The Contemplation Of God # 1

 The Contemplation Of God # 1

In the previous studies we have had in revew some of the wondrous and lovely perfections of the divine character. From this most feeble and faulty contemplation of His attributes, it should be evident to us all that God is:

First, and incomprehensible Being, and, lost in wonder at His infinite greatness, we are constrained to adopt the words of Zophar, "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). When we turn our thoughts of God's eternity, His immateriality, His omnipresence, His almightiness than our minds are overwhelmed.

But the incomprehensibility of the divine nature is not a reason why we should desist from reverent inquiry and prayerful strivings to apprehend what He has so graciously revealed of Himself in His Word. Because we are unable to acquire perfect knowledge, it would be folly to say we will therefore make no efforts to attain to any degree of it. It has been well said: "Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued, investigation of the great subject of the Deity. The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ and Him crucified and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity" (Charles Spurgeon).

Let us quote a little further from the prince of preachers; "The proper study of the Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can engage the attention of a child of God - is the name, the nature, the person, the doings, and the existence of the great God which he calls His Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity. It is a subject so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-contentment, and go on our way with the thought, "Behold I am wise." But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought - "I am but of yesterday and know nothing." (Sermon on Malachi 3:6).

Yes, the incomprehensibility of the divine nature should teach us humility, caution, and reverence. After all our searchings and meditations we have to say with Job, "Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him?" (Job 26:14). When Moses besought Jehovah for a sight of His glory, He answered him, "I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you" (Exodus 33:19). As another has said; "The name is the collection of His attributes." Rightly did the Puritan John Howe declare: "The notion therefore we can hence form of His glory, is only such as we may have a large volume by a brief synopsis; or of a spacious country by a little landscape. He has here given us a true report of Himself, but not a full account; such as will secure our apprehensions - being guided thereby from error, but not from ignorance. We can apply our minds to contemplate the several perfections whereby the blessed God discovers to us His being, and can in our thoughts attribute them all to Him, though we have still but low and defective conceptions of each one. Yet so far as our apprehensions can correspond to the discovery that He affords us of His several excellencies, we have a present view of His glory.

The difference is indeed great between the knowledge of God which His saints have in this life - and that which they shall have in Heaven. Yet, as the former should not be undervalued because it is imperfect, so the latter is not to be magnified about its reality. True, the Scriptures declare that we shall see "face to face" and "know" even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12). But to infer from this that we shall then know God as fully as He knows us, is to be misled by the mere sound of words, and to disregard the restriction of that knowledge that our finiteness necessarily requires. There is a vast difference between the saints being glorified - and their being made divine. In their glorified state, Christians will still be finite creatures, and therefore, never able to fully comprehend the infinite God.

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 2)