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And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power? —Job 26:14

In this, our final issue on the attributes of God, we want to stress the fact that even considering all the studies we have done on the subject and all that we know of God’s attributes as they are outlined in His Word, which is, more than anything else, a revelation of Himself, our last word concerning God’s attributes must be that we know only a small part of what He is.

Job said in our text that the earth, the clouds, the horizon (verses 7-10)—creation—is "but the outer fringe of his works." "How faint the whisper we hear of him...," he adds. We hear but a faint whisper of God, not the full thunder of His power. In other words, in our present scope of knowledge of Him, we know very little compared to all that He is. We know, as the King James Version says, only "...part of his ways." After our lengthy study of the attributes of God, we can only say, "These are part of His ways; this is not the complete subject—it’s just whispers." Our final word on His attributes must be that He is incomprehensible, unsearchable. By this we do not mean that we cannot comprehend anything of God, that He is altogether a mystery, that we are left only to wonder about or speculate about Him. We have gone through many attributes of God from the Scriptures, things He has revealed about Himself in His Word. He has revealed Himself to us somewhat in the creation, but only as Job says in whispers; the main way He has revealed who He is and what He is like is through the Scriptures. We can see His eternal power, wisdom, and knowledge through creation, which displays enormous complexity, especially living things. We do not fully understand the creation, nor do we fully understand life itself. A living cell is so complex that we have just begun in the past twenty years to understand how it functions. And these are merely things God has made, not God Himself. Therefore, how could anyone say that we understand Him fully if we don’t even fully understand His works? We cannot understand Him fully—He remains incomprehensible in the final analysis in the sense that we cannot fully comprehend Him.

We can understand what His attributes are as He has revealed them to us in His Word, yet we have only a limited understanding of each of these attributes. He has told us that He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent (all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present). We can comprehend God to some degree; we have words for His attributes. But can we fully grasp the attributes that these terms express? Can we fully grasp omnipresence? God is everywhere present and the universe itself cannot contain Him. No one can grasp the extent of the universe, but even if he could, God would be greater than even this. Can we fully grasp omnipotence? His power is not measurable, and it is difficult for us to conceive of something that cannot be measured. It is the same with His knowledge and wisdom. "His understanding is infinite" (Psalm 147:5, KJV); the NIV reads, "His understanding has no limit." Isaiah 40:28 says, "His understanding no one can fathom" (NIV); the KJV has, "There is no searching of his understanding." It is difficult for the human mind to conceive of anything that is infinite. To be infinite means having no end or limit.

The Scriptures tell us, as we have seen, that God is a Spirit; but can we fully grasp the meaning of this? What is spirit? We know that a spirit is incapable of being destroyed, a living creature that is eternal. Man himself also is a living spirit and therefore incapable of being destroyed or put out of existence—he is eternal. Any reference to man’s being "destroyed" in hell must be taken in the sense of being "ruined," not put out of existence. Angels also are spirits and are therefore eternal, but God is eternal in a way that men and angels are not. All men and angels had a beginning, a creation, but God had none; He is eternal not only as regards the future but also the past. He has always been as well as always will be. We know a little of what a spirit is, but we cannot fully grasp what it means to be a spirit. John Wesley discussed this in several of his sermons. We must have some idea of what a spirit is because we have a word for it. We know a spirit is a non-physical being that has eternal existence, but how does a spirit move? How does it speak and know? In our present state, we know things through our brain which functions through the physical senses of our body. But even at that, we don’t know fully how our brain works. Evidently it functions by chemical reactions that can be compared to electrical "switches,", but who really knows what a thought is and how it is collected and stored in memory in the brain? The brain is a great unknown frontier that we are only beginning to understand, but man’s spirit is even more of a mystery to us than his brain. Evidently man’s spirit is not some sort of ethereal essence, but all the things that make up a human being are in his spirit. After his body dies and his brain ceases to function, a man can still think and talk, but how could this be if there are no longer any organs of thought or speech? Obviously there remains many mysteries concerning the spirit of man. We know that God has created man a spirit being, that He has endowed him with a spirit; but in the final analysis, this remains incomprehensible. Not that we have no understanding of this, but our understanding of it is severely limited.

Both the creation and Scripture come to us from God, and both of them reveal what God is like. However, we cannot understand all the things about the material creation or universe—many things remain a mystery. It is the same with the attributes of God revealed in Scripture. His attributes are revealed to us in His Word, and therefore we can know them, at least that they are true, and have some understanding of them; but the full understanding of them remains beyond our grasp. We can no more fully comprehend God than we can His works.

We know from His Word that God is the Creator of the universe, but we don’t understand how He created it. Of course, Scripture says, "For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm"(Psalm 33:9). He created it by speaking, and it was. We know this, but who can fully understand it, that He spoke and the universe came to be out of nothing? We have no way of grasping how something came forth from no previously existing material or how speaking could cause it to be.

The Bible reveals to us that God is a Triune Being—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the One God is Three and the Three are One. We know this is true, but can anyone fully comprehend it? We can understand it to a degree: there are Three Persons in One God—the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. The enemies of the doctrine of the Trinity never tire of charging it to be false on these very grounds: that it is totally incomprehensible or nonsense. But it is neither totally incomprehensible nor nonsense; it’s just that our minds are not capable of fully comprehending it. The same is true of all the other attributes as well. We might just as well reject all of them on the same grounds, but of course we don’t. Neither should we, therefore, reject the doctrine of the Trinity on these grounds.

Can we fully understand omniscience? We may have an idea of it, but exactly how does God know everything? Who can fully understand His omnipresence? How can He be everywhere at once? We can accept these things, have some idea of them and know that they are true; but this does not mean we fully understand them .

We cannot fully understand any of God’s moral attributes any more than we can His natural ones. Can we fully comprehend the love of God, for instance? Why does He love creatures who despise Him, despise His laws, and shun Him and His grace? Why does He allow Himself to be dishonored by puny creatures? Why does He bother to fool with them at all? Who can understand the grace of God that is manifested in saving wicked men? His kindness toward even the wicked has been one stumbling block to many, leading them to doubt His existence. "If there really were a God, He would do something about these terrible things that are going on," they say. The truth is, God exists, and He is observing and recording everything and will bring it all one day into judgment. He is deferring His judgment for the most part at present; now we see only parts of His judgment occasionally.

Who can understand God fully? No one can; that is, no one but He Himself. And again, this is what we mean when we say God is incomprehensible: not that we cannot understand God at all, but that no one can understand Him fully. All that we can understand of God is nothing compared to what He really is.

"Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave—what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea." (Job 11:7-9)

This is spoken by one of Job’s "friends" who were later rebuked by God for not answering Job right, so we must be careful how we employ what they say. Nevertheless it seems that they spoke many things that were correct; their main error seemed to lie in how they applied their knowledge in dealing with Job. The question is a rhetorical one; it is not meant to seek an answer but is a literary device for effect. "Can you probe the limits, can you fully understand the Almighty?" The answer is obviously, "No, you cannot." Job couldn’t and neither can any man living.

Let me say that the fact that God is incomprehensible also does not mean that there is a "dark side" of Him like the back side of the moon that is never seen. There is not an unknown side of God that He hasn’t told us about and that will be a big surprise to us in glory. No, He is just as His Word says He is; but the words used to describe Him are, in the first place, inadequate, and, secondly, we are inadequate in our capacity to understand fully what is described to us. Nevertheless, the description the Word of God gives us is complete and true—it doesn’t leave out some of His attributes which will only be revealed when we stand before Him. It’s that one day we will fully understand what has been revealed. No doubt we will understand the Trinity much more fully and clearly then than we do now. Paul says,

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

"Now we see but a poor reflection [KJV, "darkly"] as in a mirror"—a one way mirror. God can see through perfectly, but we cannot—we see only what is reflected back. We look into the glass and we see only partly, dimly; but he says then we will know face to face. We have a whole Bible full of descriptions of God. But even after we have known and studied this our whole life long, we still know only in part.

"The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress." (Job 37:23)

"Beyond our reach." The New American Standard Version says, "We cannot find him." The KJV reads, "Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out." Of course, at the time the book of Job was being written, less had been revealed about God than in later times—the giving of the Law at Sinai and the coming of Christ. Nevertheless, it remains true for us as well that we cannot find God out to perfection.

I am taking great care to limit the idea of God being incomprehensible to the fact that we cannot understand Him fully for good reason. Many think it is a waste of time to try to know or understand God. He must remain a mystery because we can’t see Him; so why bother? But we can know God and what He is like through the creation, His Word, in the Person and ministry of His Son Jesus, and by His Spirit. Creation is the least clear witness of God, giving us only "whispers" as Job said; we see much more of who He is in His Word. We see what God is like by looking at His Son Jesus in His Word. He is the exact likeness or image of the Father, so much so that Jesus could say, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). We know what God is like by looking at Jesus, which is no different from what we see of God elsewhere in His Word. And we know God through the Holy Spirit, who has been sent to reveal to us the things of God; He makes God real to us. We experience God; we experience His presence. We know Him personally and fellowship with Him. But all of these things together are still inadequate; we do not understand God fully, and this is all we mean by His being incomprehensible.

In a sense, then, when we say God is incomprehensible, we are saying more about our inability to comprehend Him than we are a personal attribute of His per se. On the other hand, that He is not fully understood is not due alone to our limited capacity to understand Him. God has spread, as it were, a cloud over His throne to keep men from comprehending Him fully. "No one can see my face and live," He says (Exodus 33:20). God has revealed Himself, but He has not fully revealed Himself. Again, not that He is keeping some attribute that is not in the Bible a secret which we will find out later, but all of His attributes will then take on a whole new perspective. When we see Him in His total glory and immediate presence, we will understand much more of Him than we ever have before. We know Him and His presence now only in a measure. No one has ever seen God’s face and lived; but in the future, we will see His face. And when we do, it will not be a shock, a surprise to find out that He is different from what He has revealed to us in His Word. It is not because He is ugly or distorted that no one has seen His face, but that God has purposely withdrawn from fully revealing Himself to mankind in his present state and demands that man approach Him by faith in the Record He has given to him. We must approach Him according the information He has revealed to us in His Word, and we must treat Him as though He were the God we see described there. It has pleased God to work this way and not to reveal Himself fully and openly in all of His glory to man. God’s incomprehensibleness is not owing completely to man’s incapacity to understand Him fully, but is also due to the fact that God has hidden Himself in a measure at the present time.

One day we will understand in a capacity and to a degree what God is like far beyond what we do now. Our life on earth itself will seem like a dream from which we have awakened. A dream seems real to us until we awaken, and the further you get away from your dream, the less real it seems. So it will be with our present life, which is analogous to the dream state; at the end of it we will awake to a whole new reality. We will then know God in a way that is not possible at the present time. "Then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." God knows us fully right now—there is nothing about us that He doesn’t understand; but we know Him only in part. On seeing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we will receive an instant education in the mystery of the Trinity.

We can liken this vision of God to a lot things. We may take a book and look at maps and pictures of Australia—its peoples, customs, occupations, plants, animals, terrain, cities, etc., and this will bring you pretty close to being in Australia. But being there would be a whole new experience. It was like that for me when I traveled to Israel on a tour in 1980. There I visited and saw places I had heard and read about all my life. I always thought, "I know the Bible, I know the Lord; I don’t need to go to Israel to see ‘the place where Jesus walked,’" etc. But when I saw these places and things first hand, it was a different story. I had heard from a child about Moses standing on Mount Nebo looking over into the land of Canaan, but when we drove by not far from it and the guide said, "Over there is Mount Nebo, and over there is the Jordan River Valley and the Holy Land (in the distance)," did I get excited! At the Jordan River our guide said, "John the Baptist baptized Jesus a few miles up the river from here." (The river looked no bigger than a large creek!) Our guide pointed out Jerusalem miles up in the mountains from where our bus stopped for a rest. "The city of the great King"! "Beautiful for situation"! Before long our bus made its way around the Mount of Olives and there it was in full view!—the old city of Jerusalem with its ancient walls and gates! We were singing a familiar chorus:

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

In the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness;

Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth;

Is Mount Zion on the sides of the North, the city of the great king.

My brain began to be overloaded with all the sights and sounds of familiar places I had read about, but now saw with my own eyes. I knew them in a whole new light, and the things I saw left a deep and lasting impression upon me, even in the spiritual sense. There is no substitute for actually being there, no matter how much you may have read and studied about it or even seen pictures of it. Just so it is with God.

In fact, this is but a small picture of what it will be like to see God. We have heard about the throne of God, the angels, the jeweled walls, the gates of pearl, the street of gold, the river of life, the sea of crystal, the majesty of God, the rainbow around His throne, about Jesus and how His face shines as the sun, His eyes like a flame of fire, His hair white as wool. But it’s one thing to hear about these things and believe them and quite another thing entirely to actually be there! We’ve heard about Him, talked about Him, talked to Him in prayer, and been in His presence in a limited measure, but then we will stand in His immediate presence. Paul says, "...as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord....We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:6,8). We will know Him then in a far greater measure than we have known Him here on earth. Probably our understanding of God, though immediately expanded vastly, will not be made perfect instantaneously but will grow at an exponential rate from the time we behold Him. All that we can know and understand of Him now is but kindergarten in comparison with a Ph.d.! He will reveal Himself to us far more fully at that time, and we will be far more capable of understanding as well.

The same is true of heaven. We have a description of it in Revelation 21 and 22, but we can understand very little of it until we get there. We know it is 1500 miles square and 1500 miles high, but does this mean necessarily that it is a cube? It has twelve foundations, but are these like floors in a building? It has twelve gates, each a single pearl. The gold is transparent as glass. Without actually seeing it, it is difficult to know exactly what all this is like. Being there and actually seeing it will mean an instantaneous expansion of our knowledge of it. So it is with God. We will know much more about Him when we are in His immediate presence and actually get to see Him face to face. There is no substitute, as far as this life is concerned, for knowing God personally through conversion as compared to simply knowing about Him even through the Scriptures; and there will be no substitute for actually being in His immediate presence and seeing Him.

Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.(Psalm 145:3)

The KJV has, "His greatness is unsearchable."

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."(Isaiah 55:8,9)

Even allowing for the principle that the Bible is progressive revelation, it still stands that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts our thoughts. We may know more of Him than they did in Isaiah’s day, but we do not know the thoughts or ways of God fully, and we won’t until we see Him. That’s when we will "know as we are known", that is, fully. Romans certainly belongs to our dispensation, and there Paul says something of God very similar to what Isaiah said:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" (Romans 11:33,34)

Verse 34 is in fact a quotation of Isaiah 40:13. "His ways are" still "past finding out." They are "unsearchable," too deep for us to comprehend and fathom. And this is good, because we tend to take for granted anything we think we know and understand fully. To think that we have just about got Him figured out, in contradiction of Isaiah, as some seem to maintain, is a joke; we’re just in kindergarten. That keeps us humble; that keeps us learning. It is inappropriate for charismatic evangelists to strut around and boast of how well they know God and on what intimate terms they are with Him, just as it would be for kindergartners to act like they know everything when all they can say is, "A...B...C..." They’re just beginning and so are we, and we ought to act like it. Anyone who boasts about God in this manner doesn’t know as much as they think they do: "The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know" (1 Corinthians 8:2). I believe in warm, intimate, personal fellowship with God; however, some teachers advocate a rather flippant approach to God, a familiarity which is altogether inappropriate. Abraham and Moses had exceptionally close relationships with God, but both of them spoke to Him in terms of the utmost reverence, self-abasement, and humility.

One video for teens refers approvingly to a student who had learned how to pray right, according to this teacher. The kid walked along in the woods and said, "Good job God; that’s cool!" But our God is awesome and infinite; we are finite and nowhere near awesome. We are not talking to an equal when we talk to Him. He condescends to fellowship with us; we are not equals. On the other hand, our language toward Him should be natural—we don’t have to put on Elizabethan English when we pray. But we should address Him with reverence. We do not understand Him fully; we know only part of His ways. We should come to Him humbly, with a sense of awe and a little sense of mystery.

Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. (Ephesians 3:8)

How can one preach something that is "unsearchable"? You can preach it to the degree that you do understand it, but in the final analysis, it is unsearchable. The riches of Christ, being God’s Son, are unsearchable. This does not mean we cannot talk about them—Paul makes it his whole life to do so. At the same time, he recognizes that he is only skimming the surface. They can be neither fully described nor comprehended, but we preach them anyhow. What we do know of them is true, but they remain fathomless. This is precisely the same point we are making about the attributes of God—they are unsearchable, incomprehensible.

However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:10,11)

We know the things of God only as the Spirit of God shows them to us, but this does not mean we know them fully. We still know them only in part.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matthew 5:8)

"They shall see God." I take this to mean the future state, for, as John said, "No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known" (John 1:18). And this is still true to this day. John saw Him on His throne in the book of Revelation, but he didn’t see Him fully. He describes Him as shining like a precious gem, a quite indefinite description; he didn’t describe God in any detail. The reward of the meek will be, "They shall see God."

But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? (Galatians 4:9)

Yes, we know God now; but it is more proper to say that God knows us. He says this because we do not know Him anywhere near the degree He knows us. He is more fully acquainted with you than you are with Him. He is reminding us that we do not have full knowledge of God. Paul says,

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

By knowing Him "face to face," he is referring to our seeing God and being in His immediate presence. I may write you letters or talk to you by telephone (or "e-mail" nowadays), but if I say we will soon meet "face to face," I mean that we will be in each other’s presence and meet personally. Now we speak to God over the "Royal Telephone" of prayer as the old song says; now we "write letters" to God; now we "see Him on television" (at best); but one of these days we will meet Him in person and see Him face to face. Then we will know Him as fully as He already knows us.

Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

We take the phrase, "see the Lord", again, to be that future, face to face, time. If you will live holy in this life you will see the Lord; if you don’t, you won’t, whatever else you may believe or do.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. (Revelation 21:3)

God dwells with us now, but only in a measure. We are not in the immediate presence of God as we will be in the future. One might compare knowing Him now by the Holy Spirit to radio or television. This serves also as a good analogy for omnipresence. Radio and television signals beam out into all locations and are picked up by receivers. The source of the program is a studio or live location where the broadcaster is personally present. Similarly, God’s immediate "location" is heaven, but He makes His presence known throughout the universe and may be "received" wherever there is faith.

I trust you have benefited from our many months of study of God’s attributes. There is no substitute for a personal acquaintance with God by the Holy Spirit. No matter how much we may know of the Scriptural description of Him, we cannot really know Him except by personal experience. While some make too little of knowledge of Him by personal experience, others make too much of it. "Getting to know God better" for them means only drawing closer to Him in experience. But much of who God is will remain unknown to us, or our understanding of Him will be lop-sided, or it may even lead to fanaticism if we lean too much to personal experience. To know God better also involves, if not primarily consists of, getting to know Him through the attributes used to describe Him in His Word.

If you do not know the Lord personally, I pray that you will open your life to Him so that you can. If you will seek Him in the Scriptural manner in earnest and sincere prayer, He will make Himself known to you. You must come to Him humbly, confessing your sins and turning from them, and you must come to Him in the name of Jesus Christ, His Son. You must come to Him through Jesus Christ, for He is the only mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). Yield your entire life to Him and walk with Him in obedience to His Word, asking all the while for Him to grant you His Holy Spirit to make Him real to you, and He will.

And I trust that you have come to know the Lord better through our study of His attributes in His Word. That is our purpose in this study.

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

Without knowledge of God, all other knowledge is vain. May God bless you all with a deeper personal knowledge of Him is my sincere prayer.

Background from Greenfield Graphics.