work around us. Grant us confidence as we live life that You can do anything. Give us faith to act on Your mighty power, and let us remember that the immensity of Your power makes us weaker than babes in Your sight.

It is a marvelous thing to sit and look on something as powerful as Niagara Falls, to be confronted with something before which we are helpless. We are reminded quickly of our own weakness. It is not that we humans are completely powerless creatures, for we have the power to harness the power the Falls produces. It is that, strong as we think we might be, the Falls confronts us with the fact that there are simply some things we cannot do. Nature can humble us. When a hurricane strikes the coast, people flee. Some things we cannot control.

But God has made Niagara Falls, and God has made the ocean, and the imparted power which they have is nothing to God. Nature has limited power. Humanity has limited power. God has all power. He is the Almighty. He can snap His fingers and scatter stars across the sky. He can cure a child from an incurable disease. He can speak a word and bring a billion-man army to its knees. He can raise a Savior from the grave. Such is the power of God.

Is there something you think He cannot do? Then your God is not the God of the Bible, for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is God Almighty. Job was right to say, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (Jb 42:2). To deny the miraculous is to deny the Almighty. He created this world.  He can do with it as He pleases.  He also gave you your life.  He can do with it as He pleases.

When we live as if the only forces on Earth are physical, political, economic, or cultural, we deny the Almighty.  When we mentally strip the power of God from history, we also strip Him from our lives as well.  We forget that He controls our destiny, that He works in history, that He hears prayer and can actually do something about it.

To think that our circumstances are beyond the hand of God is foolheartedness. He can handle the universe, and He can handle what you are going through.  In this sense the power of God is a great comfort.

It is also humbling.  Presidents and wealthy men think themselves powerful.  They do not understand power.  If they did, they would humble themselves before it.  And so would we.

If we saw it.

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Holy, Holy, Holy

There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. (I Sam 2:2)

 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling one to another:

 “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe is me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Is 6:1-5)

God Most Holy, I am a man of unclean lips, a sinful creature. How can I comprehend Your holiness? And yet it is right for me to think on it. Show me Your blazing purity.  Give to me a vision of Your holy nature.  But have mercy.  Give me what I can handle but increase what I can handle so that I can know You more. Give me this vision not that I might merely know but that I might fall before You in worship and that I might live before You in right fear and with a right heart.

Whatever is holier than we is a mystery to us. Unholy people cannot understand a righteous man. His ways are an enigma to them. And the righteous man will be the first to tell you that he is not so righteous as people think. So if we have difficulty understanding a righteous man, what shall we do when we find a holiness so pure, so white, so bright and burning that viewing it would bring terror to the stoutest heart. Sometimes Christians talk too glibly about yearning to see God. We should have such yearning indeed, but seeing God is no small matter, and we ought not think of it lightly, as we might think of seeing our dad in Chicago. We can be like James and John asking for what we do not understand. To see God is to come before holiness. Take off your shoes. Cover your mouth. Fall on your face. The holiness of God is not some kind of relative holiness as we might find in a man or woman.  The holiness of God is absolute.  It is the fountainhead of all holiness.  Nothing on earth compares to it. Isaiah was a righteous man, but the veiled picture Isaiah saw in the temple caused him to bemoan his sinful state: “Woe is me. I am ruined.” To see the holiness of God is to see our own wicked hearts for what they are and to realize that we do not belong in such a presence. The person who sees himself as a decent fellow knows nothing of the holiness of God.

Everything God is and everything God does is holy. He is blindingly pure and fervently separate from everything we are and do. That is what holiness is. Separateness. God is not like us. Fresh snow is as scarlet beside Him. We cannot see or understand the holiness of God in the raw. We can have a sense of it. Luther did and it caused him to unravel. Some may have special visions of it as Isaiah did and perhaps the mystics. We worship Him because of it. We change our lives because of it, for His holiness is the source of ours, but we can never fully grasp the overwhelming purity and separateness of the Living God.

 

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Glory

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” (Ex 33:18-23)

 …God the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. (I Tim 6:15-16)

Oh God all glorious, let us humbly adore. Let us join the prophets and the angels and the litany of saints in falling face down before you. Open the eyes of our hearts to see even a glimpse of the Unseeable, and in seeing, let us worship. Let our minds and hearts be enraptured with your overwhelming beauty and glory beyond description, beyond classification, beyond all capacity to see and know. Blessed be Your glorious Name.

Ezekiel describes his vision into heaven — the throne, the great expanse, the brilliant light, the figure like the appearance of a man radiant with light, the likeness of a rainbow. He then responds to what he saw: “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell face down, and I heard the voice of one speaking” (Ez 1:28).

For us now to see God as He is would be instant death, like traveling to the center of the sun but infinitely more consuming. We are sinful, frail creatures, easily broken, easily killed. We have difficulty looking across a snowscape on a sunny day; we cannot look into an eclipse. Do we think we can gaze on the full glory of God? His is a glory that would penetrate through us and consume us entirely, for as He said to Moses, “No one may see me and live” (Ex 33:20).

The visions which the prophets and John the Revelator had were by necessity veiled images. God had to hide glory from them in order to show them the glory He did. They saw a fraction of a drop of glory and fell on their faces. Their little peeks of God unknit them inside out. Such is the nature of God. He dwells in unapproachable light. Who can see Him? Who can know the fullness of the Almighty?

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How We View God Matters

Lord, I want to know You.  I want to know what You are like.  I want to live in You, but I can’t live in You if I know nothing about You.  Reveal to me the glory of Yourself.  Then will I be able to live  right.

A man wanted to talk to me about a book he had read. In the book, the author, a well-known lawyer, claims that God has learned over time how to handle the human race. This lawyer apparently states that in the early days of Genesis, God did not know how to deal well with the human race. He condemned the world to the flood and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. In time, however, he learned to be more merciful, and when we reach the New Testament, he had gotten it right. Today, of course, God thinks as we do.

I’m not surprised at such a portrayal of God. Modern culture often has a small God, and this God is no different. I am sure that this lawyer is a fine lawyer, but he does not know God. His god is too small. The lawyer has made himself God’s judge. Unfortunately, that is not how God sees things.

The idea that we can think of God in any way we please is nonsense. It assumes that God has not revealed Himself. And it hurts us.

Our thoughts of God determine the quality of our faith. Tozer was right when he said that “the low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us” (p. viii. Knowledge of the Holy). We will not be morally pure if we worship a simplistic God. We will have no power to transform our world and no depth in our souls if our view of God is average. If our god is less than God, our lives will be less than Christian. Unfortunately, the Western church today suffers from this problem. Our view of God is too small. We are slow to attempt great things because we forget the greatness of the One we serve. We avoid risky steps of faith because we do not believe God is faithful. We are prone to make comfort our driving force because we subconsciously think that we are the center of life. We dabble with heresy because we ignore what is revealed. We play with moral impurity because we forget that God is a consuming fire. In each case above, you may say other factors also contribute, and I will not squabble with you, but our view of God is a foundational factor. If we really saw God for who He is, we would take more steps of faith, attempt greater things for Christ, and be morally purer and doctrinally truer.

Now our view of God must not be solely an endeavor of the head. Many people could technically tell you all the right answers about God if they were asked, but they don’t live as if those answers were true. They say they know God, but they don’t live as if they know God. They merely have correct answers. If we are to know well the Christian faith as it appears in the Bible, we must think often, with devotion, right thoughts of God. Any understanding of Christian beliefs begins with an understanding of God. When we begin to think of God aright, and do so from the heart, we will have the foundation laid for all other thinking about the Christian faith.

We must have before our hearts and minds a certain God. God is not any god, and we are not free to think of the Holy One in any way we please. The follower of Jesus believes that God has revealed Himself through the Scriptures and that we must thus base our thoughts of God on those Scriptures.  And since God is the foundation of theology, we shall begin our discussion of Christian beliefs with God.  Beginning next week, for the next few months I shall briefly highlight certain attributes of God as He reveals Himself in Scripture.

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Knowing the Unknowable

Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. (I Cor 13:12)

You can know God. That is the whole point of the Bible. Yet you will never really know God, for He is God.

I do not contradict myself, and I believe that life gives ample examples for why I don’t. Consider. Imagine a neurologist talking about her knowledge of the brain — neurons firing, the functions for different parts, how it will behave to certain medications, etc. Imagine then that same neurologist saying that we really do not understand the brain. It is a mystery. You know what she means each time. Or imagine a husband saying that he knows that his wife will order the catfish platter at a restaurant or that she will chew out that manager who would not let her return the dress. You can picture the husband saying, “I know Marianne.” Now imagine that same husband later saying, “Marianne is a mystery. I don’t understand her.” No sensible person accuses him of contradicting himself. You know what he means each time.

Neurologists can understand much about brains without understanding everything, and husbands can know much about their wives without knowing fully what makes them tick. We can know without knowing everything. We can know brains and wives because they provide us with data that we can comprehend. We find them to be mysteries because the data is complex, and not all of the data can be seen. That is how knowing God is.

God has chosen to reveal Himself through the Bible. Because He has done so, we have data on God. We can, thus, understand some things about God and even know Him personally as a wife does a husband. But God has also chosen not to reveal the full picture. The Bible is self-confessedly an incomplete revelation of God. For our purposes, it is more than adequate, but God is bigger than what you see in the pages of the Bible. When you think about it, this is common sense. God is infinite. How can you cram everything about Him into a book? Yet we do have the book, so we have something; and when we look at that something, we find it to be complex. The data we do have on God is not always neatly categorized, but this, too, should be no surprise. If brains and wives are complex, how much more ought their Creator be?

Therefore, we can know God but never fully, and only where He reveals. This means that we are right to try to make sense of God through prayer, through reading the Scriptures, or through a systematic approach to theology like The Summa or The Institutes. God invites us to put the pieces of Him together in some coherent fashion. We are wrong, however, if in our efforts to understand God, we figure Him out. Do your best to understand Him, but remember…you are often going to fail. You are dealing with God.

We are also wrong if we never get to know Him personally, for personal, relational knowledge of God is the reason why God gives the intellectual. He wants us, not just our heads. If God had to choose between a three-year-old girl with little understanding but a simple love for Jesus and a college professor with books on the New Testament but a cold heart, he would take the child a million times over. The intellectual is good and important, but it must serve the relationship. It is to be fuel for the engine of the heart. If it is not, it is merely a lump of coal.

 

 

 

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