Presumption

“I want to know Christ.
I keep Him before me.
I lift up my eyes,
I drink in His glory.”
This song has been running in my head for weeks now. It truly is one of my greatest desires to be able to know my God. I long for the eternal life promised to His children if only so that I may spend that eternity beginning to understand what He is really like.

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him.
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Col. 1:16, 17

How presumptuous to think that we can know what God is like, what he thinks, or feels, or will or will not do! How arrogant to think that we can know with any certainty anything about him, his plans or his character.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “
"For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?"
"Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?"
“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” Romans 11:33-36

He needs our permission for nothing, has no cause to explain himself to us, and does not require or desire our advice. He is complete and perfect in and of Himself.

Yet we are encouraged to seek him in the Scriptures that he has left for us and we can learn of him. We can learn that He loves. The Bible, in fact, tells us that he is love. But it would be a mistake to think that his love in any way resembles human love. His love is perfect, unselfish, unconditional, and without fail. Our human love is not.
We can learn that he hates. Yet in the same way that his love is not like ours, neither is his hate. He hates without sin. His hatred is Just. What of ours?
We can learn that He is pure. Yet our understanding of purity is tainted because we live in a tainted world. We have no examples around us of true purity and therefore our very idea of the purity of God is at best flawed.
We can learn that He is light, but what do we truly know of light? Our Sun, from the very moment that Adam and Eve sinned, has been dying. Our imperfect eyes, coupled with all of the things in our atmosphere obscure its light from us. We know that the Almighty God is light and in him is no darkness at all (I John 1:5). He is pure light. Imagine being at the flashpoint of an atomic explosion. Even that is not pure light. Now imagine looking at pure light. What would happen? That light, rather than being dimmed by imperfection, would obscure all else. And that is what it would be like to see God. Only when we come to realize this can we begin to know God. When we can say that in looking at Him we are blinded, and in knowing Him we understand that He cannot be known by us, then we are free to worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23,24).

Marriage is a picture of the relationship of Christ and the Church. I don’t think that any married couple would argue that no matter how long you are with someone, you find that you are just beginning to get to know them. How much more is that true of our relationship with our Heavenly Father?

Think on this, would you really love and want to serve a God who could be completely understood? How then would He be any different from us? I, for one, want to give my devotion, feeble though it may be, only to One who is bigger than myself. Unfathomable. Inexhaustible. Unsearchable. Incomprehensible.

*originally posted on 3/2/06