A recent book by J.B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small, was popular in Christian circles a while back and it was concerned with the fact of confining or defining God and putting Him into a box or limit as if we can analyze Him to spec. God is without definition or limit and is infinite as the Greeks said, "The finite cannot grasp the infinite." This is called the profundity or incomprehensibility of God and we will never fully know Him throughout all eternity simply because we are finite creatures. There is always more than we can apprehend. What can be known, however, is given us in the person of Christ. Christianity is a revealed religion, not speculation or imagination, myth or fable, but history and revelation in the incarnation of God Himself. All that we know about God is in the Scriptures, not in our own fabrications or subjectivism.
C. H. Spurgeon said, "The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father." We cannot plumb the depths of God. He goes on: "Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity." He says nothing so humbles the mind! If we have a high opinion of ourselves, then our idea of God must consequently be small.
In The Knowledge of the Holy, by A. W. Tozer, he entertains the idea that an "inadequate view of God is actually idolatry." We gravitate toward our image of God and our worship is no deeper than our understanding and concept of Him. C. H. Spurgeon said that nothing so humbles the mind of man than thoughts of God--it boggles the mind and is a mental gymnastic workout that blows your self-perceived concepts away. The query is not what can we imagine of God to be, but what He has revealed of Himself. Thales, the first of the Greek philosophers, was asked to describe God, and he couldn't! Eventually, Greeks said He had to be immutable, immaterial, and eternal or undefined by time.
There is only one necessary being in the cosmos, and that is God; we are not necessary for the existence of the cosmos, because we don't sustain it and didn't create it. The Greek philosophers also described Him as the first cause, or the unmoved mover, because something or someone had to be behind it all and get the ball rolling. Nothing happens by itself or can be its own cause, according to the fundamental law of causality, or cause and effect. God is not an effect and needs no cause and that is why He is eternal. However, we cannot know what God is like personally unless He chooses to show Himself in person and reveal His propositional truth.
It is important to have a big God because we have big problems and we must have the faith that our God can meet them all. No situation is too big a problem for God! Everything is small to Him and nothing is too trivial either because of that fact. It takes great faith in a great God to meet these desperate times, but it isn't so vital how big your faith is, but in whom it is--the object of the faith. It is better to have small faith in the right God who is great, than a big faith in a false God. The bigger our faith the more we can accomplish with God as our partner, because Christ said, "... 'According to your faith be it done unto you'" (Matt. 9:29, ESV).
It is important to note that we are not judged by our faith, which is a gift of God (cf. Rom. 12:3) and we are stewards of this faith to produce fruit, or it is a dead faith. Men of old were approved by their faith (in what they did with it), as we see throughout Hebrews 11. We are judged according to our deeds done in the body as to whether they deserve a reward (our sins have been dealt with on the cross and are paid for in full). "He will render to each according to his works" (Rom. 2:6, ESV). The hall of faith in Hebrews 11 mentions that these saints were commended for their faith, but note that it was faith in action that mattered; "By faith Abraham obeyed ...." Anyone can say they have faith, but the faith you have is the faith you show! Jesus rebuked the disciples for their small faith, but at least that is better than no faith. He also said it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains. To move a mountain, so to speak, we need a big God who has power over everything, or who is almighty. God is plenipotent or omnipotent, as theologians say. Nothing is a problem, hassle, or a big deal to God, you might say.
Thoughts of God are meant to humble the mind because we will never grasp Him fully. When we say things like, "I like to think of God as a kind, old, sentimental grandfather who dotes on his grandchildren, even spoiling them," I am putting God in some prefabricated box and making Him out as one-dimensional. While we live in four dimensions of the space-time continuum, God may live in many more than that. We can also do this by believing He is primarily a cosmic killjoy, kind Father Time, a mean judge, the man upstairs, the Great Spirit in the sky, cosmic energy or force, or even a genie who gives us our wishes in prayer. We must not limit God in this way, but must see the whole picture as revealed in Scripture, and put God into the full equation of our reality. Having a biblical conception of God will give faith in any circumstance and be big enough for any problem we encounter without being unbalanced.
Will Durant, a historian, has said that the "greatest question of our time is whether man can live without God." Solzhenitsyn has said that man has forgotten God! We must put God into the calculus to live right and any worldview without Him is bleak and gives man no dignity: Without God we are nothing; with God, we have extrinsic dignity, being created in the image of God, and not being glorified algae that came to life by some fluke of nature. If we don't have a big God we have a small image of ourselves and the answers to the questions: How did I get here? Why am I here? and Where am I going? go unanswered and man has no purpose and meaning in life but to avoid pain and seek pleasure as animals in heat. And so there is value in knowing God: We can truly know ourselves because the God who tells us what He is like in the Bible tells us what we are like too. Soli Deo Gloria!
C. H. Spurgeon said, "The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father." We cannot plumb the depths of God. He goes on: "Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity." He says nothing so humbles the mind! If we have a high opinion of ourselves, then our idea of God must consequently be small.
In The Knowledge of the Holy, by A. W. Tozer, he entertains the idea that an "inadequate view of God is actually idolatry." We gravitate toward our image of God and our worship is no deeper than our understanding and concept of Him. C. H. Spurgeon said that nothing so humbles the mind of man than thoughts of God--it boggles the mind and is a mental gymnastic workout that blows your self-perceived concepts away. The query is not what can we imagine of God to be, but what He has revealed of Himself. Thales, the first of the Greek philosophers, was asked to describe God, and he couldn't! Eventually, Greeks said He had to be immutable, immaterial, and eternal or undefined by time.
There is only one necessary being in the cosmos, and that is God; we are not necessary for the existence of the cosmos, because we don't sustain it and didn't create it. The Greek philosophers also described Him as the first cause, or the unmoved mover, because something or someone had to be behind it all and get the ball rolling. Nothing happens by itself or can be its own cause, according to the fundamental law of causality, or cause and effect. God is not an effect and needs no cause and that is why He is eternal. However, we cannot know what God is like personally unless He chooses to show Himself in person and reveal His propositional truth.
It is important to have a big God because we have big problems and we must have the faith that our God can meet them all. No situation is too big a problem for God! Everything is small to Him and nothing is too trivial either because of that fact. It takes great faith in a great God to meet these desperate times, but it isn't so vital how big your faith is, but in whom it is--the object of the faith. It is better to have small faith in the right God who is great, than a big faith in a false God. The bigger our faith the more we can accomplish with God as our partner, because Christ said, "... 'According to your faith be it done unto you'" (Matt. 9:29, ESV).
It is important to note that we are not judged by our faith, which is a gift of God (cf. Rom. 12:3) and we are stewards of this faith to produce fruit, or it is a dead faith. Men of old were approved by their faith (in what they did with it), as we see throughout Hebrews 11. We are judged according to our deeds done in the body as to whether they deserve a reward (our sins have been dealt with on the cross and are paid for in full). "He will render to each according to his works" (Rom. 2:6, ESV). The hall of faith in Hebrews 11 mentions that these saints were commended for their faith, but note that it was faith in action that mattered; "By faith Abraham obeyed ...." Anyone can say they have faith, but the faith you have is the faith you show! Jesus rebuked the disciples for their small faith, but at least that is better than no faith. He also said it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains. To move a mountain, so to speak, we need a big God who has power over everything, or who is almighty. God is plenipotent or omnipotent, as theologians say. Nothing is a problem, hassle, or a big deal to God, you might say.
Thoughts of God are meant to humble the mind because we will never grasp Him fully. When we say things like, "I like to think of God as a kind, old, sentimental grandfather who dotes on his grandchildren, even spoiling them," I am putting God in some prefabricated box and making Him out as one-dimensional. While we live in four dimensions of the space-time continuum, God may live in many more than that. We can also do this by believing He is primarily a cosmic killjoy, kind Father Time, a mean judge, the man upstairs, the Great Spirit in the sky, cosmic energy or force, or even a genie who gives us our wishes in prayer. We must not limit God in this way, but must see the whole picture as revealed in Scripture, and put God into the full equation of our reality. Having a biblical conception of God will give faith in any circumstance and be big enough for any problem we encounter without being unbalanced.
Will Durant, a historian, has said that the "greatest question of our time is whether man can live without God." Solzhenitsyn has said that man has forgotten God! We must put God into the calculus to live right and any worldview without Him is bleak and gives man no dignity: Without God we are nothing; with God, we have extrinsic dignity, being created in the image of God, and not being glorified algae that came to life by some fluke of nature. If we don't have a big God we have a small image of ourselves and the answers to the questions: How did I get here? Why am I here? and Where am I going? go unanswered and man has no purpose and meaning in life but to avoid pain and seek pleasure as animals in heat. And so there is value in knowing God: We can truly know ourselves because the God who tells us what He is like in the Bible tells us what we are like too. Soli Deo Gloria!
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