When I become involved with something or someone, I want to learn everything about the subject that has my attention. I want to know how it is assembled and what makes it tick. Sometimes our approach to God is the same. I want to know every aspect of God and be able to predict His actions and purposes. While it is certainly commendable to know God more intimately, and He did call us to seek Him intently, the idea that we can fully understand or comprehend God is a fleeting one for our finite minds. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says it this way.
“He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”
This is because our God is a god of mystery. It is not because He decided to be mysterious for mysteries’ sake. But, rather, He is a mysterious God by nature.
Historic Christianity conveys to us that a theological mystery is something that is believed to be true based on biblical revelation but can’t be fully comprehended by the limited human mind. I am thinking of the verse in Isaiah where God proclaims that His thoughts are not our thoughts nor are His ways our ways. He then lets us in on why that is true. He reveals that His thoughts and ways are higher than ours, even as the heavens are higher than the earth. This is not God being coy and just keeping a secret from us, but rather our finite mind cannot function on the same plane as Almighty and Sovereign God. St. Augustine once said,
“If you understand, it is not God.”
God is infinite, He is eternal, totally independent, and requires no assistance. By comparison, human beings are finite, temporal, and dependent creatures.
As God’s people, we are called upon to convey God’s communicable attributes to those around us. These would be:
Compassion
Graciousness
Slow to anger
Abounding in mercy
Truth or faithfulness to the truth
Covenant faithfulness or loyalty
Forgiveness of iniquity, transgression, & sin.
These are hidden attributes that are revealed through His church, and can be found in Exodus 34. However, there are attributes of God that cannot be conveyed by His church, except by way of identification. Our Mighty God is:
Self-revealed
Infinite
Eternal
A Spirit being
Omniscient
Omnipotent
Omnipresent
Sin came because this is what man wanted. Sin said, “I will be like God,” or, “I will be a God unto myself.” While we can list these attributes of God, they do not refer to humanity, but God Himself. Therefore, we cannot totally comprehend being omniscient, or omnipresent. Sure, we can gain a definition from the dictionary, but to really grasp the reality of being all powerful and all knowing, the human mind was not built for that. Thus God remains a God of mystery to us. Job’s friend, Zophar, said to Job,
“”Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty?”
The obvious answer to either of these questions is an emphatic “no.”
If you have ever had me sign one of my books to you, I have written in there “Deuteronomy 29:29.” It says this.
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
There are mysteries that we can comprehend, there are secrets revealed to us, albeit we may never completely understand them. Consider the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus came with high compliments, saying “we” know that you are a teacher come from God, or else you couldn’t do all the signs that you do. Jesus’ response is priceless.
“I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
That had nothing to do with the statement by Nicodemus. Jesus was easing him into a place of communicating a mystery to this leader of the Jewish nation. Naturally, Nicodemus moved immediately to the arena of obstetrics when he proclaimed it would be impossible to return to his mother’s womb and be born a second time. Jesus said to him to not be surprised that He said he must be born again. Now watch what Jesus said to him next.
“Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”
I have felt the wind many times, but I have never seen it. in In the same way, I can preach the good news of being born again, but I cannot explain to you how it happens. We know from Psalm 139 that God forms (or knits) us in our mother’s womb, and we can even describe all the medical functions that take place, but we still cannot completely explain the miracle of childbirth. Therein lies a mystery that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus.
The prophet Ezekiel wrote about this mystery and I am sure Nicodemus was fluent in the book of Ezekiel. The prophet wrote “I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.” And “I will put My Spirit in you.” Jeremiah prophesied the same thing. I am sure neither prophet had an inkling of what that meant, but now, Jesus is telling this member of the Sanhedrin these prophesies (mysteries) are about to become a reality.
Think about the mystery of God implanting His word in us (James 1:21). Think about the mystery of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, eternally producing life (1 Corinthians 3:16). This is due to the fact we were created by and serve a God who is far above all that we could ever think or comprehend. There will always remain mysteries that we do not fully grasp, and yet, we don’t have to understand everything to continue our walk with Jesus our Savior.
As Deuteronomy 29:29 teaches us, there are things the Father reveals to us as we are traveling this journey called the Christian life. Paul points out in his first letter to the church of Corinth.
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
“But it was to us that God revealed these things by His Spirit.”
God reveals to us what we need to take the next step in our faith walk. What God reveals to us is something supernatural we could not have thought up on our own (remember His thoughts are higher than our thoughts), nor could we have imagined them. Paul further writes that “no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit.”
This God of mystery is intimately involved in our lives, even though we do not always see the visible results of His handiwork. It is kind of like when the “great” Syrian army surrounded Elisha and his servant. The servant was greatly disturbed by the presence of this vast army, so Elisha prayed to God to allow the servant to see what was present that he could not see. The Bible says the Lord opened his eyes and he was able to see “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” They were no less real and active when they were invisible to his sight, but it sure improved his mood when the Lord allowed him to see them.
Because we serve a God of mystery, there are always things going on that we are not aware of, and yet our ignorance of these goings on does not make them any less authentic in our lives. Know that God is at work, even when you might not see the tangible results. Jesus said “the Father is working even now – and so am I.”
This God of mystery is on the one hand incomprehensible and yet, on the other hand, accessible by His saints. In Psalm 147:5, the psalmist proclaims,
“Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; His understanding is beyond measure.”
R.C. Sproul wrote,
“Theologically speaking, to say God is incomprehensible is not to say that God is utterly unknowable. It is to say that none of us can comprehend God exhaustively.”
And yet, even though we cannot comprehend God in an exhaustive way, we still realize God has revealed Himself to us. Remember in Romans 1 when the apostle Paul wrote,
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
The very sight of creation reveals the wonder of God Himself to us. And the Scripture teaches us there is another way we see God. Colossians 2 tells us that Paul wishes for them “the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” If we are to know the Father, we simply know the Son. Jesus said that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. The mystery of God has been revealed to us in human form in the Son of Man/Son of God.
We certainly cannot put this God of mystery in a box of limitations and expectations. As Dr. Sproul wrote, this God is definitely knowable and reachable. But let us never become cavalier or familiar with God Almighty, because He is so far above us and our thoughts that we cannot fully comprehend. There is no mystery in this…He loved us and gave Himself for us as a ransom for all.
And now, a couple of verses from a great modern hymn about this wondrous mystery.
Come Behold The Wondrous Mystery
Matt Papa, Matt Boswell, Michael Bleecker
2015
Verse 1
Come behold the wondrous mystery
In the dawning of the King
He the theme of heaven’s praises
Robed in frail humanity
In our longing, in our darkness
Now the light of life has come
Look to Christ, who condescended
Took on flesh to ransom us
Verse 2
Come behold the wondrous mystery
He the perfect Son of Man
In His living, in His suffering
Never trace nor stain of sin
See the true and better Adam
Come to save the hell-bound man
Christ the great and sure fulfillment
Of the law; in Him we stand