Our Incomprehensible God
We will never be able to comprehend God
QUESTION: Suppose you met someone who had never heard of God or even the concept of God. They have no concept of any supreme being at all. How would you describe God to them? You would probably find it very hard to do without the help of God’s Word. Here are a couple of scriptures that could help.
“Look, God is all-powerful. Who is a teacher like him? No one can tell him what to do, or say to him, ‘You have done wrong.’ Instead, glorify his mighty works, singing songs of praise. Everyone has seen these things, though only from a distance. “Look, God is greater than we can understand. His years cannot be counted.”.
— Job 36:22-26 NLT“Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! For who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice?” — Romans 11:33-34 NLT
Even the Bible cannot fully describe God, because it is God’s revelation to humans (us), who will never fully comprehend him. God is everlasting, transcendent, and holy. He is beyond anything we can comprehend or even imagine. He is the creator, sustainer, and director of all that there is in the entire universe. He is indescribable! There are no human words or thoughts capable of thoroughly describing him. He is incomprehensible! No human being can ever understand the depths of who he is.
Yet, in our desire to understand him, we must attempt to describe him. We try and wrap our finite brains around the infinite. So we, and the biblical writers, attempt to describe the indescribable in describable terms. We have a name for doing that - anthropomorphism. It means “ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing that is not human, especially to a deity.” We speak of God's hand, eyes, and heart. Yet God does not have literal hands, eyes, or a heart.; these are human characteristics. But we use them as they are the only way to begin comprehending God.
God transcends all understanding because he is “all” - all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present. In Ephesians, Paul says he is “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6 NRSV.) Our attempt to describe God is necessary, but there is also a danger in trying to describe him. In our attempt to describe him and his actions we can easily slip into making God into our own image. We can easily reduce God to what we can understand. When what God is or what he does is beyond our reason, we try to make it reasonable; we try to make it understandable. A. W. Tozer said,
“This is the god we have made and because we have made him we can understand him; because we have created him he can never surprise us, never overwhelm us, nor astonish us, nor transcend us.”
Tozer’s statement brings out four truths about God.
No matter how much we try, we will never understand God
God is beyond our comprehension! He is an eternal, infinite, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful God. We are not!
We will never understand the fact that he is eternal. We may begin to grasp, ever so slightly, eternity future, but we can comprehend eternity past. God always was. How can that be? Everything in our world has a beginning and an end, yet God had no beginning and will never cease to exist.
We cannot fully understand his omnipresence. We are restricted by time and space. We cannot comprehend being in two places at once (although there are times when we wish we could be), let alone being totally present everywhere in the universe all the time.
We can never understand God’s omniscience. How can someone know what I am thinking, feeling, and experiencing right now, as well as each of those things in my life ten minutes, ten weeks, or ten years from now? How can someone know everything that there is to know? Yet, God does!
These are just three of God’s many attributes than we can never compprehend. We can identify his attributes, but because he is God and we are not, we can never fully understand them.
Being in the presence of God will always overwhelm us
“When we truly come into the presence of God, we are overwhelmed. Isaiah found this out.
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, 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 to one 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 to 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.” — Isaiah 6:1-5 NIV
John found this out on the Isle of Patmos.
“Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.” — Revelation 1:12-18 NRSV
When we truly step into the presence of the Almighty, Living God, we are overwhelmed because he is God, and we are not. All we can do is marvel at his majesty and fall before him in worship and adoration.
God will always surprise us
We can never figure God out. We try to, but we never can! We cannot predict or determine how God will act in our lives and the world. When we think we have things all figured out, he shows up in a different way. He acts and responds in our lives, our prayers, and in our worship in ways we are not expecting. Don't get me wrong. God never changes. He is always the same - in his character and his personality. Salvation will always be the same - by grace, through faith in Jesus alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). But how God works in our lives continually changes.
“But forget all that— it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”
— Isaiah 43:18-19 NLT
God desires that we always give him glory
Glory is an interesting word. We hardly use it or hear it outside of church. There is reason for that. It is a word that is primarily used only for God. The Old Testament Hebrew word for glory is “kâbôd,” which literally translated means to give proper weight. It means to show honor, dignity, and reverence toward someone. In other words, we are to give the proper recognition (weight) to god for who he is.
“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to anyone else,”
— Isaiah 42:8 a NLT
The New Testament Greek word translated as glory is “doxa,” from which we get the word doxology. It means magnificence, excellence, preeminence, and dignity. It conveys the kingly majesty that belongs to God as the supreme ruler of the universe and the holiness of his absolute perfection.
When we truly worship God, we come into his presence with a sense of awe and wonder because we understand that their is none other like him. He is beyond all human comprehension. He is beyond all human imagination. He created all things, including us as humans, and all things hold together in him. Our response should be the same as the twenty-four elders in chapter four of Revelation, who...
“fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” — Revelation 4:10-11 NRSV
When we come to truly realize that we will never understand or explain God, that he is the holy, majestic, marvelous, mighty, incomprehensible, only true God, only then can we rightly worship him!
Responsive Prayer:
Lord God, I will never be able to comprehend you! Your greatness, your majesty, your holiness, everything about you, is beyond my understanding. I stand in awe of who you are. I bow before you in humble adoration and praise. You are the mighty God who was, who is, and will forever be King of the entire universe. I yield to you my desire to know and understand everything. You are beyond understanding. Help me to lean into the mystery of who you are and truly worship you.