March 27, 2010

Pondering God #6: God's Infinitude



In this attribute we as finite creatures are again limited right from the beginning. In an effort to describe or explain God’s infinitude we humans are immediately exposed to our finiteness. Our words and language fails us because it is a form of limited communication given to a limited creation trying to grasp and describe a being that is beyond it. Words by their very nature are firm and precise but at the same time they are nebulous and ethereal. Even with divinely granted tools such as a robust language we have difficulty creating an image of God. Because words are limited in their scope they are intrinsically unable to full their need to fully describe God.

We need to try not to go off on a tangent with a half-baked idea of God though. At the same time that he is infinite He is also personable. “True Christianity” is has an approachable and knowable God unlike the distant unknowable God of Islam and the self-deification or pursuits of godhood in some eastern religions. We are constantly reminded of Christianity’s approachable God through the cross and Jesus Christ. God sent His only begotten son so that we could have a personal relationship with Him. God may be difficult to depict with our languages when we attempt to illustrate His infinite state but we need only look to the cross to realize that He has made Himself available to us through the blood that was shed at Calvary.

The irony is that even in His human state, trying to describe what He did for us by becoming human leaves us speechless and without words. He made Himself human and ultimately approachable and yet the idea is so fantastic it leaves us breathless. The idea that God became a man is one of the greatest miracles of the Bible.

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:6-8

Because God’s mercy towards His finite creation was limitless He allowed His son to come and become a sacrificial atonement so that He could maintain a holy relationship on His “term(s)”. All of those terms and conditions for our salvation have been revealed and "spelled out" either through Christ or in the Bible.

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