When you work hard to know a subject or a skill and perhaps spend years perfecting it, you might be considered to be an expert. People ask you for advice and trust that you will know how to solve the problems in your field. For example, if someone needs to have brain surgery they will ask for a neurosurgeon’s advice, not a physiotherapist’s. If someone needs help with preparing for a Chemistry exam, they are not going to ask a Spanish teacher for help.

Many people have dedicated their entire lives to learn theology, i.e., the study of God. There are many more still doing that. Some, might accumulate an enormous amount of knowledge about God, but not one can be called an expert, because only God is an expert on God. That is correct. I am not going mad. So let’s understand why that is.

God is an infinite God, there is no limit to his character, his knowledge, his holiness, his love, his mercy, his goodness, his faithfulness (you might want to read my post “How Great is our God?”). So it is impossible for any human being to know God completely. Only God knows God completely. We might say that God is incomprehensible.

The Latin word “prehendere” means to grasp or to attain. When the prefix “com” is added to it, it means to grasp a thing in its totality so as to enclose or contain it. When referring to knowledge, comprehension means to know a thing in its entirety. Theologically speaking, to say God is incomprehensible is not to say that God is utterly unknowable. It is to say that none of us can comprehend God exhaustively.

Well, so what is the point of reading the Bible or going to church? Or praising and worshiping? We do that because we can know God. He has revealed Himself to us. Jesus said in John 17:3

“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”

We will spend eternity getting to know God. Each day will be like a Christmas morning. A new treasure to learn about his Character. We know God is infinite in His being so we shouldn’t be surprised we cannot know him fully. Who God is, what He does, how and why He does what He does is for us to explore for eternity.

Knowing that we will never be able to comprehend and know God entirely is a good thing for us. It keeps us humble. It reminds us that we are created by God and therefore we have limits. It is hard for us to grasp this truth because since the garden humans were tempted by the devil with the lie that we could be like God and know what He knows.

 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:5

We can never know all that God knows. We can only know what He has revealed to us. In His mercy and goodness, God reveals Himself to us in different ways.

God reveals Himself to us through his creation. Romans 1:18-20

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

God reveals Himself to us through His word. Through each page of the Bible, from creation to the New Heaven and New Earth, each passage, each page is full of God.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” Genesis 1:1 . 

In the book of Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses,

‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I am has sent me to you.” (my emphasis)

In Revelation 1:8 we read:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Most amazingly God reveals Himself to us through Jesus Christ. Colossians 1:15-20

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

And in John 14: 8-10 we read:

⁸ Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’⁹ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? ¹⁰ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

R.C. Sproul says: “There is a mysterious dimension of God that we do not know. (…) God remains incomprehensible because He reveals Himself without revealing everything there is to know about Him”. 

We read in Deuteronomy 29:29

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”

If we read Job, we will know that God tells him that there are many things God is doing that Job does not know or comprehend. (Job 38 and 39)

In Ecclesiasts 3:11 we read:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end”.

As we get to know what God revealed about Himself, it is very comforting for us to know that we are completely known by Him.

 ¹ You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. ² You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. ³You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. ⁴ Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. ⁵ You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. ⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. We matter to God because He choose to love us. Psalm 129:1-6

God knows everything that there is to know about us because He created us and He loves us with a love that is infinite. Keep on learning about Him.

God bless.