Sola recently released a video in which I explore the surprising good news of God's incomprehensibility. In the video, I talk about how we aren't able to wrap our limited minds around our infinite God—though, in our sin, we often try anyway to control him or shrink him down to size. Despite our grasping, the God who alone fully knows himself, and who alone fully knows us, has freely given himself to us to be known by faith in Jesus Christ. "No one knows the Father except the Son," Jesus says, "and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matt. 11:27). If you haven't already watched the video, I encourage you to check it out. (Besides meaty theological reflection, it also features lighter fare like balloons and dogs.) And be sure to share it with friends and family if you find it valuable.
In this essay, I want to press further into the theme of God's incomprehensibility by reflecting together on the question, How does the surprising good news of God's incomprehensibility shape the character of Christian discipleship? What does this lofty doctrine have to say to us about the everyday practice of being and making faithful followers of Jesus?
There are many biblical descriptions of what it means to be a disciple or Jesus follower. Here I want to highlight just one approach to thinking about it so we can connect discipleship to incomprehensibility in a more focused way: being a disciple of Jesus is being in covenant with Jesus. In other words, being a disciple of Jesus means living in a dependent relationship with him founded on his promises. Let's look at three aspects of this wonderful truth, tracing the roots of each of them down to their mysterious depths in the good news of God's incomprehensibility.
Because God Is Incomprehensible, Discipleship Is Dependent
I imagine many of us secretly think of following Jesus as something like being a little kid struggling to keep up on a hike with our much stronger, faster, more skillful older brother. "Keep up!" he barks over his shoulder, barely hiding his annoyance as we fall farther and farther behind on the path. Every so often he stops to let us catch up, of course, but not without letting out a few audible sighs to make sure we're aware that he's being very patient right now. And we don't dare try his patience because we're really going to need his help when the path ahead becomes too much for us to handle on our own.
Suffering, Death, and the Hidden God
By William Cwirla
In this essay, William Cwirla unfolds the crucial difference between the world's theology of glory (attempting to attain to the incomprehensible God by our own efforts, leading to condemnation) and the Christian theology of the cross (receiving God as he gives himself savingly to us by faith in Jesus).
The good news of God's incomprehensibility teaches us that dependence on Jesus is nothing like that. Jesus reminds us that we didn't choose him to be our Master, but he chose us (John 15:16). As disciples, we follow not in our own strength or skill, but his. Just as we were given to the Son by the Father before the world began, so the Son will keep all who have been given to him, presenting us to his Father new and whole on the last day (John 10:28–30; 1 Cor. 15:24). He doesn't begrudge our weaknesses but sympathizes with them more compassionately than we can fathom. And far from being annoyed by our need for his help, he anticipates every need and meets it gladly.
While Jesus may be ahead of us on the path, he's also with us by his Spirit every step of the way. And because he perfectly knows the way, we can be sure he's leading each of us swiftly and safely to that room he has personally made ready back home in our Father's house (John 14:1–4).
Because God Is Incomprehensible, Discipleship Is a Relationship
As creatures, we can't comprehend or contain our Creator; rather, he contains us. "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). This is no less true of Jesus as the eternal Son for whom and through whom we exist: "in him everything holds together" (Col. 1:15–17). Talk about us being dependent! Not just our walk as disciples but our very existence relies on Jesus.
This total dependence can be unsettling, especially when we think of Jesus' lordship more in terms of ownership than in terms of committed personal relationship. Certainly Jesus with his Father and Spirit owns all things and exercises his lordly right over all that is. "Has the potter no right over the clay ... ?" (Rom. 9:21). But we miss the good news of God's incomprehensibility when we affirm his sovereign power over us and forget his sovereign purpose for us. As followers of Jesus, we're vessels of honor destined for glory (Rom. 9:23–24). "No longer do I call you servants," Jesus confides in his apostles, "for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends" (John 15:15).
You might think such intimacy with God is reserved for apostles or the select few others (like Abraham and Moses) who enjoyed the privilege of being called friends of God (Exod. 33:11; James 2:23). Yet we too are God's friends: the LORD is "a friend to the upright" (Prov. 3:32). As Jesus spoke intimately with his disciples, so "the friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them" (Ps. 25:14).
By Allen C. Guelzo
In this essay, scholar Allen Guelzo cautions us that being God's friends doesn't mean we're invited to be obnoxious friends—always taking his friendship for granted and putting him to the test with our foolishness. Amazingly, though we're all obnoxious toward God in this way, he is so gracious that he not only keeps loving us but loves us in such a way to more and more make him like our perfect Friend, Jesus.
The clearest message that all disciples enjoy a committed personal relationship with the incomprehensible God comes from the even more intimate language the Bible uses when it speaks of us. We're Jesus' brothers and sisters, adopted children in the firstborn, and fellow heirs with him of heaven's endless fortunes (Gal. 4:6–7; Heb. 2:11). This means, too, that following Jesus happens not just vertically between individuals and God but horizontally in a family wealthy in faith and love. And most intimately of all, followers of Jesus receive the honor and joy of claiming him as our Bridegroom. He has become bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh, joined with us in death so that we would be united to him in life (Gen. 2:23; Heb. 2:14).
God's covenant love toward Christian disciples—his intimate commitment to us in personal relationship—is as gloriously incomprehensible as the rest of his matchless character.
Apologist Cornelius Van Til once told the story of watching a little girl across the aisle from him in a train car. She was sitting in her father's lap, when she unexpectedly reached up and slapped him in the face. Witnessing this, Van Til thought to himself, "That's what an atheist does every time he uses reason and logic to argue against the existence of God!" As with the atheist, dependence on God is certainly possible without personal relational intimacy with God. But relational intimacy with God isn't possible without trust founded on his promises.
We cannot independently verify the promises of our incomprehensible God. The Bible is robustly reliable and speaks the truth about everything it addresses. But there's no way to get behind this word or ask for a second opinion from someone else who searches the depths of God besides the Holy Spirit who reveals what he chooses. There's no greater reason or logic that encompasses and explains the mind of Christ better than listening to Christ himself (1 Cor. 2:10–16).
By Garrett Soucy
In this essay, minister and musician Garrett Soucy reflects on the curiously mixed appeal to our five senses the Bible often uses to talk about knowing God—like seeing Christ by hearing his word with faith. Such mysterious language calls us to look beyond any one sense experience and to trust that one day we will know God fully, in our whole persons, just like we are known.
Jesus calls us to embrace his promises humbly, like little children (Matt. 18:2–4), but he doesn't call us to trust him without giving our childlike faith the nourishment it needs to take root and grow. As he calls us to follow him, he gives us the means to do that which he asks. Through the reading, preaching, and praying of God's inspired word, and through the word made visible and tangible in water, bread, and wine, the Spirit mysteriously yet effectively plants and grows in us the gospel fruits by which we "walk in a manner worthy of the calling" we've received (Eph. 4:1). Whether desiring to slap our Father or hug him, we're always in his lap.
***
Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that the character of discipleship is so deeply shaped by the character of the One we follow—the One continually renewing us in his own image as we trust in and walk with him (Rom. 8:29).
But on the other hand, how can we not be surprised? How could we possibly fathom "what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9)? The surprising good news for disciples of Jesus must be incomprehensible: because "what God has prepared for those who love him"—for those in covenant with him by faith in Jesus—is no less than the infinite gift of God himself. Every other gift is less, and no gift could be more.
Footnotes
I'm paraphrasing. Van Til used this story as an illustration in various places in his writings. See Van Til's Illustrations, pp 20–21.
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