Nuggets
- Our ways and thoughts are totally different than God’s.
- We are not going to totally understand things until we have been made like Jesus.
- God love us even though we are the ones that rebelled against Him by not obeying Him.
- Sometimes, we don’t understand things in the Bible because God hasn’t revealed the meaning to us yet or we just haven’t had the experience needed to connect all of the dots.
- God reveals Himself to us little by little through His Spirit.
A lot of times, we can get hung up on what we know and don’t know. Or maybe more honestly, we get hung up on what we understand and what we don’t understand.
We think we have to understand things before we can believe in God. Unfortunately, there are things that science is never going to explain — and some of the things they think they have explained didn’t happen that way.
Let’s look at understanding God.
Mine v. Yours
“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor 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 NASB)
I think it is interesting that God said first that “My thoughts are not yours,” but he immediately follows that up with, “But your ways are not Mine.” It isn’t just that we can’t understand Him. It is that our ways are totally different than His.
God calls us to repent of our ways and thoughts that are opposite of His. Repentance is expressing sorrow for things we’ve done wrong. But it is not just feeling sorry for doing or thinking those things. It is making the commitment to changing ourselves so that we no longer do or think the wrong things.
This necessitates regeneration. Regeneration is the change in us that God brings about when we go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive. It is where God breaks Satan’s hold on us. Only God has the power to do that, and He only does when we admit our sins, believe on Jesus as Redeemer, and confess God as Sovereign Lord. We have to be regenerated because we are so entrenched in this human existence.
No, we are not going to totally understand things until we have been made like Jesus. “Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is” (I Jn. 3: 2 HCSB).
Let’s look at it this way, too. God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows the good, bad, and the ugly. He knows the past, present, and future. He knows the whys and the how’s. God will work all things out.
A Great Big Love
“As high as the sky is above the earth, so great is his love for those who honor him” (Ps. 103: 11 GNT)
How can God love us so much? We are the ones that rebelled against Him by not obeying Him. We are the ones that crucified Him.
“But from eternity to eternity the Lord’s faithful love is toward those who fear him, and his righteousness toward the grandchildren of those who keep his covenant, who remember to observe his precepts” (Ps. 103: 17-18 CSB). That is the words. But we’ve talked about actions have to follow the words.
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God put a huge plan of action behind His words.
Because of this great big love, God has through His grace found a way to offer us salvation. Grace is a free and unmerited gift from Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers. Salvation is the deliverance from the consequences of sin.
This deliverance is necessitated by the original sin committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which made everyone sinners. Sin is when we disobey God and break one of His laws and commandments.
Because of God’s infinite grace, He devised the plan of salvation that made Jesus our Redeemer in order to forgive us of our sins. Redemption is where something is used in exchange for something else to gain or regain something.
Jesus is our Redeemer because He was born of a virgin, making Him 100% God and 100% man; gave His life on the cross for us so that His blood could pay the price for our sins; and because of God’s great might and power, rose from the grave, conquering death and paying the price for our sins. Redemption allows us to receive forgiveness for our sins.
Jesus justifies us when we put our lives in His hand. Justification means the act of making something righteous before God. He does that by atoning for our sins. Atonement is about repayment for a wrong (a.k.a. our sins). The repayment is the shedding of His blood.
Jesus substituted Himself — became the propitiation — for us so He could do the hard stuff, the stuff we would never be able to do. Jesus knew God’s wrath had to be appeased so He shed His blood to pay the price for our sins.
We access this grace through faith. Faith is the belief that the doctrines stated in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them. Faith is a product of love. We have to have faith to accept God’s love.
Sit Tight
“Jesus replied, ‘You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will’” (Jn. 13: 7 NLT)
We talked about this a while back. Proverbs 25: 2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings” (NIV). God already knows everything. We do not.
We have to put the John verse in context. The scene is the Last Supper. The action is Jesus is washing the disciples’ feet.
Peter was going, “Oh, no You don’t.” Jesus was saying, “Peter, Peter. Sit tight. I’ll explain eventually.”
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Sometimes, we don’t understand things in the Bible because God hasn’t revealed the meaning to us yet. Other times, we just haven’t had the experience needed to connect all of the dots. He wants us to go through the trial before we figure out the meaning of it.
I wonder how many times, though, we don’t understand because we don’t take the time to stop and figure it out. We expect things to be immediately discernible and write off anything that isn’t.
But if God’s ways and thoughts are above ours, how can we expect immediate comprehension? Why are we upset when we don’t get it? This is the God that created the universe. Science will never replicate that.
Look what Jesus says, though. “… You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will” (Jn. 13: 7 NLT). Sit tight, Peter. You’ll get to the understanding part.
But look at this, too. “What we do not know does not lessen or impair the value of what we do know” (H. H. Dobney).
Don’t focus on the “know not.” Focus on the “this I know.” We are supposed to walk in faith, not understanding. We have to work on His timetable, not ours.
Understanding a Mystery
“The mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have briefly written above. By reading this you are able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3: 3-4 CSB)
We’ve been walking through Ephesians — when I don’t chase a rabbit and talk about something else. So, we’ve talked about the mystery of Christ and my take on it.
To me, the mystery is the doctrine of salvation. It is hard to understand. God reveals Himself to us little by little through His Spirit.
You see, the thing is we want to keep going at this from a physical standpoint. We can’t. This is a spiritual matter.
Making the Connections
No, we don’t have to understand God to love Him. We can love Him because He has done so much to pave the way to even approach Him.
We have to give God the honor that is due Him. One thing that means is that we shouldn’t think that we have to know everything He does.
We aren’t God. We aren’t in control of the universe. We don’t need to know everything.
Besides, God doesn’t want a relationship that is solely based on knowledge. He wants us to put our faith and trust in Him.
How Do We Apply This?
We aren’t going to understand and won’t until later? So, we can just ride things out, right?
No. We have to understand what God wants us to understand. That means we have to look at ourselves and evaluate where we are at and what He is calling us to be.
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We have to admit we don’t understand. Ooo, baby. That goes against our nature. We are supposed to be know-it-all’s.
Since we aren’t and won’t be for a while, we have to put our faith in the One Who does. That means make the decision and go on. We can’t keep railing that we don’t know. This is one way we show that we submit to God.
There are things that we are told. Jesus said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16: 33 ESV). Jesus gives us peace through the trials. We have to cling to that peace.
Bottom line is we have step out in faith. We have to live with our trust fully in the Sovereign God, even if we don’t understand.
Father God. You are a gracious and loving God. Forgive us when we think that we have to know and understand everything. We are not You and never will be. Eventually, we will be like Jesus and will be able to understand everything we need to understand. We look for that day. Amen.
What do you think?
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Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness. But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, “an upright heart”, as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God.
Very well said. Thank you for your comment.
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10:17). Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become “one body”, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself. We can thus understand how comes to us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us. Only by keeping in mind this Christological and sacramental basis can we correctly understand Jesus’ teaching on love. The transition which he makes from the Law and the Prophets to the twofold commandment of love of God and of neighbour, and his grounding the whole life of faith on this central precept, is not simply a matter of morality—something that could exist apart from and alongside faith in Christ and its sacramental re-actualization. Faith, worship and
Absolutely! One of Paul’s themes throughout Ephesians is how Jesus has demolished the barriers that separate. He not only has called us to one body but also to one faith. That faith is to be demonstrated through love. We are to love all — disciples and nonbelievers — through His definition of love, not the world’s.