We Do Not Know Everything About God

Some years ago A. W. Tozer expressed his concern that Christians were reducing the infinite God down to a more convenient size and imagining that they could fully comprehend Him. “Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms,” he wrote, before continuing:

“We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like, and what He is like is, of course, a composite of all the religious pictures we have seen, all the best people we have known or heard about, and all the sublime ideas we have entertained. If all this sounds strange to modern ears, it is only because we have for a full half-century taken God for granted. The glory of God has not been revealed to this generation of men. The God of contemporary Christianity is only slightly superior to the gods of Greece and Rome if indeed He is not actually inferior to them in that He is weak and helpless while they at least had power.” [1]

Tozer, I think, hit the nail right on the head. The danger he saw in his day, six decades ago, remains in our day. Our great need is to see that the God of eternity, the God of creation, our Lord and Redeemer, our Judge and King, is bigger and greater than our finite minds could ever conceive. This leads us into the first point, which is the truth that God has not revealed Himself exhaustively to us.

In the church in which I serve there are a number of people who work in the Canadian federal government. They tell me that there are different levels of security clearance given for particular roles. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service manages the security clearance program, under which, I understand, there are four levels of clearance, topping out at the “enhanced top secret level.” If you operate within the misty world of security or defense, you know that, depending on your clearance level, there are certain things that have been made known to you— certain types of information to which you have been given access— as well as certain things that have not been made known to you. That is just the way it is. Everyone understands that there are good reasons for giving and withholding information.

Our limitless God is incomprehensible to us limited and finite creatures.

When it comes to our knowledge of God, I think we tend to assume that we have the right to know everything that can be known about Him. However, as we look closely at Scripture, we find that this is simply not the case. God’s Word makes it clear that there are aspects of divine knowledge that are not given to us to know.

When Moses delivered a message from the Lord to the people of Israel at Moab, he declared that “the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). This is a fascinating statement. It tells us that there are essentially two categories of knowledge. On the one hand, the secret things belong only to God; on the other hand, God, in his wisdom and kindness, has chosen to make the revealed things known to us.

There are levels of clearance when it comes to divine knowledge, if you like, and the top-level clearance belongs only to God Himself. Why this is the case, we do not fully know, but unquestionably an element of this is for our own protection. We can see or comprehend only so much of God in His glory and power without being entirely overwhelmed and even destroyed.

This truth is powerfully illustrated in a striking incident in the Exodus narrative when Moses asked the Lord if he could see Him:

Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” (Ex. 33:12–23)

Moses wanted to know God—His name and His ways—and God promised to be with Moses and go with His people and pro- claim His name in their presence. Then Moses said he wanted to see God, and God said: I will put you in the cleft of the rock, cover you with My hand as I pass by, and when I remove My hand, you will see My back. That is as far as it can possibly go. You cannot see My face. The sight of God as He truly is, in all His glory and majesty, is more than a human being can manage or absorb. We cannot see or encounter the very essence of God.

The Scottish theologian Thomas Boston wrote that God, in His infinite being, “lies hid in rays of such bright and radiant glory, as must for ever dazzle the eyes of those who attempt to look into it.”[2] It is like trying to look at the sun. It is destructive for our eyes and too much for us to manage.[3] Of course, that should not surprise us. If God is truly God, and if we truly are His creatures, we should expect to be limited in our ability to comprehend Him. Even if God chose to tell us everything there was to know about Him, we could never process it nor fully comprehend it. Scripture after Scripture reminds us that the God of heaven is bigger and more glorious, more wonderful, and more majestic than we can ever fully know:

“[God] does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number.” (Job 5:9)

“Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?
It is higher than heaven—what can you do? Deeper than Sheol—what can you know?
Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.” (Job 11:7–9)

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. (Ps. 145:3)

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. (Isa. 40:28)

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa. 55:8–9)

No one can fathom the greatness or the mysteries of God. His thoughts and His ways are higher than ours. He has not made Himself fully known to us, but has kept some things secret. Even what He has revealed is more than we can fully process. As Chris- tian theologians have affirmed through the centuries, the finite cannot contain the infinite.

No one can fathom the greatness or the mysteries of God.

Our limitless God is incomprehensible to us limited and finite creatures. We will never know Him as He knows Himself. This might seem disappointing. But I want to suggest that this is actually good news. In our age, when we have the world’s information at our fingertips, it is frustrating for us not to know something. It sounds like bad news to our ears that God has not revealed Himself exhaustively to us and remains incomprehensible. But this truth is a comfort for us because, at the end of the day, we actually want to know—and need to know—that there are those whose knowledge and ability goes beyond our own.

Imagine you are heading into a major medical procedure. You do not ever want to reach a point where you feel you know as much as the surgeon knows. What you want and need to know before you lie on the table and close your eyes is that the surgeon’s knowledge and ability go far beyond yours. That is what really matters to you. If you and I felt we could put God in a box and have Him all figured out, we would find ourselves in a vulnerable and frightening situation. But praise God that His knowledge and being go far beyond anything we could ever comprehend.

[1] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), 8.

[2] Thomas Boston, An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion with Respect to Faith and Practice upon the Plan of the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity, vol. 1 (Aberdeen, Scotland: George and Robert King, 1848), 80.

[3] Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 18.