Our Heavenly Father, we have heard Thee say, “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.” But unless Thou dost enable us by the exceeding greatness of Thy power how can we who are by nature weak and sinful walk in a perfect way?
Grant that we may learn to lay hold on the working of the mighty power which wrought in Christ when Thou didst raise Him from the dead and set Him at Thine own right hand in the heavenly places. Amen.
In the time of his vision, John the Revelator heard as it were the voice of a great multitude and as the voice of many waters and as the voice of mighty thundering sounding throughout the universe.
The Omnipotence of God Explained
And what the voice proclaimed was the sovereignty and omnipotence of God: “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
Sovereignty and omnipotence must go together. One cannot exist without the other. To reign, God must have power, and to reign sovereignly, He must have all power. And that is what omnipotent means, having all power.
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The word derives from the Latin and is identical in meaning with the more familiar almighty which we have from the Anglo-Saxon.
This latter word occurs fifty-six times in our English Bible and is never used by anyone but God. He alone is almighty.
Grant that God is infinite and self-existent and we see at once that He must be all-powerful as well, and reason kneels to worship before the divine omnipotence.
“Power belongeth unto God,” says the psalmist, and Paul the apostle declares that nature itself gives evidence of the eternal power of the Godhead (Rom 1:20) From this knowledge we reason to the omnipotence of God this way: God has power.
Since God is also infinite, whatever He has must be without limit; therefore God has limitless power, and He is omnipotent.
We see further that God the self-existent Creator is the source of all the power there is, and since a source must be at least equal to anything that emanates from it, God is of necessity equal to all the power there is, and this is to say again that He is omnipotent.
God has delegated power to His creatures, but being self-sufficient, He cannot relinquish anything of His perfections and, power being one of them, He has never surrendered the least iota of His power. He gives but He does not give away.
All that He gives remains His own and returns to Him again. Forever He must remain what He has forever been, the Lord God omnipotent.
One cannot long read the Scriptures sympathetically without noticing the radical disparity between the outlook of men of the Bible and that of modern men.
We are today suffering from a secularized mentality. Where the sacred writers saw God, we see the laws of nature. Their world was fully populated; ours was all but empty.
Their world was alive and personal; ours is impersonal and dead. God ruled their world; ours is ruled by the laws of nature and we are always once removed from the presence of God.
Biblical Verses on the Omnipotence of God
And what are these laws of nature that have displaced God in the minds of millions? Law has two meanings. One is all external rules enforced by authority, such as the common rule against robbery and assault.
The word is also used to denote the uniform way things act in the universe, but this second use of the word is erroneous.
What we see in nature is simply the paths God’s power and wisdom take through creation.
Properly these are phenomena, not laws, but we call them laws by analogy with the arbitrary laws of society Science observes how the power of God operates, discovers a regular pattern somewhere, and fixes it as a “law.”
The uniformity of God’s activities in His creation enables the scientist to predict the course of natural phenomena.
The trustworthiness of God’s behavior in His world is the foundation of all scientific truth.
Upon it, the scientist rests his faith and from there he goes on to achieve great and useful things in such fields as navigation, chemistry, agriculture, and the medical arts.
Religion, on the other hand, goes back to the nature of God. It is concerned not with the footprints of God along the paths of creation.
But with the One who treads those paths. Religion is interested primarily in the One who is the source of all things, the master of every phenomenon.
This One philosophy has various names, the most horrendous that I have seen is that supplied by Rudolph Otto: “The absolute, the gigantic, never-resting active world stress.
” The Christian delights to remember that this “world stress” once said “I AM” and the greatest teacher of them all directed His disciples to address Him as a person: “When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Omnipotence of God Meaning and Examples
” The men of the Bible everywhere communed with this “gigantic absolute” in language as personal as speech affords, and with Him prophet and saint walked in a rapture of devotion, warmly intimate, and deeply satisfying.
Omnipotence is not a name given to the sum of all power, but an attribute of a personal God we Christians believe to be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of all who believe in Him to live eternal.
The worshipping man finds this knowledge a source of wonderful strength for his inner life.
His faith rises to take the great leap upward into the fellowship of Him who can do whatever He wills to do, for whom nothing is hard or difficult because He possesses power absolute.
Since He has at His command all the power in the universe, the Lord God omnipotent can do anything as easily as anything else. All His acts are done without effort.
He expends no energy that must be replenished. His self-sufficiency makes it unnecessary for Him to look outside of Himself for a renewal of strength.
All the power required to do all that He wills to do lies in undiminished fullness in His infinite being.
The Presbyterian pastor A. B. Simpson, approaching middle age, broken in health, deeply despondent, and ready to quit the ministry, chanced to hear the simple Negro spiritual,
Nothing is too hard for Jesus,
No man can work like Him.
Its message sped like an arrow to his heart, carrying faith and hope and life for body and soul.
He sought a place of retirement and after a season alone with God arose to his feet completely cured, and went forth in the fullness of joy to found what has since become one of the largest foreign missionary societies in the world.
God’s Omnipotence in Christianity
For thirty-five years after this encounter with God, he labored prodigiously in the service of Christ. His faith in God of limitless power gave him all the strength he needed to carry on.
Almighty One! I bend in the dust before Thee;
Even so, veiled cherubs bend;
In calm and still devotion I adore Thee,
All-wise, all-present friend
Thou to the earth its emerald robe hast given,
Or curtained it in sow;
And the bright sun, and the soft moon in heaven,
Before Thy presence bow. —Sir John Bowring
This day our hearts approve with gladness what our reason can never fully comprehend, even Thine eternity, O Ancient of Days. Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, mine Holy One?
We worship Thee, the Father Everlasting, whose years shall have no end; and Thee, the love-begotten Son whose goings forth have been ever of old; we also acknowledge and adore Thee, Eternal Spirit, who before the foundation of the world didst live and love in coequal glory with the Father and the Son.
The concept of everlastingness runs like a lofty mountain range throughout the entire Bible and looms large in orthodox Hebrew and Christian thought. Were we to reject the concept, it would be altogether impossible for us to think again the thoughts of prophets and apostles, so full were they of the long dreams of eternity.
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Because the word everlasting is sometimes used by the sacred writers to mean no more than long-lasting (as “the everlasting hills”) some persons have argued that the concept of unending existence was not in the minds of the writers when they used the word but was supplied later by the theologians.
This is of course a serious error, and, as far as I can see, has, no ground in serious scholarship. It has been used by certain teachers as an escape from the doctrine of eternal punishment.
These reject the eternity of moral retribution, and to be consistent they are forced to weaken the whole idea of endlessness. This is not the only instance where an attempt was made to slay a truth to keep it quiet lest it appear as a material witness against an error.
The truth is that if the Bible did not teach that God possessed endless being in the ultimate meaning of that term, we would be compelled to infer it from His other attributes, and if the Holy Scriptures had no word for absolute everlastingness.
it would be necessary for us to coin one to express the concept, for it is assumed, implied, and generally taken for granted everywhere throughout the inspired Scriptures. The idea of endlessness is to the kingdom of God what carbon is to the kingdom of nature.
As carbon is present almost everywhere, as it is an essential element in all living matter and supplies all life with energy, the concept of everlastingness is necessary to give meaning to any Christian doctrine.
Indeed I know of no tenet of the Christian creed that could retain its significance if the idea of eternity were extracted from it. “From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God,” said Moses in the Spirit.
“From the vanishing point to the vanishing point” would be another way to say it quite in keeping with the words as Moses used them.
The mind looks backward in time till the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks into the future till thought and imagination collapses from exhaustion: and God is at both points, unaffected by either.
Time marks the beginning of created existence, and because God never began to exist it can have no application to Him. “Began” is a time word, and it can have no personal meaning for the high and lofty One that inhabited eternity.
No age can heap its outward years on Thee;
Dear God! Thou art; Thyself, Thine own eternity. —Frederick F. Faber
Because God lives in an everlasting now, He has no past and no future. When time-words occur in the Scriptures they refer to our time, not to His.
When the four living creatures before the throne cry day and night, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come,” they are identifying God with the flow of creature-life with its familiar three tenses; and this is right and good, for God has sovereignly willed so to identify Himself.
But since God is uncreated, He is not himself affected by that succession of consecutive changes we call time. God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God. He has already lived all our tomorrows as He has lived all our yesterdays. An illustration offered by C. S. Lewis may help us here. He suggests that we think of a sheet of paper infinitely extended. That would be an eternity.
Then on that paper draw a short line to represent time. As the line begins and ends on that infinite expanse, so time began in God and will end in Him. That God appears at time’s beginning is not too difficult to comprehend, but that He appears at the” beginning and end of time simultaneously is not so easy to grasp, yet it is true.
Time is known to us by a succession of events. It is the way we account for consecutive changes in the universe. Changes take place not all at once but one after the other, and it is the relation of “after” to “before” that gives us our idea of time.
We wait for the sun to move from east to west or for the hour hand to move around the face of the clock, but God is not compelled so to wait. For Him, everything that will happen has already happened.
This is why God can say, “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning.” He sees the end and the beginning in one view.
“For the infinite duration, which is eternity’s self, include- deth all succession,” says Nicholas of Cusa, “and all which see meth to us to be in succession existeth not posterior to Thy concept, which is eternity…
Thus, because Thou art God almighty, Thou dwellest within the wall of Paradise, and this wall is that coincidence where later is one with earlier, where the end is one with the beginning, where Alpha and Omega are the same…
For NOW and THEN coincide in the circle of the wall of Paradise. But, O my God, the Absolute and Eternal, it is beyond the present and the past that Thou dost exist and utter speech.”
When He was a very old man, Moses wrote the Psalm which I have quoted earlier in this chapter. In it, he celebrates the eternity of God.
To him, this truth is a solid theological fact as firm and hard as that Mount Sinai with which he was so familiar, and for him it had two practical meanings: since God is eternal, He can be and continue forever to be the one safe home for His time-driven children.
“Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” The second thought is less comforting: God’s eternity is so long and our years on earth are so few, how shall we establish the work of our hands?
How shall we escape the abrasive action of events that would wear us out and destroy us? God fills and dominates the psalm, so it is to Him that Moses makes his plaintive appeal, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” May the knowledge of Thy eternity not be wasted on me!
We who live in this nervous age would be wise to meditate on our lives and our days long and often before the face of God and on the edge of eternity. For we are made for eternity as certainly as we are made for time, and as responsible moral beings we must deal with both.
“He hath set eternity in their heart,” said the Preacher, and I think he here sets forth both the glory and the misery of men. To be made for eternity and forced to dwell in time is for mankind a tragedy of huge proportions.
All within us cries for life and permanence, and everything around us reminds us of mortality and change. Yet that God has made us of the stuff of eternity is both a glory and a prophecy yet to be fulfilled.
I hope it will not be found unduly repetitious if I return to that important pillar of Christian theology, the image of God in man.
The marks of the divine image have been so obscured by sin that they are not easy to identify, but is it not reasonable to believe that one mark may be mans insatiable craving for immortality?
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die
And Thou hast made him: Thou art just.
So reasons Tennyson, and the deepest instincts of the normal human heart agree with him.
The ancient image of God whispers within every man of everlasting hope; somewhere he will continue to exist. Still, he cannot rejoice, for the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world troubles his conscience, frightening him with proofs of guilt and evidence of coming death.
So is the ground between the upper millstone of hope and the nether stone of fear.
Just here the sweet relevancy of the Christian message appears. “Jesus Christ… hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
” So wrote the greatest Christian of them all just before he went out to meet his executioner. God’s eternity and man’s mortality join to persuade us that faith in Jesus Christ is not optional.
For every man, it must be Christ or eternal tragedy. Out of eternity, our Lord came into time to rescue His human brethren whose moral folly had made them not only fools of the passing world but slaves of sin and death as well.
Brief life is here our portion,
Brief sorrow, short-lived care;
The life that knows no end,
The tearless life is there.
There God, our King, and Portion,
In fullness of His grace, We then shall see forever,
And worship face to face. —Bernard of Cluny
Our Heavenly Father: Let us see Thy glory if it must be from the shelter of the cleft rock and from beneath the protection of Thy covering hand.
Whatever the cost to us in loss of friends or goods or length of days let us know Thee as Thou art, that we may adore Thee as we should. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The world is evil, the times are waxing late, and the glory of God has departed from the church as the fiery cloud once lifted from the door of the Temple in the sight of Ezekiel the prophet.
This 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.
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The God of glory sometimes revealed Himself like a sun to warm and bless, indeed, but often to astonish, overwhelm, and blind before He healed and bestowed permanent sight.
This God of our fathers wills to be the God of their succeeding race. We have only to prepare Him a habitation in love faith and humility.
We have but to want Him badly enough, and He will come and manifest Himself to us.
Shall we allow a saintly and thoughtful man to exhort us? Hear Anselm; or better still, heed his words:
Up now, slight man! Flee for a little while thy occupations; hide thyself for a time from thy disturbing thoughts. Cast aside now thy burdensome cares, and put away thy toilsome business.
Yield room for some little time to God, and rest for a little time in Him. Enter the inner chamber of thy mind; shut out all thoughts save that of God and such as can aid thee in seeking Him.
Speak now, my whole heart! Speak now to God, saying, I seek Thy face; Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” Of all that can be thought or said about God, His Infinitude is the most difficult to grasp.
Even to try to conceive of it would appear to be self-contradictory, for such conceptualization requires us to undertake something that we know at the outset we can never accomplish.
Yet we must try, for the Holy Scriptures teach that God is infinite and, if we accept His other attributes, we must of necessity accept this one too.
From the effort to understand, we must not turn back because the way is difficult and there are no mechanical aids for the ascent.
The view is better farther up and the journey is not one for the feet but for the heart. Let us seek, therefore, such “trances of thought and mountings of the mind” as God may be pleased to grant us.
Knowing that the Lord often pours eyesight on the blind and whispers to babes and sucklings truths never dreamed of by the wise and prudent.
Now the blind must see and the deaf hear. Now we must expect to receive the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places.
Infinitude, of course, means limitlessness and a limited mind can’t grasp the Unlimited.
I am compelled to think one step short of that about which I am writing, and the reader must of necessity think a degree under that about which he is trying to think.
O, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out The reason for our dilemma has been suggested before.
We are trying to envision a mode of being altogether foreign to us, and wholly unlike anything we have known in our familiar world of matter, space, and time.
“Here, and in all our meditations upon the qualities and content of God,” writes Novatian, “we pass beyond our power of fit conception, nor can human eloquence put forth a power commensurate with 4 His greatness.
At the contemplation and utterance of His majesty all eloquence is rightly dumb, all mental effort is feeble. For God is greater than the mind itself.
His greatness cannot be conceived. Nay, could we conceive of His greatness He would be less than the human mind which could form the conception. He is greater than all language, and no statement can express Him.
Indeed, if any statement could express Him, He would be less than human speech which could by such statement comprehend and gather up all that He is.
All our thoughts about Him will be less than He, and our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison with Him.”
Unfortunately, the word infinite has not always been held to its precise meaning but has been used carelessly to mean simply much or a great deal.
When we say that an artist takes infinite pains with his picture or a teacher shows infinite patience with her class.
Properly, the word can be used of no created thing, and of no one but God. Hence, to argue about whether or not space is infinite is to play with words. Infinitude can belong to but One.
There can be no second When we say that God is infinite we mean that He knows no bounds. Whatever God is and all that God is, He is without limit.
And here again, we must break away from the popular meaning of words. “Unlimited wealth” and “boundless energy” are further examples of the misuse of words.
Of course, no wealth is unlimited and no energy is boundless unless we are speaking of the wealth and energy of God.
Again, to say that God is infinite is to say that He is measureless. Measurement is the way created things account for themselves. It describes limitations, and imperfections, and cannot apply to God.
Weight describes the gravitational pull of the Earth upon material bodies; distance describes intervals between bodies in space; length means tension in space.
There are other familiar measurements such as those for liquid, energy, sound, and light, and numbers for pluralities.
We also try to measure abstract qualities and speak of great or little faith, high or low intelligence, and large or meager talents.
It is not plain that all this does not and cannot apply to God. It is the way we see the works of His hands, but not the way we see Him. He is above all this, outside of it, beyond it.
Our concepts of measurement embrace mountains and men, atoms and stars, gravity, energy, numbers, speed, but never God.
We cannot speak of measure or amount or size or weight and at the same time be speaking of God, for these tell of degrees and there are no degrees in God.
AH, that is He is without growth or addition or development. Nothing in God is less or more, or large or small. He is what He is in Himself, without qualifying thought or word. He is simply God.
In the awful abyss of the divine Being may lie attributes of which we know nothing and which can have no meaning for us, just as the attributes of mercy and grace can have no personal meaning for seraphim or cherubim.
These holy beings may know of these qualities in God but be unable to feel them sympathetically for the reason that they have not sinned and so do not call forth God’s mercy and grace.
So there may be, and I believe there surely are, other aspects of God’s essential being that He has not revealed even to His ransomed and Spirit-illuminated children.
These hidden facets of God’s nature concern His relation to none but Himself. They are like the far side of the moon, which we know is there but which has never been explored and has no immediate meaning for men on earth.
There is no reason for us to try to discover what has not been revealed. It is enough to know that God is God.
Thine own Self forever filling
With self kindled flame,
In Thyself Thou art distilling
Unctions without enamel
Without worshipping of creatures.
Without veiling of Thy features,
God is always the same! —Frederick W. Faber
But God’s infinitude belongs to us and is made known to us for our everlasting profit. Yet, just what does it mean to us beyond the mere wonder of thinking about it? Much every way, and more as we come to know ourselves and God better.
Because God’s nature is infinite, everything that flows out of it is infinite also. We, poor human creatures, are constantly being frustrated by limitations imposed upon us from without and within.
The days of the years of our lives are few, and swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Life is a short and fevered rehearsal for a concert we cannot stay to give.
Just when we appear to have attained some proficiency we are forced to lay our instruments down. There is simply not time enough to think, to become, to perform what the constitution of our natures indicates we are capable of.
How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart.
For Him time does not pass, it remains, and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years.
God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.
For those out of Christ, time is a devouring beast; before the sons of the new creation time crouches and purrs and licks their hands.
The foe of the old human race becomes the friend of the new, and the stars in their courses fight for the man God delights to honor. This we may learn from the divine infinitude.
But there is more. God’s gifts in nature have their limitations. They are finite because they have been created, but the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus is as limitless as God.
The Christian man possesses God’s own life and shares His infinitude with Him. In God, there is life enough for all and time enough to enjoy it.
Whatever is possessed of natural life runs through its cycle from birth to death and ceases to be, but the life of God returns upon itself and ceases never.
And this is life eternal: to know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. The mercy of God is infinite too, and the man who has felt the grinding pain of inward guilt knows that this is more than academic. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
” Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind, however, sin may abound it still has its limits, for it is the product of finite minds and hearts.
But God’s much more” introduces us to infinitude. Against our deep creature-sickness stands God’s infinite ability to cure.
The Christian witness through the centuries has been that “God so loved the world…”.
It remains for us to see that love in the light of God’s infinitude. His love is measureless. It is more: it is boundless. It has no bounds because it is not a thing but a facet of the essential nature of God.
His love is something He is, and because He is infinite that love can enfold the whole created world in itself and have room for ten thousand times ten thousand worlds beside.
This, this is the God we adore,
Our faithful, unchangeable Friend,
Whose love is as great as His power,
And neither knows measure nor end.
‘Tis Jesus, the first and the last,
Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home;
We praise Him for all that is past,
And trust Him for all that’s to come. —Joseph Hart
O Christ our Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. As conies to their rock, so have we run to Thee for safety; as birds from their wanderings, so have we flown to Thee for peace.
Chance and change are busy in our little world of nature and men, but in Thee, we find no variableness nor shadow of turning. We rest in Thee without fear or doubt and face our tomorrows without anxiety. Amen.
The Immutability Of God Explained Biblically
The immutability of God is among those attributes less difficult to understand, but to grasp it we must discipline ourselves to sort out the usual thoughts with which we think of created things from the rarer ones that arise when we try to lay hold of whatever may be comprehended of God.
It seems to me impossible to think of God as varying from Himself in any way. Here is why:
For a moral being to change it would be necessary that the change be in one of three directions. He must go from better to worse or from worse to better.
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Granted that the moral quality remains stable, he must change within himself, from miniature to mature or from one order of being to another.
It should be clear that God can move in none of these directions. His perfections forever rule out any such possibility.
Bible Study Guide On The Immutability Of God
God cannot change for the better. Since He is perfectly holy, He has never been less holy than He is now and can never be holier than He is and has always been.
Neither can God change for the worse. Any deterioration within the unspeakably holy nature of God is impossible. Indeed I believe it impossible even to think of such a thing.
For the moment we attempt to do so, the object about which we are thinking is no longer God but something else and someone less than He.
The one whom we are thinking may be a great and awesome creature, but because he is a creature he cannot be the self-existent Creator.
As there can be no mutation in the moral character of God, so there can be none within the divine essence. The being of God is unique in the only proper meaning of that word; that is, His being is other than and different from all other beings.
We have seen how God differs from His creatures in being self-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal. By these attributes, God is God and not some other being.
One who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not God.
Only a being composed of parts may change, for change is a shift in the relation of the parts of a whole or the admission of some foreign element into the original composition.
Since God is self-existent, He is not composed. There are in Him no parts to be altered. And since He is self-sufficient, nothing can enter His being from without.
“Whatever is composed of parts,” says Anselm, “is not altogether one, but is in some sort plural, and diverse from itself, and either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution.
Biblical Perspective On God’S Unchanging Nature
But these things are alien to Thee, than whom nothing better can be conceived of. Hence, there are no parts in Thee Lord., nor art Thou more than one.
But Thou art so truly a unitary being, and so identical with Thyself, that in no respect art Thou unlike Thyself, rather Thou art unity itself, indivisible by any conception.”
“All that God is He has always been, and all that He has been and is He will ever be.” Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified.
Nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded. His immutability guarantees this.
The immutability of God appears in its most perfect beauty when viewed against the mutability of men. In God no change is possible; in men change is impossible to escape.
Neither the man is fixed nor his world, but he and it are in constant flux. Each man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle.
Certain poets have found a morbid pleasure in the law of impermanence and have sung in a minor key the song of perpetual change.
Omar the tentmaker sang with pathos and humor of mutation and mortality, the twin diseases that afflict mankind. “Don’t slap that clay around so roughly,” he exhorts the potter, “that may be your grandfather’s dust you make so free with”.
“When you lift the cup to drink red wine,” he reminds the reveler, “you may be kissing the lips of some beauty dead long ago.”
This note of sweet sorrow expressed with gentle humor gives a radiant beauty to his quatrains but, however beautiful, the whole long poem is sick, sick unto death.
Like the bird charmed by the serpent that would devour it, the poet is fascinated by the enemy that is destroying him and all men and every generation of men.
The sacred writers, too, face up to man’s mutability, but they are healthy men and there is a wholesome strength in their words. They have found the cure for the great sickness. God, they say changes not.
The law of mutation belongs to a fallen world, but God is immutable, and in Him, men of faith find at last eternal permanence. In the meanwhile change works for the children of the kingdom, not against them.
Immutability Of God Commentary
The changes that occur in them are wrought by the hand of the in-living Spirit. “But we all,” says the apostle, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the passing of dear familiar things.
O Lord! My heart is sick,
Sick of this everlasting change;
And life runs tediously quick
Through its unresting race and varied range:
Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee
And wakes no echo in Thy mute Eternity. —Frederick W. Faber
These words of Faber find sympathetic response in every heart; yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things.
In a fallen world such as this, the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving.
For human beings, the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change.
To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance: the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered.
The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before. So radical is this change that the apostle calls the man who used to be “the old man” and the man who now is “the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.”
Yet the change is deeper and more basic than any external acts can reveal, for it includes also the reception of life of another and higher quality.
The old man, even at his best, possesses only the life of Adam: the new man has the life of God. And this is more than a mere manner of speaking.
It is quite literally true. When God infuses eternal life into the spirit of a man, the man becomes a member of a new and higher order of being.
In the working out of His redemptive processes the unchanging God makes full use of change and through a succession of changes arrives at permanence at last. In the Book of Hebrews, this is shown most clearly.
“He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second,” is a kind of summation of the teaching of that remarkable book. The old covenant, as something provisional, was abolished, and the new and everlasting covenant took its place.
The blood of goats and bulls lost its significance when the blood of the Paschal Lamb was shed. The law, the altar, the priesthood.
All were temporary and subject to change; now the eternal law of God is engraved forever on the living, sensitive stuff of which the human soul is composed.
The ancient sanctuary is no more, but the new sanctuary is eternal in the heavens and there the Son of God has His eternal priesthood.
Here we see that God uses change as a lowly servant to bless His redeemed household, but He is outside of the law of mutation and is unaffected by any changes that occur in the universe.
Immutability Of God Commentary
And all things as they change proclaim
The Lord is eternally the same. —Charles Wesley
Again the question of use arises. “Of what use to me is, the knowledge that God is immutable?” someone asks. “Is not the whole thing mere metaphysical speculation?
Something that might bring a certain satisfaction to persons of a particular type of mind but can have no real significance for practical men?”
If by “practical men” we mean unbelieving men engrossed in secular affairs and indifferent to the claims of Christ, the welfare of their souls, or the interests of the world to come.
Then for them, such a book as this can have no meaning at all; nor, unfortunately, can any other book that takes religion seriously.
But while such men may be in the majority, they do not by any means compose the whole of the population. There are still the seven thousand who have not bowed their knees to Baal.
These believe they were created to worship God and to enjoy His presence forever, and they are eager to learn all they can about the God with whom they expect to spend eternity.
In this world where men forget us, change their attitude toward us as their private interests dictate, and revise their opinion of us for the slightest cause, is it not a source of wondrous strength to know that the God with whom we have to do changes not?
That His attitude toward us now is the same as it was in eternity past and will be in eternity to come?
What peace it brings to the Christian heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. Incoming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood.
He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one. Neither does He change His mind about anything.
Today, at this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, and the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.
God never changes moods cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm. His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when He drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden.
And His attitude toward the sinner was the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest.”
God will not compromise and He need not be coaxed. He cannot be persuaded to alter His Word nor talk into answering selfish prayer.
In all our efforts to find God, to please Him, and to commune with Him, we should remember that all change must be on our part.
“I am the lord, I change not.” We have but to meet His clearly stated terms, and bring our lives into accord with His revealed will, and His infinite power will become instantly operative toward us in the manner set forth through the gospel in the Scriptures of truth.
Fountain of being! Source of Good!
Immutable Thou dost remain!
Nor can the shadow of a change
Obscure the glories of Thy reign.
Earth may with all her powers dissolve,
If such the great Creator will;
But Thou forever art the same,
I AM is Thy memorial still. —From Walker’s Collection
Thou, O Christ, who was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, make us strong.to overcome the desire to be wise and to be reputed wise by others as ignorant as ourselves.
We turn from our wisdom as well as from our folly and flee to Thee, the wisdom of God and the power of God. Amen.
In this brief study of divine wisdom, we begin with faith in God. Following our usual pattern, we shall not seek to understand so that we may believe, but to believe so that we may understand.
Hence, we shall not seek for proof that God is wise. The unbelieving mind would not be convinced by any proof and the worshipping heart needs none.
He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that no understanding: he revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.
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” The believing man responds to this, and to the angelic chant, “Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever.
” It never occurs to such a man that God should furnish proof of His wisdom or His power. Is it not enough that He is God?
When Christian theology declares that God is wise, it means vastly more than it says or can say, for it tries to make a comparatively weak word bear an incomprehensible plentitude of meaning that threatens to tear it apart and crush it under the sheer weight of the idea.
“His understanding is infinite,” says the psalmist. It is nothing less than infinitude that theology is here laboring to express.
Since the word infinite describes what is unique, it can have no modifiers. We do not say “more unique” or “very infinite.” Before infinitude, we stand silent.
There is indeed a secondary, created wisdom that God has given in measure to His creatures as their highest good may require; but the wisdom of any creature or all creatures.
When set against the boundless wisdom of God, is pathetically small. For this reason, the apostle is accurate when he refers to God as “only wise”.
That is, God is wise in Himself, and all the shining wisdom of men or angels is but a reflection of that uncreated effulgence that streams from the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.
The idea” of God as infinitely wise is at the root of all truth. It is a datum of belief necessary to the soundness of all other beliefs about God.
Being what He is without regard to creatures, God is of course unaffected by our opinions of Him, but our moral sanity requires that we attribute to the maker and sustainer of the universe a wisdom entirely perfect.
To refuse to do this is to betray the very thing in us that distinguishes us from the beasts.
In the Holy Scriptures wisdom, when used by God and good men, always carries a strong moral connotation. It is conceived as being pure, loving, and good.
Wisdom that is mere shrewdness is often attributed to evil men, but such wisdom is treacherous and false. These two kinds of wisdom are in perpetual conflict.
Indeed, when seen from the lofty peak of Sinai or Calvary, the whole history of the world is discovered to be but a contest between the wisdom of God and the cunning of Satan and fallen men.
The outcome of the contest is not in doubt. The imperfect must fall before the perfect at last. God has warned that He will take the wise in their craftiness and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Wisdom, among other things, is the ability to devise perfect ends and to achieve those ends by the most perfect means. It sees the end from the beginning, so there can be no need to guess or conjecture.
Wisdom sees everything in focus, each in proper relation to all, and is thus able to work toward predestined goals with flawless precision.
All God’s acts are done in perfect wisdom, first for His glory, and then for the highest good of the greatest number for the longest time.
And all His acts are as pure as they are wise and as good as they are wise and pure.
Not only could His acts not be better done: but a better way to do them could not be imagined. An infinitely wise God must work in a manner not to be improved upon by finite creatures.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all. The earth is full of Thy riches Without the creation.
The wisdom of God would have remained forever locked in the boundless abyss of the divine nature. God brought His creatures into being so that He might enjoy them and they rejoice in Him.
“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Many through the centuries have declared themselves unable to believe in the basic wisdom of a world wherein so much appears to be so wrong.
Voltaire in his Candide introduces a determined optimist, whom he calls Dr. Pangloss, and into his mouth puts all the arguments for the “best-of-all-possible-worlds” philosophy.
Of course, the French cynic took keen delight in placing the old professor in situations that made his philosophy look ridiculous.
But the Christian view of life is altogether more realistic than that of Dr. Pangloss with his “sufficient reason.”
It is that this is not at the moment the best of all possible worlds, but one lying under the shadow of a huge calamity, the Fall of man.
The inspired writers insist that the whole creation now groans and travails under the mighty shock of the Fall. They do not attempt to supply “sufficient reasons”.
They assert that the “creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who hath subjected the same in hope.
” No effort here to justify the ways of God with men; just a simple declaration of fact. The being of God is its defense.
But there is hope in all our tears. When the hour of Christ’s triumph arrives, the suffering world will be brought out into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
For men of the new creation, the golden age is not past but future, and when it is ushered in, a wondering universe will see that God has indeed abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.
In the meantime, we rest our hope in the only wise God, our Saviour, and wait with patience for the slow development of His benign purposes.
Despite tears and pain and death, we believe that the God who made us all is infinitely wise and good.
As Abraham staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving the glory to God, and was fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able to perform.
So do we base our hope on God alone and hope against hope till the day breaks? We rest in what God is. I believe that this alone is true faith. Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith.
“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
The testimony of faith is that, no matter how things look in this fallen world, all God’s acts are wrought in perfect wisdom.
The incarnation of the Eternal Son in human flesh was one of God’s mighty deeds, and we may be sure that this awesome deed was done with a perfection possible only to the Infinite.
“Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh. Atonement too was accomplished with the same flawless skill that marks all of God’s acts.
However little we understand it all, we know that Christ’s expiatory work perfectly reconciled God and men and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Our concern is not to explain but to proclaim. Indeed I wonder whether God could make us understand all that happened there at the cross.
According to the apostle Peter not even angels know, however eagerly they may desire to look into these things. The operation of the gospel, the new birth, the coming of the divine Spirit into human nature.
The ultimate overthrow of evil, and the final establishment of Christ’s righteous kingdom – all these have flowed and do flow out of God’s infinite fullness of wisdom.
The sharpest eyes of the honest watcher in the best company above cannot discover a flaw in the ways of God in bringing all this to fruition.
Nor can the pooled wisdom of seraphim and cherubim suggest how an improvement might be made in the divine procedure.
“I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.”
It is vitally important that we hold the truth of God’s infinite wisdom as a tenet of our creed, but this is not enough. We must by the exercise of faith and by prayer bring it into the practical world of our day-by-day experience.
To believe actively that our Heavenly Father constantly spreads around us providential circumstances that work for our present good and our everlasting well-being brings to the soul a veritable benediction.
Most of us go through life praying a little, planning a little, jockeying for position, hoping but never being quite certain of anything, and always secretly afraid that we will miss the way. This is a tragic waste of truth and never gives rest to the heart.
There is a better way. It is to repudiate our wisdom and take instead the infinite wisdom of God. Our insistence upon seeing ahead is natural enough, but it is a real hindrance to our spiritual progress.
God has charged himself with full responsibility for our eternal happiness and stands ready to take over the management of our lives the moment we turn in faith in Him.
Here is His promise: “And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known.
I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.”
Let Him lead the blindfold onwards,
Love needs not to know;
Children whom the Father leadeth Ask not where they go.
Though the path is all unknown,
Over moors and mountains alone. —Gerhard Teersteegen
God constantly encourages us to trust Him in the dark. I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass.
And cut in sunder the bars of iron: and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.”
It is heartening to learn how many of God’s mighty deeds were done in secret, away from the prying eyes of men or angels.
When God created the heavens and the earth, darkness was upon the face of the deep. When the Eternal Son became flesh, He was carried for a time in the darkness of the sweet virgin’s womb.
When He died for the life of the world, it was in the darkness, seen by no one at the last.
When He arose from the dead, it was, “very early in the morning.” No one saw Him rise. It is as if God were saying, “What I am is all that need matter to you, for there lie your hope and your peace.
I will do what I will do, and it will all come to light at last, but how I do it is My secret. Trust Me, and be not afraid.”
With the goodness of God to desire our highest welfare, the wisdom of God to plan it, and the power of God to achieve it, what do we lack? Surely we are the most favored of all creatures.
In all our Maker’s grand designs,
Omnipotence, with wisdom, shines;
His works., through all this wondrous frame,
Declare the glory of His Name. —Thomas Blacklock
Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising and art acquainted with all my ways. I can inform Thee of nothing and it is vain to try to hide anything from Thee.
In the light of Thy perfect knowledge, I would be as artless as a little child. Help me to put away all care, for Thou knowest the way that I take and when Thou hast tried me I shall come forth as gold. Amen.
The Scriptures teach that God has never learned from anyone. “Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counselor hath taught him?
With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to Him the way of understanding?”
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“For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counselor?” These rhetorical questions put by the prophet and the apostle Paul declare that God has never learned.
From there it is only a step to the conclusion that God cannot learn. Could God at any time or in any manner receive into His mind knowledge that He did not possess and had not possessed from eternity, He would be imperfect and less than himself?
To think of a God who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel or a seraph, is to think of someone other than the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth.
This negative approach to the divine omniscience is, I believe, quite justified in the circumstances.
Since our intellectual knowledge of God is so small and obscure, we can sometimes gain considerable advantage in our struggle to understand what God is like by the simple expedient of thinking what He is not like.
So far in this examination of the attributes of God we have been driven to the free use of negatives. We have seen that God had no origin.
That He had no beginning, that He requires no helpers, that He suffers no change, and that in His essential being, there are no limitations.
This method of trying to make men see what God is like by showing them what He is not like is used also by the inspired writers in the Holy Scriptures.
“Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,” cries Isaiah, “that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?”
And that abrupt statement by God Himself, “I am the Lord, I change not,” tells us more about the divine omniscience than could be told in a ten-thousand-word treatise, were all negatives arbitrarily ruled out.
God’s eternal truthfulness is stated negatively by the apostle Paul, “God… cannot lie”; and when the angel asserted that “with God, nothing shall be impossible,” the two negatives add up to a ringing positive.
That God is omniscient is not only taught in the Scriptures, it must be inferred also from all else that is taught concerning Him.
God perfectly knows Himself and, being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known.
And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn.
God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood, and all creatures.
Every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret.
All thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in the earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell.
Because God knows all things perfectly, He knows nothing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything.
He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their good) does He seek information or ask questions.
God is self-existent and self-contained and knows what no creature can ever know – Himself, perfectly. “The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Only the Infinite can know the infinite.
In the divine omniscience, we see set forth against each other the terror and fascination of the Godhead.
That God knows each person through and through can be a cause of shaking fear in the man who has something to hide – some unforsaken sin, some secret crime committed against man or God.
The unblessed soul may well tremble that God knows the flimsiness of every pretext and never accepts the poor excuses given for sinful conduct since He knows perfectly the real reason for it.
“Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
” How frightful a thing to see the sons of Adam seeking to hide among the trees of another garden. But where shall they hide? “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?…
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day.”
And to us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the gospel, how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely?
No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick; and no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past.
No unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us since He knew us utterly before we knew Him
and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us.
“For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”
Our Father in Heaven knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. He knew our inborn treachery, and for His own sake engaged to save us (Isa. 48:8-11).
His only begotten Son, when He walked among us, felt our pains in their naked intensity of anguish. His knowledge of our afflictions and adversities is more than theoretic.
It is personal, warm, and compassionate. Whatever may befall us, God knows and cares as no one else can.
He doth give His joy to all;
He becomes an infant small;
He becomes a man of woe;
He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh
And thy Maker is not by;
Think not thou canst weep a tear
And thy Maker is not near.
O! He gives us His joy
That our griefs He may destroy;
Till our grief is fled and gone
He doth sit by us and moan. —William Blake
O Lord our Lord, there is none like Thee in heaven above or in the earth beneath. Thine is the greatness and the dignity and the majesty.
All that is in the heaven and the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, O God, and Thou art exalted as head over all. Amen.
When we speak of God as transcendent we mean of course that He is exalted far above the created universe, so far above that human thought cannot imagine it.
To think accurately about this, however, we must keep in mind that “far above” does not here refer to physical distance from the earth but to quality of being.
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We are concerned not with location in space nor with mere altitude, but with life. God is spirit, and to Him, magnitude and distance have no meaning.
The words of God as found in Isaiah, “Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,” give a distinct impression of altitude.
But that is because we who dwell in a world of matter, space, and time tend to think in material terms and can grasp abstract ideas only when they are identified in some way with material things.
In its struggle to free itself from the tyranny of the natural world, the human heart must learn to translate upward the language the Spirit uses to instruct us.
It is the spirit that gives significance to matter and apart from spirit, nothing has any value at last.
A little child strays from a party of sightseers and becomes lost on a mountain, and immediately the whole mental perspective of the members of the party is changed.
Rapt admiration for the grandeur of nature gives way to acute distress for the lost child.
The group spreads out over the mountainside anxiously calling the child’s name and searching eagerly into every secluded spot where the little one might chance to be hidden.
What brought about this sudden change? The tree-clad mountain is still there towering into the clouds in breathtaking beauty, but no one notices it now.
All attention is focused on the search for a curly-haired little girl not yet two years old and weighing less than thirty pounds.
Though so new and so small, she is more precious to parents and friends than the huge bulk of the vast and ancient mountain they had been admiring a few minutes before.
And in their judgment, the whole civilized world concurs, for the little girl can love and laugh and speak and pray, and the mountain cannot. It is the child’s quality of being that gives it worth.
Yet we must not compare the being of God with any other as we just now compared the mountain with the child. We must not think of God as the highest in an ascending order of beings.
Starting with the single cell and going on up from the fish to the bird to the animal to man to angel to cherub to God.
This would be to grant God eminence, even pre-eminence, but that is not enough; we must grant Him transcendence in the fullest meaning of that word.
Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable. He is as high above an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite, while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite.
The caterpillar and the archangel, though far removed from each other in the scale of created things, are nevertheless one in that they are alike created.
They both belong in the category of that-which-is-not-God and are separated from God by infinitude itself Reticence and compulsion forever contend within the heart that would speak of God.
How shall polluted mortals dare
To sing Thy glory or Thy grace
Beneath Thy feet, we lie afar
And see but shadows of Thy face. —Isaac Watts
Yet we console ourselves with the knowledge that it is God Himself who puts it in our hearts to seek Him and makes it possible in some measure to know Him, and He is pleased with even the feeble effort to make Him known.
If some watcher or holy one who has spent his glad centuries by the sea of fire were to come to earth, how meaningless to him would be the ceaseless chatter of the busy tribes of men.
How strange to him and how empty would sound the flat, stale, and profitless words heard in the average pulpit from week to week.
And were such a one to speak on earth would he not speak of God? Would he not charm and fascinate his hearers with rapturous descriptions of the Godhead?
And after hearing him could we ever again consent to listen to anything less than theology?
The doctrine of God? Would we not thereafter demand of those who would presume to teach us that they speak to us from the mount of divine vision or remain silent altogether?
When the psalmist saw the transgression of the wicked his heart told him how it could be. “There is no fear of God before his eyes,” he explained, and in so saying revealed to us the psychology of sin.
When men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws without hesitation. The fear of consequences is not a deterrent when the fear of God is gone.
In the olden days men of faith were said to “walk in the fear of God” and to “serve the Lord with fear.
” However intimate their communion with God, however bold their prayers, at the base of their religious life was the conception of God as awesome and dreadful.
This idea of God’s transcendent rims through the whole Bible and gives color and tone to the character of the saints.
This fear of God was more than a natural apprehension of danger; it was a non-rational dread, an acute feeling of personal insufficiency in the presence of God the Almighty.
Wherever God appeared to men in Bible times the results were the same – an overwhelming sense of terror and dismay, a wrenching sensation of sinfulness and guilt.
When God spoke, Abram stretched himself upon the ground to listen. When Moses saw the Lord in the burning bush, he hid his face in fear to look upon God.
Isaiah’s vision of God wrung from him the cry, “Woe is me!” and the confession, “I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.”
Daniels’s encounter with God was probably the most dreadful and wonderful of them all. The prophet lifted his eyes and saw One whose “body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning.
And his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.”
“Daniel alone saw the vision” he afterward wrote, “for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide.
Therefore I was left alone and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.
Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.”
These experiences show that a vision of divine transcendence soon ends all controversy between man and his God.
The fight goes out of the man and he is ready with the conquered Saul to ask meekly, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
Conversely, the self-assurance of modern Christians, the basic levity present in so many of our religious gatherings, and the shocking disrespect shown for the Person of God are evidence enough of deep blindness of heart.
Many call themselves by the name of Christ, talk much about God, and pray to Him sometimes, but do not know who He is.
“The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,” but this healing fear is today hardly found among Christian men.
Once in conversation with his friend Eckermann, the poet Goethe turned to thoughts of religion and spoke of the abuse of the divine name.
“People treat it,” he said, “as if that incomprehensible and most high Being, who is even beyond the reach of thought, were only their equal.
Otherwise, they would not say ‘the Lord God, the dear God, the good God.’ This expression becomes to them, especially to the clergy, who have it daily in their mouths, a mere phrase, a barren name, to which no thought whatever is attached.
If they were impressed by His greatness they would be dumb and through veneration unwilling to name Him.
Lord of all beings, throned afar,
They glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!
Lord of all life, below, above,
Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
Before They ever-blazing throne We ask no luster of our own. —Oliver Wendell Holmes
Our Father, we know that Thou art present with us, but our knowledge is but a figure and shadow of truth and has little of the spiritual savor and inward sweetness such knowledge should afford.
This is for us a great loss and the cause of much weakness of heart. Help us to make at once such amendment of life as is necessary before we can experience the true meaning of the words “In thy presence is fulness of joy.” Amen.
God Is Omnipresent Bible Verse
The word present, of course, means here, close to, next to, and the prefix omni gives it universality. God is everywhere here, close to everything, next to everyone.
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Few other truths are taught in the Scriptures with as great clarity as the doctrine of divine omnipresence. Those passages supporting this truth are so plain that it would take considerable effort to misunderstand them.
God’s Omnipresence Explained
They teach that God is at once far off and near and that in Him men move and live and have their being.
And what is equally convincing is that they everywhere compel us to assume that God is omnipresent to account for other facts they tell us about Him.
For instance, the Scriptures teach that God is infinite. This means that His being knows no limits.
Therefore there can be no limit to His presence; He is omnipresent. In His infinitude, He surrounds the finite creation and contains it. There is no place beyond Him for anything to be.
God Is Omnipresent Bible Verse
God is our environment as the sea is to the fish and the air to the bird. “God is over all things,” wrote Hildebert of Lavardin, “under all things; outside all.
Within but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly within, filling.”
Biblical Verses On God’s Omnipresence
The belief that God is present within His universe cannot be held in isolation.
It has practical implications in many areas of theological thought and bears directly upon certain religious problems, such, for instance, as the nature of the world.
Men of almost every age and culture have been concerned with the question of what kind of world this is.
Is it a material world running by itself, or is it spiritual and run by unseen powers? Does this interlocking system explain itself or does its secret lie in mystery?
Does the stream of existence begin and end in itself? Or is its source higher up and farther back in the hills?
Christian theology claims to have the answer to these questions. It does not speculate nor offer an opinion but presents its “Thus saith the Lord” as its authority.
It declares positively that the world is spiritual: it originated in spirit, flows out of spirit, is spiritual, and is meaningless apart from the Spirit that inhabits it.
God Is Omnipresent Bible Verse
The doctrine of divine omnipresence personalizes man’s relation to the universe in which he finds himself. This great central truth gives meaning to all truths and imparts supreme value to all his little life.
God is present, near him, next to him, and this God sees him and knows him through and thoroughly.
At this point faith begins, and while it may go on to include a thousand other wonderful truths, these all refer back to the truth that God is and God is here.
“He that cometh to God”, says the Book of Hebrews, “must believe that he is” And Christ Himself said, “Ye believe in God, Believe also…
” Whatever “also” may be added to the elementary belief in God is the superstructure, and regardless of the heights to which it may rise, it continues to rest solidly upon the original foundation.
The Omnipresence Of God In Christianity
The teachings of the New Testament are that God created the world by the Logos, the Word, and the Word is identified with the second person of the Godhead who was present in the world even before He became incarnate in human nature,
The Word made all things and remained in His creation to uphold and sustain it and be at the same time a moral light enabling every man to distinguish good from evil.
The universe operates as an orderly system, not by impersonal laws but by the creative voice of the immanent and universal Presence, the Logos.
Canon W. G. Holmes of India told of seeing Hindu worshipers tapping on trees and stones and whispering “Are you there? Are you there?” to the god they hoped might reside within.
In complete humility, the instructed Christian brings the answer to that question. God is indeed there.
God Is Omnipresent Bible Verse
He is there as He is here and everywhere, not confined to tree or stone, but free in the universe, near to everything, next to everyone, and through Jesus Christ immediately accessible to every loving heart.
The doctrine of divine omnipresence decides this forever. This truth is to the convinced Christian a source of deep comfort in sorrow and of steadfast assurance in all the varied experiences of his life.
To him “the practice of the presence of God” consists not of protecting an imaginary object from within his mind and then seeking to realize its presence.
It is rather to recognize the real presence of the One whom all sound theology declares to be already there, an objective entity, existing apart from any apprehension of Him on the part of His creatures.
The resultant experience is not visionary but real. The certainty that God is always near us, present in all parts of His world, closer to us than our thoughts, should maintain us in a state of high moral happiness most of the time.
But not all the time. It would be less than honest to promise every believer continual jubilee and less than realistic to expect it.
A child may cry out in pain even when sheltered in their mother’s arms, so a Christian may sometimes know what it is to suffer even in the conscious presence of God.
God Is Everywhere: The Meaning Of Omnipresence
| 1 Chronicles | 1 Kings | 1 Samuel | Mark |
| 2 Kings | Genesis | Deuteronomy | Judges |
| Ephesians | Exodus | Galatians | Leviticus |
| Proverbs | Song of Soloman | 2 Samuel | Philippians |
God Is Omnipresent Bible Verse
Though “always rejoicing,” Paul admitted that he was sometimes sorrowful, and for our sakes, Christ experienced strong crying and tears though He never left the bosom of the Father (John 1:18).
But all will be well. In a world like this tears have their therapeutic effects. The healing balm distilled from the garments of the enfolding Presence cures our ills before they become fatal.
The knowledge that we are never alone calms the troubled sea of our lives and speaks peace to our souls.
That God is here both Scripture and reason declare. It remains only for us to learn to realize this in conscious experience.
A sentence from a letter by Dr. Allen Fleece sums up the testimony of many others: “The knowledge that God is present is blessed, but to feel His presence is nothing less than sheer happiness.”
God reveals His presence:
Let us now adore Him,
And with awe appear before Him.
Him alone, God we own;
He’s our Lord and Savoury Praise His name forever.
God Himself is with us:
The angelic legions Serve with awe in heavenly regions. -Gerhard Tersteegen
It is a good thing to give thanks unto Thee and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High, to show forth Thy loving-kindness in the morn- ng and Thy faithfulness every night.
As Thy Son while on earth was loyal to Thee, His Heavenly Father, so now in heaven He is faithful to us, His earthly brethren; and in this knowledge we press on with every confident hope for all the years and centuries yet to come. Amen.
As emphasized earlier, God’s attributes are not isolated traits of His character but facets of His unitary being. They are not things-in-them-selves; they are, rather, thoughts by which we think of God’s aspects of a perfect whole, names were given to whatever we know to be true of the Godhead.
Read and Learn More The knowledge of the Holy
To have a correct understanding of the attributes we must see them all as one. We can think of them separately but they cannot be separated.
“Whence, although we attribute to God sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, sense, reason and intellect, and so forth, according to the divers significations of each word, yet in Him sight is not other than hearing, or tasting, or smelling, or touching, or feeling, or understanding.
And so all theology is said to be established in a circle because any one of His attributes is affirmed of another.” In studying any attribute, the essential oneness of all the attributes soon becomes apparent.
We see, for instance, that if God is self-existent He must be also self-sufficient; and if He has power He, being infinite, must have all power.
If He possesses knowledge, His infinitude assures us that He possesses all knowledge. Similarly, His immutability presupposes His faithfulness. If He is unchanging, it follows that He could not be unfaithful, since that would require Him to change.
Any failure within the divine character would argue imperfection and, since God is perfect, it could not occur. Thus the attributes explain each other and prove that they are but glimpses the mind enjoys of the perfect Godhead.
All of God’s acts are consistent with all of His attributes. No attribute contradicts the other, but all harmonize and blend into each other in the infinite abyss of the Godhead. All that God does agrees with all that God is and being and”doing are one in Him.
The familiar picture of God as often torn between His justice and His mercy is altogether false to the facts. To think of God as inclining first toward one and then toward another of His attributes is to imagine a God who is unsure of Himself.
Frustrated, and emotionally unstable, which of course is to say that the one whom we are thinking is not the true God at all but a weak, mental reflection of Him badly out of focus.
God being who He is, cannot cease to be what He is, and being what He is, He cannot act out of character with Himself. He is at once faithful and immutable, so all His words and acts must be and remain faithful.
Men become unfaithful out of desire, fear, weakness, loss of interest, or because of some strong influence from without.
None of these forces can affect God in any way. He is His reason for all He is and does. He cannot be compelled from without but ever speaks and acts from within Himself by His sovereign will as it pleases Him.
I think it might be demonstrated that almost every heresy that has afflicted the church through the years has arisen from believing about God things that are not true, or from overemphasizing certain true things to obscure other things equally true.
To magnify any attribute to the exclusion of another is to head straight for one of the dismal swamps of theology, and yet we are all constantly tempted to do just that.
For instance, the Bible teaches that God is love, some have interpreted this in such a way as virtually to deny that He is just, which the Bible also teaches.
Others press the Biblical doctrine of God’s goodness so far that it is made to contradict his holiness. Or they make His compassion cancel out His truth.
Still, others understand the sovereignty of God in a way that destroys or at least greatly diminishes His goodness and love. We can hold a correct view of truth only by daring to believe everything God has said about Himself.
It is a grave responsibility that a man takes upon himself when he seeks to edit out of God’s self-revelation such features as he in his ignorance deems objectionable.
Blindness in part must surely fall upon any of up presumptuous enough to attempt such a thing.
And it is wholly uncalled for. We need not fear to let the truth stand as it is written. There is no conflict among the divine attributes. God’s being is unitary.
He cannot divide Himself and act at a given time from one of His attributes while the rest remain inactive.
All that God is must accord with all that God does. Justice must be present in mercy and love in judgment. And so with all the divine attributes.
The faithfulness of God is a datum of sound theology but to the believer, it becomes far more than that: it passes through the processes of the understanding and goes on to become nourishing food for the soul.
The Scriptures not only teach truth, but they show also its uses for mankind.
The inspired writers were men of like passion with us, dwelling amid life. What they learned about God became to them a sword, a shield, a hammer; it became their life motivation, their good hope, and their confident expectation.
From the objective facts of theology, their hearts made how many thousand joyous deductions and personal applications! The Book of Psalms rings with glad thanksgiving for the faithfulness of God.
The New Testament takes up the theme and celebrates the loyalty of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession.
And in the Apocalypse, Christ is seen astride a white horse riding toward His triumph, and the names He bears are Faithful and True.
Christian song, too, celebrates the attributes of God, and among them the divine faithfulness. In our hymnody, at its best, the attributes become the wellspring from which flow rivers of joyous melody.
Some old hymnbooks may yet be found in which the hymns have no names; a line in italics above each one indicates the theme, and the worshiping heart cannot but rejoice in what it finds: “God’s glorious perfections celebrated.”
“Wisdom, Majesty, and goodness.” “Omniscience.” “Omnipotence and immutability.” “Glory, mercy, and grace.” These are a few samples taken from a hymnbook published in 1849.
But everyone familiar with Christian hymnody knows that the stream of sacred song takes its rise far back in the early years of the Church’s existence.
From the beginning belief in the perfection of God brought sweet assurance to believing men and taught the ages to sing.
Upon God’s faithfulness rests our whole hope of future blessedness. Only as He is faithful will His covenants stand and His promises be honored.
Only as we have complete assurance that He is faithful may we live in peace and look forward with assurance to the life to come.
Every heart can make its application of this and draw from it such conclusions as the truth suggests and its own needs bring into focus.
The tempted, the anxious, the fearful, and the discouraged may all find new hope and good cheer in the knowledge that our Heavenly Father is faithful.
He will never be true to His pledged word. The hard-pressed sons of the covenant may be sure that He will never remove His loving-kindness from them nor suffer His faithfulness to fail.
Happy the man whose hopes rely
On Israel’s God; He made the sky;
And earth and seas, with all their train;
His truth forever stands secure;
He saves the oppressed, He feeds the poor,
And none shall find His promises in vain. —Isaac Watts
