Do you know all about God?

Even the question sounds presumptuous, doesn’t it? How can any man fully comprehend the God of the universe?

David makes this point in Psalm 139. He first contemplates God’s comprehensive knowledge of all the intimate details of his life:

You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. . . . Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. (Psalm 139:2, 4)

He then responds:

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139:6)

Charles Spurgeon elaborates on what David says here:

I cannot grasp it. I can hardly endure to think of it. The theme overwhelms me. I am amazed and astounded at it. Such knowledge not only surpasses my comprehension, but even my imagination. It is high, I cannot attain unto it. Mount as I may, this truth is too lofty for my mind. It seems to be always above me, even when I soar into the loftiest regions of spiritual thought. Is it not so with every attribute of God? Can we attain to any idea of his power, his wisdom, his holiness? Our mind has no line with which to measure the Infinite (The Treasury of David).

He is infinite; we are finite. We cannot even begin to figure God out. We have nothing in our experience to compare Him to – indeed, He is incomparable. We can never know all about God.

Some, rightly seeing that we can have no hope of fully understanding such a being, wrongly conclude that we cannot know Him at all. While that may initially sound humble and God-honoring, actually the statement is arrogant and demeaning to God. For an infinitely wise, all-knowing God must be able to communicate aspects of Who He is to those of His creatures who have the capacity to reflect on His character.

This, indeed, is the claim of Scripture: That God reveals Himself to us to some extent in creation itself (Romans 1:19-20; Psalm 19:1-4); He reveals Himself yet more fully through His working with the people of Israel, through prophets, through laws, through ceremonies, and through acts in history (Hebrews 1:1); and He reveals Himself most fully in the person of His Son, God Himself (John 1:1), the “exact imprint of His nature” (Hebrews 1:3). As John Calvin writes (echoing the second century church father Irenaeus),

The Father, who is infinite in himself, becomes finite in the Son because he has accommodated himself to our capacity, that he may not overwhelm our minds with the infinity of his glory (Institutes 2.6.4).

Or as Charles Wesley writes, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see! Hail the incarnate Deity!”

In trying to understand God, we are similar to a two-year-old trying to understand his parents. The two-year-old cannot possibly comprehend their character and abilities through his reasoning and investigations. Indeed, there is much about his parents that he is completely incapable of grasping. But through the parents’ loving and caring acts, and through their simple, carefully chosen words, they can communicate to him much about themselves – all, in fact, that he needs to know at this point in his life.

Just so with God and us. We surely cannot know all about God; throughout eternity we will rejoice to learn more and more of His infinite goodness. But He acted in history to teach us about Himself (1 Corinthians 10:11); He breathed out the Scriptures so that we might know Him and love Him (2 Timothy 3:16; Matthew 22:36-40); He became incarnate in Jesus, fully God and fully man, so that we might see God’s attributes in the flesh; He died on the cross so that we might be reconciled to Him by grace through faith.

Remember this image: You are the two-year-old. God is above you. You can’t comprehend Him. But you can trust what He tells you. You can see Jesus, revealed in Scripture. You can love Him.

So humble yourself. Adore Him. Bow before Him. Submit to His perfect Word. And rejoice that He has invited you to come into His presence as His adopted two-year-old.