Fix Your Eyes: A 5-Day Plan on Knowing God RightlyParaugs

DAY 2

Incommunicable Attributes

We are not God. Therein lies our greatest hope.

The incommunicable attributes of God will show up in many theological places in the devotions during the next few days—both in big and small ways. The reality of a Christian God, who is unlike any other god, is a foundation for our doctrine and the baseline of our theology. The fact that God is in a category of his own is what creates our theological pursuit; it is the reality that surges in our hearts a desire to know and articulate what we can about him! As we unpack eight of God’s incommunicable attributes, this is the truth we are savoring: there is no one like our God.

Infinite

God has no limits. He has no constraints, and he cannot be weighed or measured. In his being and essence, he is endless.

It is natural for children to think of God as being “bigger” than themselves; sometimes, we adults fall into this line of thought as well. But that doesn’t capture the reality of God’s infiniteness. God is not just bigger than us or bigger than we can imagine; he is a God with no boundaries, a God to which we can’t attempt dimensions or scales. Though we can hop on a scale and weigh ourselves or stand against a door frame and trace our childhood growth, the same cannot apply to God. In both his being and his essence, he is infinite.

To say that God is infinite is to say that God is beyond our greatest thoughts of him, he is higher and longer and wider and deeper than we can even conceive—and to even speak in such measurable terms gives us away! This is why the book of Job referred to these things as the “deep things of God”: God’s nature and being lie far beyond the limitations of our human minds.

Incomprehensible

God is beyond our human comprehension. Because there is none like him, he is unfathomable in his nature, inscrutable in his knowledge, and incomprehensible in his work.

The infinite nature of God leads us directly to his incomprehensibility. Because we humans are limited creatures, we have limited imaginations and minds and understanding, much like a child at the tender age of three cannot possibly grasp the full scope of her parent’s wisdom, love, and so on. It isn’t wrong for the child to not understand everything, of course, but the gap between a parent and child is still quite wide. It should not surprise us that God’s complete nature lies beyond the boundaries of our mind’s grasp. If the gap between a three-year-old and his or her parent is somewhat wide, the gap between us and God may as well be the width of the Grand Canyon to infinite power. Who he is in his fullness cannot be captured in our minds or articulated in our words. He is in a category entirely his own.

God, in His fullness, is incomprehensible. And perhaps this reality causes you to pause; why, then, did you pick up a theology book at all? If we cannot fully know God, why study the nature of God? The answer is simple: just because we cannot fully know God does not mean he cannot be sufficiently known. God, in his glorious humility and desire for his creation to know him, gives us sufficient knowledge of himself—so that we might be saved and spend our entire lives seeking to know him more without ever coming to the end of our pursuit. There will always be more to discover about him.