…utterly different, always Good
God is perfect in every way, and this confuses sinful people, because they are not perfect. Although God reveals his character to us in the Bible, our frail human minds struggle to perceive this flawless God. As a result, people often misunderstand God or even accuse him of being wrong. To better appreciate (and trust) God, we need to accept the truth that God is so vastly different from us. Therefore, we cannot fully understand him, and that is OK. Furthermore, this difference is good. We won’t help ourselves if we compare people and God to a grayscale (saying people are somewhat good and bad, hence gray; that God is good and all white, and Satan is bad and all black.) This is because God is so pure, our brightest white cannot compare to God’s brilliance (Mark 9:3 speaks of when Jesus was transfigured into his true glory: “Jesus’ clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.” And Acts 9:3 describes God’s brilliance to man “blinded by a dazzling flash of light.”) Satan is so evil, he is filthier than the darkest shade of black. And people are so different from God, we would do better to think of humans on a brown scale instead. Please join me as I explore God’s utter difference from us, even when we cannot fully understand that difference.
We do our best to compare God to things we can relate to, and in his grace, God does this for us too. He has compared himself to a nursing mother (Isaiah 49:15) and a mother hen (Matt.23:37), a jilted lover (James 4:4-6), and to a father (Psalm 103:13), just to name a few of the ways God does this. And then God reaches out to us and lets us know he loves us and cares for us, (Job 10:20, “You gave me life and showed me your unfailing love. My life was preserved by your care.”) And before they fell into sin, Adam and Eve even talked with God and walked with him (Genesis chapters 1 and 2.) So we have a God who is so kind, he is willing to compare himself to aspects of our material world so we can relate to him.
But God also lets us know that no one, in her sinful state, can look at God and live (Exodus 32:20, “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.”) Once Adam and Eve sinned, God banished them from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:23.) In the Old Testament, when High Priest, Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu offered to God foreign (forbidden) incense while they wore their priestly robes, God struck them dead (Lev. 10:1-20.) When the Ark of the Covenant nearly fell off a cart, Uzzah touched it to steady it, even though he was not a priest, and God struck him dead (2 Sam. 6:1-7.) And in the New Testament, when Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit and to the new church, God struck them dead too (Acts 5:1-11.) God would not permit this sin against his place of worship, whether at the Old Testament Tabernacle or at the New Testament church. God threatened to kill sinful people who tried to look at him, and he actually did kill those who tried to come into his worship with rebellion.
So while God can show himself to be relatable and loving, he can also show himself to be holy and untouchable. People become confused and wonder why, in both the Old and New Testaments God sometimes shows himself to be relatable and affectionate, yet also perfect and untouchable. How can God be both? First, we must explore his untouchable side. Since we know that Adam and Eve did walk and talk with God without being struck dead, God is able to relate to human beings directly. And since God no longer walked with Adam and Eve once they sinned (even banishing them from Eden) we can recognize what separates us from God’s holiness: our sin. We inherited sin through the bloodline of our fathers, and we cannot look at God in all his glory, due to this sin. It is our sin that makes God so untouchable. Humans are no longer perfect and sinless.
Sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59:2 “But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear.”) We were born in sin and doomed to eternal Hell on our own, so there is no work we can do to make ourselves acceptable to God (Psalm 51:5 “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”) Without God, we are utterly helpless. And on our own, we cannot face this perfect God. But he did not want to let us perish! The classic Bible verse, John 3:16 confirms God’s joy in us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
We cannot look at the perfect God in our fleshly efforts. Many people tried to do so (as Adam and Eve tried when they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness in Genesis chapter 3, and as Uzzah, Nadab, Abihu, Ananias and Sapphira did in the earlier verses I mentioned) and they all failed (with some dying instantly.) But God is not being unkind. This is simply one of his absolutes; he is absolutely sinless, pure, and perfect, and we never will be, outside of Christ’s sacrifice for us.
Since Christ is perfect, his sacrifice, in our place, covers our sin and allows God to see us like himself, absolutely sinless, pure, and perfect. God is approachable. God is kind. But we do not get to choose how we come to him. We can only come to him in humility and repentance. Human pride causes people to say God was wrong for striking dead the Bible-people I mentioned above. But God never provided any other way for us to approach him. While we cannot understand how God can be perfect, we can choose to accept Christ’s sacrifice and trust that even though our sinful minds cannot understand perfection, we can embrace it in Christ’s substitution for us. We don’t need to understand God’s perfection, because we never will. We just need to humble ourselves and accept that truth. No one can approach God in his or her sinful nature without surrendering to Christ.
God is utterly beyond our comprehension, but he is utterly trustworthy. He has proven his faithfulness in the Bible history of many generations, and also in our own lives and in the lives of present day people. Our faith is not blind, because we can see God’s goodness. But our faith is childlike, because so many aspects of God’s absolutes (such as his perfection) are beyond our comprehension. We do not need to understand God to trust him. That faith is not blind, but in how it is childlike, it will mean that people will mock us. But we can cling to that faith anyway.
Our world demands answers, and insists it must understand everything. With God that will never happen. God will not answer every one of our questions, nor will we ever fully understand him, and that is OK. God is still good, incomprehensible and all.
I pray we have blessed you with this week’s post and instead of frustrating you (since I did not give you a way to understand God’s absolutes) I pray I have comforted you to know God is trustworthy anyway. He has been trustworthy in my life, and he will be trustworthy in yours too, if you surrender your heart to him! If you do, please write to me and let me pray for you and encourage you in your new faith in Christ!