Part 3 (1/2)

Here we see that G.o.d uses change as a lowly servant to bless His redeemed household, but He Himself is outside of the law of mutation and is unaffected by any changes that occur in the universe.

And all things as they change proclaim The Lord eternally the same.

Charles Wesley Again the question of use arises. 'Of what use to me is, the knowledge that G.o.d is immutable?' someone asks. 'Is not the whole thing mere metaphysical speculation? Something that might bring a certain satisfaction to persons of a particular type of mind but can have no real significance for practical men?'

If by 'practical men' we mean unbelieving men engrossed in secular affairs and indifferent to the claims of Christ, the welfare of their own souls, or the interests of the world to come, then for them such a book as this can have no meaning at all; nor, unfortunately, can any other book that takes religion seriously. But while such men may be in the majority, they do not by any means compose the whole of the population. There are still the seven thousand who have not bowed their knees to Baal. These believe they were created to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d and to enjoy His presence forever, and they are eager to learn all they can about the G.o.d with whom they expect to spend eternity.

In this world where men forget us, change their att.i.tude toward us as their private interests dictate, and revise their opinion of us for the slightest cause, is it not a source of wondrous strength to know that the G.o.d with whom we have to do changes not? That His att.i.tude toward us now is the same as it was in eternity past and will be in eternity to come?

What peace it brings to the Christian's heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. Incoming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one. Neither does He change His mind about anything. Today, this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.

G.o.d never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm. His att.i.tude toward sin is now the same as it was when He drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and His att.i.tude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'

G.o.d will not compromise and He need not be coaxed. He cannot be persuaded to alter His Word nor talked into answering selfish prayer. In all our efforts to find G.o.d, to please Him, to commune with Him, we should remember that all change must be on our part. 'I am the Lord, I change not.' We have but to meet His clearly stated terms, bring our lives into accord with His revealed will, and His infinite power will become instantly operative toward us in the manner set forth through the gospel in the Scriptures of truth.

Fountain of being! Source of Good!

Immutable Thou dost remain!

Nor can the shadow of a change Obscure the glories of Thy reign.

Earth may with all her powers dissolve, If such the great Creator will; But Thou for ever art the same, I AM is Thy memorial still.

From Walker's Collection

Chapter 10.

The Divine Omniscience Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising and art acquainted with all my ways. I can inform Thee of nothing and it is vain to try to hide anything from Thee. In the light of Thy perfect knowledge I would be as artless as a little child. Help me to put away all care, for Thou knowest the way that I take and when Thou hast tried me I shall come forth as gold. Amen.

To say that G.o.d is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that G.o.d has never learned and cannot learn.

The Scriptures teach that G.o.d has never learned from anyone. 'Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to Him the way of understanding?' 'For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor?” These rhetorical questions put by the prophet and the apostle Paul declare that G.o.d has never learned.

From there it is only a step to the conclusion that G.o.d cannot learn. Could G.o.d at any time or in any manner receive into His mind knowledge that He did not possess and had not possessed from eternity, He would be imperfect and less than himself. To think of a G.o.d who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel or a seraph, is to think of someone other than the Most High G.o.d, maker of heaven and earth.

This negative approach to the divine omniscience is, I believe, quite justified in the circ.u.mstances. Since our intellectual knowledge of G.o.d is so small and obscure, we can sometimes gain considerable advantage in our struggle to understand what G.o.d is like by the simple expedient of thinking what He is not like. So far in this examination of the attributes of G.o.d we have been driven to the free use of negatives. We have seen that G.o.d had no origin, that He had no beginning, that He requires no helpers, that He suffers no change, and that in His essential being there are no limitations.

This method of trying to make men see what G.o.d is like by showing them what He is not like is used also by the inspired writers in the Holy Scriptures. 'Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,' cries Isaiah, 'that the everlasting G.o.d, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?' And that abrupt statement by G.o.d Himself, 'I am the Lord, I change not,' tells us more about the divine omniscience than could be told in a ten-thousand word treatise, were all negatives arbitrarily ruled out.

G.o.d's eternal truthfulness is stated negatively by the apostle Paul, 'G.o.d... cannot lie'; and when the angel a.s.serted that 'with G.o.d nothing shall be impossible,' the two negatives add up to a ringing positive.

That G.o.d is omniscient is not only taught in the Scriptures, it must be inferred also from all else that is taught concerning Him. G.o.d perfectly knows Himself and, being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known. And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn.

G.o.d knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, s.p.a.ce, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and h.e.l.l.

Because G.o.d knows all things perfectly, He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything. He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does He seek information or ask questions.

G.o.d is self-existent and self-contained and knows what no creature can ever know - Himself, perfectly. 'The things of G.o.d knoweth no man, but the Spirit of G.o.d.' Only the Infinite can know the infinite.

In the divine omniscience we see set forth against each other the terror and fascination of the G.o.dhead. That G.o.d knows each person through and through can be a cause of shaking fear to the man that has something to hide - some unforsaken sin, some secret crime committed against man or G.o.d. The unblessed soul may well tremble that G.o.d knows the flimsiness of every pretext and never accepts the poor excuses given for sinful conduct, since He knows perfectly the real reason for it. 'Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.' How frightful a thing to see the sons of Adam seeking to hide among the trees of another garden. But where shall they hide? 'Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?... If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night s.h.i.+neth as the day.'

And to us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the gospel, how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick; no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn G.o.d away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us. 'For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.'

Our Father in heaven knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. He knew our inborn treachery, and for His own sake engaged to save us (Isa. 48:8-11). His only begotten Son, when He walked among us, felt our pains in their naked intensity of anguish. His knowledge of our afflictions and adversities is more than theoretic; it is personal, warm, and compa.s.sionate. Whatever may befall us, G.o.d knows and cares as no one else can.

He doth give His joy to all; He becomes an infant small; He becomes a man of woe; He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh And thy Maker is not by; Think not thou canst weep a tear And thy Maker is not near.

O! He gives to us His joy That our griefs He may destroy; Till our grief is fled and gone He doth sit by us and moan.

William Blake

Chapter 11.

The Wisdom of G.o.d Thou, O Christ, who wert tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, make us strong to overcome the desire to be wise and to be reputed wise by others as ignorant as ourselves. We turn from our wisdom as well as from our folly and flee to Thee, the wisdom of G.o.d and the power of G.o.d. Amen.

In this brief study of the divine wisdom we begin with faith in G.o.d. Following our usual pattern, we shall not seek to understand in order that we may believe, but to believe in order that we may understand. Hence, we shall not seek for proof that G.o.d is wise. The unbelieving mind would not be convinced by any proof and the wors.h.i.+pping heart needs none.

'Blessed be the name of G.o.d for ever and ever,' cried Daniel the prophet, 'for wisdom and might are his: ... he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: he revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.' The believing man responds to this, and to the angelic chant, 'Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our G.o.d for ever and ever.' It never occurs to such a man that G.o.d should furnish proof of His wisdom or His power. Is it not enough that He is G.o.d?

When Christian theology declares that G.o.d is wise, it means vastly more than it says or can say, for it tries to make a comparatively weak word bear an incomprehensible plent.i.tude of meaning that threatens to tear it apart and crush it under the sheer weight of the idea. 'His understanding is infinite,' says the psalmist. It is nothing less than infinitude that theology is here laboring to express.

Since the word infinite describes what is unique, it can have no modifiers. We do not say 'more unique' or 'very infinite.' Before infinitude we stand silent.

There is indeed a secondary, created wisdom which G.o.d has given in measure to His creatures as their highest good may require; but the wisdom of any creature or of all creatures, when set against the boundless wisdom of G.o.d, is pathetically small. For this reason the apostle is accurate when he refers to G.o.d as 'only wise' That is, G.o.d is wise in Himself, and all the s.h.i.+ning wisdom of men or angels is but a reflection of that uncreated effulgence which streams from the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.

The idea of G.o.d as infinitely wise is at the root of all truth. It is a datum of belief necessary to the soundness of all other beliefs about G.o.d. Being what He is without regard to creatures, G.o.d is of course unaffected by our opinions of Him, but our moral sanity requires that we attribute to the maker and sustainer of the universe a wisdom entirely perfect. To refuse to do this is to betray the very thing in us that distinguishes us from the beasts.

In the Holy Scriptures wisdom, when used of G.o.d and good men, always carries a strong moral connotation. It is conceived as being pure, loving, and good. Wisdom that is mere shrewdness is often attributed to evil men, but such wisdom is treacherous and false. These two kinds of wisdom are in perpetual conflict. Indeed, when seen from the lofty peak of Sinai or Calvary, the whole history of the world is discovered to be but a contest between the wisdom of G.o.d and the cunning of Satan and fallen men. The outcome of the contest is not in doubt. The imperfect must fall before the perfect at last. G.o.d has warned that He will take the wise in their own craftiness and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Wisdom, among other things, is the ability to devise perfect ends and to achieve those ends by the most perfect means. It sees the end from the beginning, so there can be no need to guess or conjecture. Wisdom sees everything in focus, each in proper relation to all, and is thus able to work toward predestined goals with flawless precision.

All G.o.d's acts are done in perfect wisdom, first for His own glory, and then for the highest good of the greatest number for the longest time. And all His acts are as pure as they are wise, and as good as they are wise and pure. Not only could His acts not be better done: a better way to do them could not be imagined. An infinitely wise G.o.d must work in a manner not to be improved upon by finite creatures.

O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all. The earth is full of Thy riches!

Without the creation, the wisdom of G.o.d would have remained forever locked in the boundless abyss of the divine nature. G.o.d brought His creatures into being that He might enjoy them and they rejoice in Him. 'And G.o.d saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.'