If he manifested himself to us as he did to the prophet Isaiah, nothing
would prepare us for such an overwhelming encounter. Everything that we think
we know about him would be reduced to something like the babbling of a toddler.
Awesome, majestic, wonderful, dreadful, beautiful, fearsome, or terrible might give
a hint of such a manifestation, but even those words would be woefully inadequate
to faithfully describe someone infinitely beyond all words or thoughts that
our limited intelligence can express. Even the apostle John, when he saw Jesus glorified,
"fell at his feet as dead". But Jesus put his hand on him and said, "Don't be afraid."
We might be made in His image, but He is not really like us.
His power is inexhaustible. He created and holds all things
together by his powerful word moment by moment, and it would take no
more from him to create a billion other universes any more than it would take to
create a single atom. Nothing is too difficult for him.
Even the highest heavens cannot contain him. He is just as much
“here” as he is “there”, wherever here or there may be. Since he is omnipresent,
he is not only everywhere, he is everywhen.
The heavens may declare the glory of God, but even the stars are
not pure in his sight. They may declare his glory, but they can never equal it
because he is immeasurably greater than anything in creation.
He never changes. He can't even want to change.
In the past, present or future, and beyond
the limits of time, he is always a no beginning, never ending,
never changing perfect person.
He knows everything – whatever is or isn’t, whatever was or
wasn’t, whatever will or won’t be. He knows every one of us as well as he knows
everything else – our upside, downside, inside and outside are all known by him.
There is nothing he doesn’t know, nothing he has to learn.
He can be grieved and angered by our sins. If sin is about as
common as the air we breathe, his patience or longsuffering is incredible.
That we still exist at all is a miracle of his mercy and grace.
He is incomprehensible, yet he can be known somewhat as he is
revealed in the Bible and in nature. But, forever will not be long enough to
learn all that can be known about him because he is infinite. The learning process
will never diminish. It will be endlessly expanding.
He is holy, absolutely perfect in all his nature and ways. We can
know something of his holiness by his hatred and punishment of sin – eternal
separation from himself and never-ending punishment in hell. But his remedy
for a sinful and lost humanity reveals another aspect of his holy nature. He took
upon himself the sins of the world and the punishment they deserve.
No mere created being, even the highest created being, could pay the terrible penalty for sin.
He alone paid the price for our salvation because he was the only one who could.
The fact that he took upon himself human flesh, coming to this
world as a baby in a manger used for the feeding of animals; the fact that he
lived a perfectly sinless life for us; the fact that he suffered and died for our sins
are the greatest proof of his love for us. No one can understand the full significance
of his expression of love that was displayed at Calvary, but anyone who has
trusted him alone for their salvation will know and appreciate it when they are
united with him in heaven.
He isn’t a baby anymore. He isn’t a dead man still hanging on a cross.
He is the Son of God, our risen Lord and Savior, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End . . . Almighty God.
“All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out." (John 6:37)
