CAN WE UNDERSTAND GOD?

 

We are quite limited in our understanding of the uncaused God and His uncaused attributes. How so? Our limited human understanding is based upon how one thing causes another—perceiving the causal relationship between what is known with what is presently unknown (God). However, God doesn’t have a cause. He just IS: “I am that I am!,” and we have to accept Him as such!

We can ask, “Why did God require a substitutionary payment for our sins?” However, do not expect a satisfying answer. Instead, He just IS this way, as His uncaused nature proclaims. We know that He is perfectly righteous from what He has revealed to us, but we do not know how or why. We also know some things about Him from His creation:

•    Romans 1:19–20 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

I think that we can also potentially know about Him by knowing ourselves. How? We are created in His likeness. This means that there are similarities between God and ourselves:

•    Ephesians 4:22–24  …put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

However, this knowledge requires that our corrupted lives be regenerated (born again) to open our previously blinded eyes to see God’s “righteousness and holiness.” How? By observing these same longings within ourselves.