Our Perception Of God’s Perfection
I long for Thee, O God, in all Thy perfection. My mind cannot comprehend the wonders of Thy perfection, and I stagger trying to understand Thee. What my mind cannot grasp, my heart can in full wonder and adoration. Fill my heart with Thyself. The heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee; how much less this mind of mine. Amen.
God makes the greatest demand on our intelligence and imagination and powers of reason, requiring us to picture a mode of being we are not familiar with, a mode of being wholly beyond ourselves, a mode of being unlike anything we have ever known.
We must keep in mind one thing: All I say about God is still not God, because theology, at its finest moment, can do no more than tell us about God. To know about God and to know God are two absolutely different things. Most people confuse knowing about God with knowing God, and this, in my opinion, is at the core of many of our problems in the evangelical church today.
Read and Learn More Things That Delight The Heart Of God
Let me say that if you ever know God, you are going to have to enter in by the new birth, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and by the revelation of the Spirit. There must be revelation and illumination.
You have to have the truth revealed to you, but until there is illumination of that truth, it does not do you any good. Only the Holy Spirit can make us know God. That is why when we speak of the Holy Spirit, we ought not to speak apologetically, and nobody ought to be ashamed to preach about the Holy Spirit or be afraid to talk about Him, for the reason that only He can make us know.
Theology can teach us about God, and that is what this book is all about.
One problem in describing God is that we use ourselves as a pattern, push that up into the heavens, and say that is what God is like. God is bigger than we are, of course. But He is one size and we are another size, so we begin to think of God in terms of our limitations.
When we try to describe God this way, we end up with a caricature of God, a God that is not worthy of our worship. Too many people are worshiping the God of their own imaginations.
If we are really going to understand God, we need to see Him in light of infinity. I mean by that, God is infinite in every aspect of himself. What I mean about the infinitude of God is that God knows no limit, and right there is where we stop.
The human mind can go a long way, but it cannot go all the way to limitlessness. But God is limitless, boundless, and has no end. This defies every definition we could ever come up with. There is no end to anything in God, and He has no bounds.
The vast ocean has a boundary, but God has no boundary. Whatever God is, He is without limit or bounds, and whatever God has, He has without limit or measure. These are words that can be used only about something created, and God is the Uncreated One.
When we come to describe God, we sometimes use words carelessly. We often say that something is unlimited. A company’s wealth is unlimited, an athlete has unlimited energy, and an artist takes unlimited pains to do his painting.
The danger of taking the word unlimited and pulling it down into our sphere is that we then associate it. God and His unlimitedness with our understanding of unlimited.
Take the word measureless, for example. Measureless is a word we can use only of God. Anytime you have some kind of measurement, it has to do with created things giving an account of themselves. But it cannot be applied to God.
In our description of God, we cannot use imperfections, because God does not have limitations or imperfections of any sort. God is in a category all by himself. Everything we describe by limitations is contingent and relative, whereas God is self-existent, an absolute.
Therefore, He is a boundless ocean; and none can bound Him, and none can fathom Him, and none can describe how far out He goes in infinite distance in all that He is.
The measure applies to created things and can never be associated with God. We have liquid measurements and measurements of energy and sound measurements. We have measures of light.
We say a bulb is so piany watts, and we have numbers for pluralities: ones, twos, fives, and some tens. We can even measure intelligence. We measure our brain and our ability to do things, but when we do that, we are imperfect, small, and limited—not infinite.
God cannot be measured and cannot be weighed, for He is not composed of matter. You cannot figure God in distance, for God fills all distance. You cannot measure God, for God has no extension in space. You cannot measure the energy of God the sound God makes the light He gives off, or anything else in their absolute pluralities. God is one—one God, we praise Thee.
None of these words or concepts can touch God or describe Him. They describe only imperfect things that God has made, not God himself. They are the way we see the work of God’s hands. It is His fingerprint in creation.
Look on the work of God’s hands and you will see it. You see a mountain or a man and you have size there. Size is a relative thing. A man weighing two hundred pounds is nothing compared to a mountain.
But with God, there are no sizes, no degrees, no measurements, and no pluralities, because God is just God.
Frederick Faber once wrote a hymn about the infinity of God (“The Greatness of God”)- Nobody ever sings it, but he wrote it and got it out of his system. I have read it and it has blessed me.
O Majesty unspeakable dread!
Wert Thou less mighty than Thou art,
Thou went O Lord! Too great for our belief
Too little for our heart.
I hear people say, “We have a big God.” I really do not like that, because I do not think we ought to pull God down to our level. I think God is too holy, too infinite, too high, too wonderful, too glorious to even think of Him like that.
If God were just a big God, He would be so big He would scare us, but He would be too little for us to worship. I could not worship a God who was just an oversized man. I could not even worship a God who was a huge man. If God were simply a huge man, then I could say, “He’s bigger than I am, but here I am.” This great God is infinite, and so I have no greatness apart from God.
But greatness, which is infinite makes room
For all things in its lap to lie;
We should be crushed by a magnificence
Short of infinity.
We share in what is infinite: ’tis ours,
For we and it alike are Thine;
What I enjoy, great God! by right of Thee
Is more than doubly mine.
Thus doth Thy grandeur make us grand ourselves;
‘Tis goodness bids us fear;
Thy greatness makes us brave as children are,
When those they love are near. –Frederick Faber(1814-1863)
God is infinite, and because God is infinite, you and I can be bold and brave in the universe, just the same as the little boy who is brave when his father is around.
How could I stand myself if I did not believe in the infinite God? How could I endure myself if I did not know that God is eternal? How could I endure the passing of my years if I did not know that I had been baptized into the heart of the One who knows no years, who is the Ancient of Days, who had no beginning and can have no end?
How could I accept my weakness if I did not know that I had been baptized into the heart of the One who has infinite strength? So this is our God, and this is the God we adore.
God is what He is without limit. He knows no extent, He knows no measure, and if there is a point where God is not, it would mean that God is not really who He says He is. There is a limit to great countries and a limit to great wealth, but there is no place where you can put a boundary and say, “God, do not overflow this.”
God speaks to the sea, and says, “This far, and no farther.” But who can speak to God and say, “This far and no farther”? Who dares tell God what He can do or cannot do?
If you are thinking of a limit, you are not thinking about God. But if you think and think and think, out and out, and up and up, and try to think as far out as God and then you break down—do not let it worry you.
Saint Augustine had his troubles with it. So did Paul David and Isaiah. No human being can think infinitude. Nobody can think it; you must believe it. You must believe it in your heart.
I cannot take you by the hand and lead you into the kingdom of God. I can only point you to the Lamb of God, and then it is between God and you. In the same way, I cannot by any means describe the infinitude of God. I can only point with wonder, amazement, and awestruck admiration and say, “Behold God.” After that, it is you and God.
What does all this mean to us? If God is infinite—and all theologians believe this, the Bible teaches it, and we sing about it—what does it mean to us now? Is it simply a lesson in theology that will be examined one day? No, not that. If this is true—and it is true—then certain things about God are true.
If God is infinite, then His love is infinite. There is a love closer than the love of a mother, and that is the love of God. A mother’s love goes so far, but “there is a limit to it. A mother can die and her love dies with her, but God cannot die, and because He cannot die, His love never dies.
Right here someone will say, “Did not Jesus die, and do we not sing, ‘When Christ the mighty Maker died, for man the creature s sin?”
Yes. The second person of the Trinity took upon himself the form of a man and died for our sins, but the eternal God remained alive and raised Him from the dead. Deity never died, but the man called Jesus, who was both God and man, died for our sins. No contradiction there.
No confusion at all. God cannot die. God is the immortal who has only immortality dwelling in light, which no man can approach. So the love of God is infinite. You can be certain of this.
The love of people is not infinite. It is an awful thing to fall in love and then fall back out of love. I always think how shocking it is when in a divorce situation a person will say, “I no longer love him.” She once did, but no longer. Love did not last.
We sometimes hear about mothers who forsake their children, so even the finest love that the world knows can fail. The love of a father, mother, sister, or wife has limits; but the love of God has none because God is infinite, and anything God has is limitless. There is one thing you can be sure about: There is no limit to the love of God.
Some believe in the complete salvation of the universe. They believe that when Christ died, He died for everyone, including the devil and demons. That is universalism, which I do not go along with. But as far as the love of God is concerned, the love of God is infinite enough to take in all of heaven and hell too. God, in His infinite planning,” planned that only those who repent and believe shall be saved.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind. –Frederick W. Faber(1814-1863)
Recently I was praying and thinking about how vast the grace of God is compared with our human sin. It is a peculiar contradiction. For example, if you do not think your sin is big, then the Lord cannot save you.
If you think your sin is bigger than God, then He cannot save you. You have to realize that to you, your sin is big; but God is infinite, and therefore God is bigger than all your sin. Where sin abounds, the grace of God does much more abound.
When God says “more,” referring to himself, we must extend our imagination into borderline infinity. When God says “much more” and puts a qualifying word behind it, what can you do but kneel and say, “My Lord and my God, how grace does much more abound”?
When you have your medicine that has no limit to cure a disease, which has a limit, you can be sure the patient is going to get well. When the infinite, limitless grace of God attacks the finite limit of sin in a man, that sin has no chance.
If we will only repent and turn from it, God will pulverize it and whirl it into immensity, where it can never be known again while eternity rolls on eternity.
That is what happened to my sin. That is what happens to the sin of everyone who believes. I am not making a fuss with the devil; I will let God handle him.
God is the only one who can. But I would like, in a sneaky way, to have the devil know that Jesus Christ our Lord is infinite, and His blood is infinite, and the purchase of His blood is infinite; and if all the sands of the seashore and all the stars in the sky were human beings, and if every corpuscle in the bloodstream of every human being in the world was a human being, and they had all sinned as bad as Judas did, still the grace of God, being infinite and limitless, would have no limit.
As Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf expressed:
Lord, I believe, were sinners more
Then sands upon the ocean shore,
For all Thou hast the ransom given,
Purchased for all peace, life, and heaven.
God could send a team of angels to count my sins, and in ten years or so, they could have them all added up and say, “Here’s the total,” and it would string clear across the room. The angel might say, “I guess he is doomed.”
But God would say, “No, look at My grace. It extends, not across the room, but from eternity past to eternity to come.” We sing of the infinite grace of our loving God, and it is proper and correct that we should.
This concept of infinitude also applies to the atonement, when Christ died for us.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross, it was enough. Personally, I am glad to have had enough of something. When Jesus died on the cross, it took Him only six hours. But because it was infinity dying, the man who died was the Deity who could not die. Bfit because God counted the infinity there, to Him it was enough.
I believe Jesus died for everyone, and when He died on the cross, He not only died for the elect, but He died for every human being who was ever born in the world or ever will be born. I believe He died for every baby who died at birth and for every man and woman who lived to be one hundred or more. I believe He died for all.
We can go around the world telling people that Jesus Christ died for them.
No man who has ever lived has been too much of a sinner to go beyond the infinite atonement of Jesus Christ. If every man were a sinner as bad as Judas Iscariot, the atonement of Jesus Christ would still cover him. If someone had only told Judas and he had repented, there might have been a Saint Judas today.
Another description we have in this regard has to do with the patience of Jesus—the infinite patience of Jesus, the patience of God, with the power to save. He has infinite power to save and break the power of canceled sin. Paul Rader used to say, “You name it, and God will break it.” He was so right.
Jesus, Thy Blood, And Righteousness
Lord, I believe, were sinners more
Then sands upon the ocean shore.
For all Thou hast the ransom given,
Purchased for all peace, life, and heaven.
Lord, I believe the price is paid
For every soul, the atonement made;
And every soul Thy grace may prove,
Loved with an everlasting love.
Jesus, be endless praise to Thee,
Whose boundless mercy hath for me,
For me, and all Thine hands have made,
An everlasting ransom was paid.
Ah, give to all Thy servants, Lord,
With the power to speak Thy quickening Word,
That sinners to Thy wounds may flee,
And find eternal life in Thee.
Thou God of power., Thou God of love,
Let the whole world Thy mercy prove,
Now let Thy Word oer all prevail;
Now take the spoils of death and hell. –Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf(1700-1760)