December 22, 2023

Isaiah 40: 18, 25 To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? . . . “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. (NIV)

Our earthbound minds can’t completely fathom all he is and all he does.*

I love words. I get a great deal of satisfaction from finding just the right ones to express a thought. Precision in communication reduces misunderstanding and hurt feelings. So, when I read, “To whom will you compare God,” I take it as a personal challenge to accurately describe God. I have resources: 66 books of the Bible. I have first-hand knowledge: a relationship with him. Surely I know him well enough to draw a word-picture of him.

But I don’t. I know my heavenly Father well enough to know that I can’t possibly know him that well. If I used every description of him found in the Bible and added my own personal experience with him, I still would not have a complete picture. Just think what we know of the contrasting characteristics of his nature: love and vengeance; justice and mercy; almighty, majestic, powerful – and a newborn baby. He is the God of the big things and the God of the details. He created and organized the universe, and he hears my whining. But that’s not all . . .

Throughout scripture we get the idea that God wants us to know him. And so we know what he reveals of himself to us. If we attempt to go beyond his revelation in our rendering of him, we have wandered into dangerous territory. As someone has observed, “All other ideas about God are . . . false gods.”*

So don’t waste time trying to reduce God to a simile. He is beyond compare – in his own words – and we should seek to know him as he reveals himself to us - through his word and through his Spirit. And the more we know, the more we will know. That’s how it works.

Every aspect of God’s being transcends our knowledge, our experience, and our comprehension.*