The Incomprehensible God
This excerpt is from Behold Your God: The Weight of Majesty.
If we could understand God, he would not be God, for it is a part of the nature
of God that he should be infinitely greater than any created mind.
—Charles Spurgeon
The fourth-century theologian Augustine wrote:
We are speaking of God. Is it any wonder
that you do not comprehend?
Stephen Charnock, in his book The Existence and Attributes of God, writes:
And whatsoever conception comes into your
mind, say, “This is not God; God is more than this:
If I could conceive him, he [could not be] God; for
God is incomprehensibly above whatsoever I can
say, whatsoever I can think and conceive of him.”
Referring to the impossibility of fully grasping the character of God, the twentieth-century Chicago pastor A. W. Tozer wrote:
…If all this sounds strange to modern ears, it is
only because we have for a full half century taken
God for granted. The glory of God has not been
revealed to this generation of men.
These men confront us with a fundamental aspect of God’s majesty—His incomprehensibility.
Incomprehensibility (the impossibility of being completely understood) may seem a strange and somewhat discouraging place to start a study of the attributes of our God. Yet these men give us a needed caution: we are entering the realm of mystery. There are facts to be studied and compared, facts to be grasped and lived upon. We can know our God through His self-revelation. We can, however, never fully comprehend Him.
Understanding God’s incomprehensibility will keep us from two dangers:
1. The smug assumption that if we work hard enough we will fully comprehend the revealed realities of God’s character.
2. The tendency to humanize God, to think of Him as one of us, only bigger.
To enlarge our thoughts of God’s majesty, we must look to Scripture to see what He says about Himself. If we will humbly set our hearts and minds to examine God’s self-revelation, we need not be discouraged by His incomprehensibility. In reality, incomprehensibility is one of the shining features of God’s splendor, the weight of His majesty. It is a truth that separates Him from all else.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
Romans 11:3
Meet the author:
John Snyder
Dr. John Snyder is a pastor at Christ Church New Albany, the director of Media Gratiae, and host of the Whole Counsel podcast. John has written several Bible studies, including Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically and Behold Your God: The Weight of Majesty. John and his wife, Misty, live in New Albany, Mississippi. They have been blessed with four children and three grandchildren.
