Incommunicable Attributes (All of Life for God)
Episode Summary:
“To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal, And compare Me, that we should be alike?”—Isaiah 46:5
Discover the majesty of the one true God in His incommunicable attributes with pastor Terry Johnson on this week’s episode of All of Life for God.
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Psalm 139. The 139th Psalm could be considered an extended meditation on the omniscience and the immensity and the infinity of God. This might come as something of a surprise for many of us because it's not altogether clear to us how abstract doctrines touching on the nature of God would have any kind of devotional value for us and yet we read beginning at verse 1 of the psalm he says, "O Lord, you have searched me and known me and you know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways." Now what's he doing there? But he's meditating on the fact that God knows everything about him. God is omniscient. He has all knowledge of all things.
Skip forward to verse 7. He says there, "Where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol or in the grave, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there your hands shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me." There he's contemplating the fact that God is inescapable. He is omnipresent. He is always there. And his conclusion about, his pondering, we can find in verse 6 where he says, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it." And then in verse 17 he says there, "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. How vast is the sum of them." So he considers that God is omniscient, he knows everything and that God is immense or omnipresent. He's inescapable.
As Alec Motyer put in his little summary of this psalm, there is no escape and there is no regret. He draws great comfort from the fact that God is always there and knows everything about him. And so inspired is he by that thought, that he writes a poem, the 139th Psalm, he writes a poem about it. Now I wonder today how many people are writing poems from which they would derive comfort from the omniscience, the omnipresence and some of the infinity of God? I reckon that there's not a whole lot of poetry being written on those subjects. And I think the reason is that we do not know God as we ought and so we lack the kind of resources that such a knowledge of God would give us. We struggle to make sense of God and his ways and what he is doing and most of us are loaded with false expectations about what God is required to do and what he has promised to do and what his character implies that he will do.
We are haunted by a limited knowledge of a limitless God and what I want to do this evening is I want to study the difference between God and ourselves. James Henley Thornwell, the great Southern Presbyterian theologian of the 19th century, speaks of the immeasurable disparity between even the most exalted of creatures and our infinite creator. The older theologians distinguish between what they call the incommunicable and the communicable attributes. The incommunicable attributes are those which are true of God alone in which we do not share such as God's infinity and his eternality and his immutability. These are the attributes that highlight the difference between God and all created things. They are the attributes that cannot be transmitted to us as creatures. And then there are the communicable attributes that can be transmitted to us in which we share to a limited degree, such as his goodness and his holiness and his love. Again, Thornwell says that there is an impassable chasm between God and all created things and refers to these incommunicable attributes as the badges of divinity.
They are those attributes that constitute, if you want to put it this way, the Godishness of God, that which is distinctive of God and sets him apart from everything else. And we'll look at these under four headings. God's independence, his immutability, his infinity, and his simplicity. Let's begin with God's independence. God is independent of all other things. He is self-existent. There was nothing that brought him into existence. He doesn't owe his being to some other person or some other thing and he is self-sufficient. He depends upon no one. He is the uncaused cause. In John 5:26 Jesus says, "The Father has life in himself." No one gave him life. It is inherent to him. Exodus 3:14, God reveals himself to Moses as the "I am", the present tense or some form of that of the Hebrew verb. That is, the one who always was and always is, the self-existent one who needs nothing, who answers to no one, who is self-contained and self-satisfied. What this means is that God is free of all external control, all external restraints and all external needs.
Consider the following examples of the way that the Bible treats these themes. Psalm 115:3 says, "Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases." What does he do? He does what he pleases. He answers to no one. He's accountable to no one. He's utterly independent. Exodus 33:19. "He has mercy on whom he has mercy. He has compassion on whom he has compassion." The Apostle Paul then cites that in Romans 9 as he affirms the right of the potter over the clay, his absolute right to make of the clay whatever he wishes to make of it. He's unrestrained. There are no obligations that can be laid upon him. He does whatever he wishes to do. Daniel 4:35, "He does according to his own will amongst the hosts of heaven and the inhabitants of earth, and there's no one who can restrain him and no one who can stay his hand."
Ephesians 1:11. "He works all things after the counsel of his own will." What does he do? He works all things. How does he work all things? According to his own will. He doesn't consult with anyone else's will. He doesn't have any other counselors. He doesn't have any other beings to whom he goes as he determines what he will do and what he will not do.
A.W. Tozer in his wonderful little book, The Knowledge of the Holy, talks about how that we are unsettled by the revelation of such a God. He says, and I'll quote him, "We tend to be disquieted by the thought of one who does not account to us for his being. Who is responsible to no one. Who is self-existent, self-dependent and self-sufficient. To admit there is one who lies beyond us, who exists outside of our categories, who will not be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason nor submit to our curious inquiries. This requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess. So we save face by thinking God down to our level or at least down to where we can manage him. Yet how he eludes us."
God is self-sufficient. He doesn't need us. He didn't have to create us. There are some who have carelessly said things like that there was some need in God that fueled the work of creation to give us the reason behind God's creative acts. This is a misconception. God didn't need to create. God was perfectly content in himself, the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Perfectly blessed, perfectly content for all eternity. Unobligated, without any needs beyond himself. He doesn't rely on anyone. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, perfectly complete within themselves, needing nothing outside of themselves.
Again, let me cite A.W. Tozer's Knowledge of the Holy. He says, "Almighty God, just because he is almighty needs no support. The picture of a nervous, ingratiating God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one. Yet if we look at the popular conception of God, that is precisely what we see. 20th century Christianity has put God on charity. So lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God. But the truth is that God is not greater for our being nor would he be less if we did not exist." Probably the hardest thought of all for our natural egotism to entertain is that God does not need our help. We commonly represent him as a busy, eager, somewhat frustrated father, hurrying about seeking help to carry out his benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world.
Too many missionary appeals are based on this fancy frustration of almighty God. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his hearers, not only for the heathen but for the God who has tried so hard and so long to save them and has failed for want of support. Tozer says, "I fear that thousands of young persons enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation his love has gotten him into and his limited abilities seem unable to get him out of. Add to this," he says, "a certain degree of commendable idealism and a fair amount of compassion for the underprivileged and you have the true drive behind much Christian activity today." No, God, the God of heaven, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is self-sufficient. He is self-existent. He is self-dependent. He needs nothing and no one outside of himself. God is independent.
Secondly, God is immutable or unchanging. God's character, his ways, his purposes, his plans are all free from any alteration, any growth or any decay. God doesn't change his mind. He doesn't revise his decrees. There are no improvements in any of his plans or purposes and there are no deterioration in them. A.W. Pink in his outstanding little book, The Attributes of God, says God cannot change for the better for he is already perfect and being perfect, he cannot change for the worst. The Psalmist in the 102nd Psalm, when speaking of the heavens and earth in comparison with God says, "They will perish but you will remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe and they will pass away, but you are the same and your years have no end." Psalm 102:26 and 27. James speaks of the God with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change, James 1:17. God declares through the prophet Malachi, "For I the Lord do not change", Malachi 3:6.
In J.I. Packer's highly, highly recommended book, Knowing God, he outlines five areas in which we may speak of the unchanging nature of God. One, God's character never changes. God was holy in Bible times. He's holy today. He is just. His justice never changes. He is righteous. His righteousness never changes. He is good. His goodness never changes. His love, his grace, his mercy, his patience, the character of God does not change. We change. We are subject to change. Our character changes. We can go from telling a lie to being a liar because sin has a changing impact upon. We will say about people, "You know what? They have really changed." Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better, but we can recognize. Those who practice righteousness become righteous. Those who practice evil become evil because the character of fickle human beings can change. This is not true of God. The character of God is absolutely unchanging. He never changes.
Secondly, the truth of God never changes. His mind doesn't change. His views don't change. His word doesn't change. His promises don't change. We do. We change our promises. We give our word and then we go back on it. We say things that we don't mean. Consider a couple of sweethearts in the tenderness of the moment, giving promises to each other of this and that or the other and then we change our mind. We change our plans. We change our outlook. We have an altered view of things. We disappoint each other. We say that we're going to help and then we don't provide the help that we promised we would give. We say that we're going to visit and we don't make the visit that we promised that we were going to make. We say we will call and then we don't follow through. People break their promises. We're not reliable. Our outlook changes. Our perspective changes. Again, people are fickle.
Jesus says, John 10:35, "Scripture cannot be broken." God's word does not change. His promises do not change. Matthew 5:18. Jesus says, "Till heaven and earth pass away, not a single line or stroke, not a single jot or tittle will pass away from the law until all is accomplished." The truth of the scriptures does not change. Isaiah 40:6. We recite this every week. "The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever." It doesn't change. That's why we can go to our Bibles and read them with profit because the truth of the Bible doesn't change. This is why we can take this book that is 2,000 years old and in parts 4,000 years old and we can read it today.
We can read it even though much of it was written in a rural society or even in a nomadic society. Why? Because the truths that are found in the scripture do not change. They are ever the same and ever applicable and ever reliable because God's truth doesn't change. And so it applies to the same humanity today that it applied to thousands of years ago going all the way back to Adam and Eve. People change. God doesn't change. Our promises fail. God's promises don't fail. They can be relied upon and then God's ways don't change. He is consistent with his ways revealed in the Bible. It's still true that we are saved by faith, saved by grace, saved by Christ. That was true in New Testament times. That was true in Old Testament times. That continues to be true today. Why? Because God is the same and so his ways with humanity are the same.
He still blesses obedience. He still disciplines disobedience. He still saves those who believe, who put their trust in Christ. He extends his grace to them and pardons their sin. He still uses today's affliction to teach his children and to correct them. He still leads us by his word and his Spirit. Again, this is why study of the Bible and God's interactions with people in the Bible still make sense today. Why? Because his ways of dealing with humanity haven't changed and so we can study the Bible profitably, knowing that his ways of dealing with sinners back then remain unchanged even today. Fourthly, God's purposes don't change. Numbers 23:19, similar actually to a statement that we read this evening. Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man that he should lie nor a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it?"
God's purposes don't change. He doesn't revise his plans. He isn't surprised by unforeseen developments or unexpected alterations in circumstances. There aren't any unanticipated events. That's why we change. We change our plans because there is so much that we cannot foresee, that we do not know, that we do not anticipate, that we do not expect, that we didn't realize and all of that that is the basis for our changing is impossible with God because he knows all and sees all. J.I. Packer in Knowing God says, "God never changes his plans." He says, "He never needs to, for his plans are made on the basis of complete knowledge and control which extends to all things past, present, and future so that there can be no sudden emergencies or unlooked-for developments to take him by surprise."
You see the difference? Of course we change our plans because I didn't know what was going to happen and it's right for us to change our plans when circumstances change. When changes come about, someone gets sick, someone dies, some tragedy takes place or even positively, some good thing takes place and so we alter the plans that we had. We charter a different course than the one that we had anticipated. Why? Because we didn't know. That's never true with God. He always knows. He's known from all eternity. By the way, we'll want to say more about this along the way. The attributes are not bits and pieces of God or parts of God. These are all interrelated. God's purposes don't change because he's omniscient. He knows everything. God's purposes don't change because his knowledge is infinite. He is an infinite God. He is an immutable God. He doesn't change because he has infinite knowledge and that knowledge is eternal knowledge. It never changes. He's always known and he always will know and so his purposes don't change.
People change. What about those verses where it speaks of God repenting? I think the right way to understand those passages is the same way that we understand when it speaks of God's arm and God's hand and God's eye and God's feet. Those are anthropomorphic statements. They are examples of God condescending to the limitations of our comprehension, speaking of himself in the way of humanity so that we would be able to understand what's taking place. But in each of those cases, it's not God who changes, it's the human agent that changes. They repent. They alter course and it's their change that takes place. It's not that God woke up one day and then was surprised to find out, look, Saul has sinned as though he never intended that David should be king. As though it weren't always the plan that there would be the son of Jesse, David, and the Davidic line would lead to Christ. Jesus is the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world.
There's an eternality about that plan. God was not surprised and so when we read of God repenting or being sorry for something, that is speaking of God in the language of humanity. God does not have arms and legs. He's a spirit. I know the children of our church learn that from the very beginning. What is God? The children's catechism question answer? God is a spirit and has not a body like men. We learned that when we're still on the bottle in this church. And so when we read of God in human terms, we understand it in a physical sense. Likewise, when we read of God responding as humans would respond in the absence of knowledge, we're to understand that that is God condescending to the limits of our comprehension. Speaking of himself anthropomorphically in the form of a man, what would be true of humanity, giving us thereby a window into understanding the change of circumstances, not a change in the essence of God or the being of God or the plans of God or the character of God.
And then fifthly, God's son never changes. His character never changes. His truth never changes. His ways never change. His purposes never change and God's Son never change. He still saves those who receive him by faith. He still forgives all those who will repent. He still calls to us, "Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden" and welcomes all that respond to that call. He still weeps over the unbelief of those who are hard of heart. He still weeps in the presence of the travesty of sin and of death as he did at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. He still intercedes on our behalf. Hebrews promises, Hebrews 7, "That he always lives to make intercession for us." "Jesus Christ", according to Hebrews 13:8, "is the same yesterday, today and forever."
One of the older Protestant scholastic theologians from the 17th century said of the immutability of God. He said, "It is the foundation of all our hope." Now, that was a bit startling to read, the foundation of all our hope is the fact that God doesn't change. Well, you think about it for a while, you contemplate it, there's some sense to what he was saying. That's the rock on which we stand is that God never changes, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. That's a rock for us. We're in the midst of a world that is rapidly changing, rapidly altering, altering itself at a frenetic pace. The pace at which change is happening today is mind-boggling.
I remember the first time a member of the staff of the church walked into a staff meeting with a cell phone. It was about 1995. He was a church planter and was on the staff for about six months and I looked at him and I said, "Who do you think you are, get smart? Is that a shoe phone?" Before long, the cell phone became universal. They started off big, they've gotten smaller. Now there's smartphones, all of which are way too smart for me. I remember the first personal computers came out. Believe it or not, the staff of your church was on the cutting edge. We took classes where we learned MS-DOS. That's ancient. Some of you don't even know what I'm talking about. Fortran IV with Watfor and Watfiv. We were taking MS-DOS, bringing in literal floppies for the secretaries to complete the work that we were doing.
All that stuff is just junk now, those old PCs. This was before there were color monitors on the PCs. We were right on the cutting edge. We were one of the first churches that had a website. Why did we have one? Because about the same time somebody said to me, "You know what? It's going to be really important in the future to have a website." This is like 1995. This was in a meeting in Jackson, Mississippi. It's really important to have a website. You're not going to be surprised. I was fairly out of touch with what was happening in technology. I said, "Really? Tell me about it." They told me about it. I came back here. I said, "You know what? We need to get right there in front of things. Let's get a website." We got a website. All that stuff that we were doing in the middle nineties is like ancient history today.
Life in the world was pretty much stable for most of recorded human history. Do you know before the invention of the telegraph, communication took place at the speed of a horse? The battle of New Orleans was fought for several months after the end of the War of 1812 because nobody there knew the war had ended, not the British or the Americans. It took so long for word to travel. The speed of a sailing ship or the speed of a horse were the limits. When a telegraph was invented, it was the first time rapid communication took place, where you could send a message over hundreds of miles in a matter of seconds. For the previous hundreds, even thousands of years, things were pretty much the way they'd always been. A little bit of technological advance here and there pretty much. They invented the wheel. That was a big leap forward. Steel plows. That was another big leap forward, but pretty much things were as they had been.
And now every 10 years, everything technologically we have is now obsolete. Maybe every five years. Maybe it's down to every couple of years now. Change is so rapid. Child-rearing now is so difficult. We are invaded. Our homes are invaded. A few years back if you wanted to communicate with my children, you had to call the family phone. In fact, if you know the book, Life with Father, back before there were phones, you wanted to communicate with one of the children of the household, you had to go through the front door. You had to get past father and mother to get any access to the children. Then the phone came along. In that book, Life with Father, father is absolutely beside himself with rage because people are calling his daughter and he doesn't know who they are. And so people have access to her and he is no longer the hedge of protection around her. The phone.
Then the radio, broadcasting messages that you may not approve of as a Christian. Things you don't really want your children to hear, representing a worldview and an outlook and a way of life of which you don't approve and which the Bible doesn't approve. Then the television. Now images being projected and thankfully for a number of decades the images weren't too bad. It was all Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Pretty benign stuff. It wasn't Christian but it wasn't anti-Christian. Then came cable. Then came the internet. Now you're the click of a mouse away from the most abominable images imaginable that will corrupt and destroy your children and destroy you and have destroyed countless ministers and ministries in the last decade and destroyed large numbers of them in the PCA.
Art gave an address at the General Assembly pointing to this very fact and the dangers. As parents, you're just trying to keep up with it. I remember when instant messaging was the thing. Well, that passed out quickly. Then it was text messaging. All this communication is going on not being filtered by parents. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child and these children are without restraints and without limits and without boundaries and without filtering by parents. The technology is changing so rapidly and we as parents are racing to try to keep up with it and keep ahead of it before communication takes place that poisons the souls of our children. Change. Rapid, phonetic and in such a world where do we stand? We stand on a rock of the immutability of God, the God who does not change, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, who is faithful and reliable and can be counted upon. This is the value of knowing the God of the Bible. This is the value of in-depth study of his attributes.
Our heads are spinning because of the speed with which everything around us is changing and yet we have a God who says, "I, the Lord do not change." And you can plant your feet there in the truth of God and the truth of his Word and in Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today, yes, and forever. And on that foundation we can build a family. On that foundation we can build a church. On that foundation we can build a life. Everything else around us may be crumbling, may be falling apart, may be obsolete, rapidly being swept onto the ash heap of history, in the dustbin of humanity, everything else around us, but not God. He is the same and on him and his promises, we as his people can rely. There is a refuge. There for us is a safe place. There is the foundation, the sure foundation amidst all of the variableness of human society and human opinions. There is the unchanging truth of God upon which we can build our lives and build our church as we pray together.
Our Father in heaven, we praise you, O Lord, for your independence, your self-sufficiency. O Lord, you are the self-existent one who does your will without restraint and you are the changeless one. And O Lord, we rejoice that you, the unchanging God, have given us your unchanging Word and we put all our trust and confidence in you alone and in no other. Give us, O Lord, a greater and ever-increasing knowledge of yourself. In Jesus' name. Amen.
