And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high Heb 1:3 NASB95
Systematic theology is in many ways a fool’s game. God cannot be defined and God the Son, Who is the exact radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, throws a wrench into the works of any conception we try to construct about Him. Every conception we put forward concerning God is thrown down as an idol by the very existence of Jesus Christ, the incarnate God. It is no wonder that He was rejected and crucified by mankind! Every which way we turn, He is the destroyer of idols, at once the enemy and the fulfillment of theology.
God is infinite! Jesus: not so fast!
God is all powerful! Jesus: I am able to not be able. I didn’t want to die – I sweated blood. Put that in your systematic theology pipe and smoke it.
God is just! Jesus: My God My God why have You forsaken me?
For every reasonable and comfortable idol on which we think we might rest our head, Jesus Christ is the Word which says “No. This is not the Way. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Every human understanding of God apart from Christ is in the end cruel and horrifying. As the voice of the Father thundered from heaven, let us learn:
While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice from the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him!” – Mat 17:5 NASB20
So I have this crazy idea: how about if we stop listening to other voices which are obviously not helping us, and start listening to Jesus? I don’t remember Jesus ever giving any extended lectures on the omniscience or omnipotence or omnipresence of God. Someone might be able to juice these things some obscure way out of something Jesus said, but we all know it was never His main point.
It’s almost like God is saying, everything except My beloved Son is an idol. There are no other answers. If you say God is infinite and all-powerful, it only serves to distance Him and make Him alien to us. If you say God is just and holy, it only serves to make Him our awful judge. If you say God is omniscient and knows all things, it only makes us feel infinitely inferior and inadequate. All of these ideas about God are only vaguely proposed in scripture, but our systems of theology assert them as if they are the ultimate truth revealed about God.
It’s all another way Christians marginalize Jesus Christ. The word of the cross is not a word of infiniteness, or of power, or of omniscience. It’s certainly not about holiness. How is human sacrifice holy? Does that mean that I believe God is finite or unpowerful or has limited knowledge or even unholy? That’s the same problem. God is God, it is hubris to say what He is. I would rather say that I don’t know. That’s actually the point: how the hell would I know? I don’t know. I don’t even know what these things mean really. No one knows what “infinite” or “omniscient” means. I am saying, it probably isn’t all that important.
How can I possibly say that? Because what God has actually revealed is that He is able and willing to be present with us. That’s His name: Immanuel, God with us. For our sake He is able to NOT be able. He can be limited and weak and finite and killable. He can let injustice overcome Him. I can identify with these things – my life is absolutely filled with them. I can have fellowship in my sufferings, not because I am so disciplined to gloriously suffer, but because life is suffering and full of disappointment that I can’t avoid or think my way out of.
Is it really such a strange idea that much more than omniscience or omnipotence or omnipresence, God is love? He loves us. He is unstoppable love. That’s really what He is. The word of the cross is love.