by Garrett Glende
Moving forward in Grudem’s Systematic Theology, we come to the study of the doctrine of God, theology proper. Last week, we covered the issue of God’s existence and learned that man is without excuse when it comes to acknowledging the reality of its Creator. All men know that God exists, but there are those who choose to suppress this truth and those who are illuminated by the Holy Spirit to submit to the Father. The question now is, “Can we truly know who God is?” Thankfully, God has not hidden Himself from us. In addition to general revelation through nature, God has revealed Himself to us through His word, where we are able to learn about who He is and how He has redeemed a people for Himself. Without this insight into God’s character, we would be left to ourselves to imagine exactly what God is like. Yes, we could look around at the vastness of creation and perceive that God is creative and powerful, but we would not necessarily understand His wrath or righteousness. For this kind of knowledge, we need Scripture to enlighten us. Our sinful natures are prone to misinterpret what we see in nature, so special revelation is necessary for a true knowledge of God. This is a different type of knowledge than one acquires in a chemistry class, a spectrum of facts and theories. We can look around and see things about God, but we still may not know Him in a way that leads to salvation. An encyclopedic knowledge is insufficient to have a true relationship with God. Instead, we must be reborn and quickened by the Spirit to see our need for a redeemer. When brought before the Scriptures, we will then be able to see God clearly and develop a personal relationship with Him.
Although we can learn many things about God through the Bible, there is certainly a limit to this knowledge. The infinitude of God implies that we, as finite creatures will never be able to fully grasp who He is, yet we can still know Him truly. At the end of Romans 11, Paul has just finished unpacking the wonderful truths of God’s plan of salvation and declares “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” The Psalms are filled with statements attesting to the vastness and incomprehensibility of God: “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable”; “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure”; “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalm 145:3; 147:5; 139:6). In these verses we see that many different attributes of God are unknowable. We are able to understand certain aspects of the holiness of God or the justice of God, but we will never fully exhaust all there is to know about these things. In this way, even the man who has been studying Scripture his whole life cannot say that He fully knows God.
However, we are sure that what we do know about God is true knowledge. Grudem writes that “even though we cannot know God exhaustively, we can know true things about God. In fact, all that Scripture tells us about God is true.” It would not be false to say that God is holy, loving, just, or righteous, even though we don’t fully comprehend these aspects of God. The type of knowledge that the Christian has of God is intimate and personal. God is not just a list of facts stored away in our brains. We know God himself, not just things about Him.
Granted the fact that we will never be able to fully exhaust our knowledge of God, why then would we ever consider our knowledge sufficient? Just because “his understanding is beyond measure” does not mean that we should never seek to attain it. It should encourage us all the more to study all that we can about God and persuade us to draw closer to him. If we are ever satisfied with our current understanding of our Creator, then we don’t understand how glorious and satisfying He really is. It’s common for many to feel like they’ve come to firm understandings of the basic truths of Christianity (the gospel, God’s love, God’s mercy) and then never take the time to study them further. But the truth is that we will never be able to fully grasp any of these things, so we must continue to seek after a deeper knowledge of them. As we do, our relationship with God will grow deeper, strengthening our faith in our wonderful Lord and Savior. We should never be content with our present comprehension of God and we must be especially careful not to overlook the depths of His grace and mercy shown through the gospel.
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