God's Omniscience

This is not a repost of an old post. For some reason, when I did the original series of attributes of God posts, I skipped this one. I’m fixing that now.

When we say that God is omniscient, we mean that he knows everything. There is no limit to what God knows; his knowledge is complete. What are some of the things that are included in God’s all-comprehensive knowledge?

Let’s start with the most remarkable thing that God knows: God knows himself.

For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. … [N]o one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:10-11 ESV)

God is infinite, yet he knows “even the depths” of himself. His understanding is “beyond measure” (Psalm 147:5), but he knows every one of his thoughts. We think that God’s knowledge of everything about everyone who has ever lived and will ever live is amazing—and it is—but it’s small potatoes in comparison to the whole of his knowledge of his infinite self.

God also knows everything that exists. Scripture tells us that “[God] looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens (Job 28:24 ESV).” And again: “[N]o creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4:13 ESV).” He calls every star by name and knows when every sparrow dies, so there is nothing in the whole universe, including the tiniest details about the most insignificant things, that is unknown to God.

And it is God who declares “the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done (Isaiah 46:10 ESV).” This means that in addition to knowing everything about everything that exists, he knows everything about everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. Nothing surprises him; nothing catches him off-guard; nothing is forgotten by him.

God’s knowledge of things existing and happening includes knowledge of every aspect of every single person’s life. He knows, for instance, the number of hairs on each head. He knows everything we do, think, and say; and he knows it all before we do it. Yes, before each one of us is born, God knows what will happen on each day we will live.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:1-4, 15-16 ESV)

This comprehensive intimate knowledge, says the psalmist, is “too wonderful” for us. How can I not be in awe when I consider God’s knowledge of me?

But God’s knowledge is not limited to things that actually do or will exist, or things that have happened or will happen. Do you remember that Jesus said that Tyre and Sidon would have repented if Jesus had done his miracles there? God knows everything that is possible—everything that could or would occur were circumstances different. He knows what he is able to do, so he knows what could have occured if he had chosen to cause it to occur.

God’s knowledge is an aspect of his nature, so he doesn’t reason his way to it or receive it from anything or anyone outside of himself.

Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD,
Or as His counselor has informed Him?
With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? (Isaiah 40:13-14)

The source of all of God’s knowledge is God himself, and he’s the only existing being who knows what he knows entirely independently. God doesn’t know what will happen because he sees and foresees, for that would be receiving knowledge from things outside of himself. Rather, God knows because he plans, creates and sustains. God declares the end from the beginning because his “counsel shall stand, and [he] will accomplish all [his] purpose (Isaiah 46: 10).”

What’s more, as a perfection of the eternal and unchanging God, God’s knowledge is eternal and unchanging. It can’t increase or decrease; God doesn’t learn or forget. He is always fully conscious of every detail of his infinite, complete knowledge of everything.

I started this post by saying that when we say that God is omniscient, we mean that he knows everything. That’s not wrong, but it’s not a very precise, is it? Louis Berkhof’s definition of God’s omniscience is this:

that perfection of God whereby He….knows himself and all things possible and actual in one eternal and most simple act.

And that’s the outline, more or less, for what I’ve written here. God knows himself, all things actual (what exists and what happens), and all things possible, in one eternal (unchanging) and most simple (complete or whole) act.

How can knowing that God knows everything we think, do and say not change the way we live? We may be able to fool those around us, but God knows everything about us. He knows what we are really thinking and what we do when no one else sees. We can’t hide our shortcomings from him, so pretense is useless. It’s foolish not to bring all our faults before him, asking for forgiveness and deliverance from them.

God’s omniscience can also be a comfort. Because God knows everything about us, he can lead us and protect us and sanctify us. He knows what we need before we do, so he can answer our prayer before we ask it. He knows when we are in trouble and he has the power to deliver us. He knows where we are growing in santification and where we need more of his sanctifying work. For those of us who trust him, our God’s complete and infinite knowledge is a glorious thing!

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you. (Psalm 139:17-18 ESV)

God As Judge

A repost of an old post.

Because of his righteousness (see last week’s attributes of God post), all of God’s thoughts and actions are morally perfect. One of the righteous ways he acts is as the perfect Judge of all things.

God stands in judgment over everything, discerning the exact truth about every thought and action of all of his creatures, impartially pronouncing and executing his judgments (Romans 2:6-11). In our legal systems, those who make the laws, those who sentence lawbreakers, and those who execute the sentences are separate. In God’s rule, however, those three functions are all carried out by God himself as the one and only righteous Judge of all the earth.

First of all, God is the one who has set the moral standards and declared them to us. They are called his precepts, his laws, his commandments, his statutes, his judgments—there are probably more terms I’ve forgotten—and he reveals them to us in scripture. And even those who’ve had no exposure to God’s word know instinctively what sorts of behaviour a righteous judge would require of us, because God’s righteous standards for human behaviour are written on their hearts and in their consciences (Romans 2:15).

God’s standard of righteousness is not arbitrary, but rather, it is the perfect reflections of God’s own holy character. He is morally perfect, and his standard for us demands that we “be holy as he is holy”—that we not fall short of his glory. We can’t complain that this standard is an unjust one, for its source is in the only perfect justice there is: the justice of God.

Secondly, God is the one who determines the just sentences for those who don’t live up to the standard of righteousness He has declared. He is the only one suited for this job. He has the wisdom to discern the truth in every situation of lawbreaking, and he knows a lie when he hears it and a cover-up when he sees it. He sees not only the actions taken, but the motives behind the actions. Everything stands in the open before his wisdom and his truth. And he loves what is good and hates wickedness, so he has a vested interest in seeing right win out over wrong. He can be counted on, then, to never overlook wrongdoing; he will always pass the perfectly deserved (and therefore perfectly just) sentence for all lawbreaking.

Lastly, as the righteous Judge, God is the one who executes the sentences. He is perfectly suited for this role as well, for he has the wisdom and might to enforce all of his judgments. There is no one with the wits or power to escape the sentence for breaking the moral standards set by God.

This brings us to one aspect of God’s activity as Judge that we probably prefer not to think about—the outpouring of God’s wrath. God’s wrath will be expressed against sin and sinners as the execution of the righteous sentence for all unrighteousness.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18 ESV)

Those who love God will want to know all facets of him, even the less comfortable ones, like his just wrath. His wrath is part of what makes him the absolutely holy God that he is; it is one of his perfections. If God had no wrath against sin, he wouldn’t be true to his morally perfect (or righteous) character.

And deep down, we all know that. We wouldn’t much like a God who simply overlooked the cruelty of heinous villians—of murderers and rapists and terrorists. We want God to express his wrath against what we feel is true, unequivocal evil, because we know that real justice requires it. What we have more trouble with is God expressing his wrath against the more ordinary sorts of lawbreaking like our own and that of people like us. It’s easy for us to see that history’s more evil men deserve God’s wrath for their moral imperfection, but scripture tells us that when it comes to what God requires of us—and remember, he can rightly require no less than that we be “holy as he is holy!”—we all fall on the wrong side of the line. We all fall far short of his righteous requirement; by our very nature, we are “objects of God’s wrath.” Some are more abominable than others, and a just God will take this into account, but we are all rightly placed in the cubbyhole labeled “evildoers”. What we deserve—the just payment or wages—for being the kind of people we are is to be on the receiving end of the expression of God’s righteous wrath against sin.

Even when God mercifully spares some from the execution of his just sentence for lawbreaking, he must do it in a just way. His morally perfect character places certain parameters around the way he can pardon us. He can’t overlook sin without a righteous ground upon which that can be done. This is what Christ’s death is all about. It is God’s righteous way of pardoning sinners. He displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation (a way to turn away God’s wrath)

to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3: 25, 26)

Christ’s propitiatory (or wrath appeasing) death proves before all eyes that God is righteous, because even his mercy upon sinners—his forgiveness of sins—is extended in a way that is in accordance with his righteousness. He justifies the faithful in a just way.

What does it mean to us that our God is a perfectly just judge and that he has just wrath against our sin? For one, it shows us the abhorrent nature of our unrighteousness. That the wrath of the only morally perfect One is called out as the correct—and only correct—response to what we might prefer to excuse as petty mistakes or small crimes of little consequence ought to help us see those sins in a their true light. That the one who know and sees it all as it is judges us as deserving of his terrible wrath ought to stop our excuse making mouths and cause us to cry out for his mercy.

Knowing that God has judged our sins as worthy of the outpouring of his wrath should make those of us who have experienced his mercy extremely grateful. We have been spared something utterly deserved, and the mercy that spared us wasn’t an easy mercy, for it required the death of his own Son in order for him to be justly merciful to us. It was costly and he spared no cost. In return, we are called to

serve the living and true God,
and …. wait for his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
(1 Thessalonians 1:9,10 ESV)

God's Righteousness

This is another edited post from the old blog, reposted in preparation for this week’s theological term.

That God is righteous means that what He thinks and what he does is always “excruciatingly correct,” to borrow a term from Miss Manners. There is moral perfection in every single thought and activity of God. 

God’s righteousness, then, is an aspect of his holiness. All of his actions are righteous because they have their source in God’s unchangeably holy character. We know that God’s actions are righteous simply because it is God who does them, for any thought or action that come from God comes from the one-and-only morally perfect being, from the One who exists as the perfect standard of righteousness.

If we use terms the same way they are used scripturally, then God’s righteousness and His justice are the same thing. Both terms—righteousness and justice—are translated from exactly the same words in the original languages. We don’t usually use the words as precise synonyms, however, and commonly save the word justice to refer to God’s righteousness as it pertains to his law giving and law enforcment, including his impartial punishment for lawbreakers and blessing for lawkeeping.

We call God’s righteousness one of his communicable attributes. The term communicable refers to those attributes that God shares (or “communicates) with us. This means that when we are righteous, we are exhibiting derived righteousness—righteousness that doesn’t come from us, but from God. If we are righteous, we are righteous because the Holy Spirit communicates righteousness to us. Even when we are glorified so that we become spotlessly righteous forever onward, it is due to the work of the God’s Spirit (Romans 8).

What does scripture teach us about God’s righteousness?

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. (Psalm 97:2 NASB)

Righteousness as an essential character of God, for righteousness and justice are the underpinnings of his rule; they determine how God acts as Lord over all the earth.

One of the most often quoted texts on God’s righteousness is Abraham’s question of God in Genesis 18:25:

Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the godly with the wicked, treating the godly and the wicked alike! Far be it from you! Will not the judge of the whole earth do what is right? (NET)

Abraham appeals to God’s essential righteousness—and rightly so!—when he pleads for God to spare any righteous people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah from his judgment against sin. Abraham understood that God’s righteousness (or his justice) keeps him from acting toward godly people in the same way that he acts toward the wicked. A righteous God will never give anyone judgment that they do not deserve.

God’s righteousness is the source of all his judgments:

….he now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness…(Acts 17:31)

The judgment that is yet to come has its source in God’s righteousness. It is because God is righteous that he must judge sinful people. To forever overlook the immorality of mankind would not be in accordance with his perfect morality, so on a day that he has already determined he will display his righteousness through his condemnation of unrepentant sinners. 

In addition, that God keeps his word is a facet of his righteousness.

You have fulfilled your promise, for you are righteous. (Nehemiah 7:8 NET)

Because God is righteous, when he promises something, that promise will always be kept.

That God is righteous also means that he instructs us in how to be righteous.

Good and upright [or just] is the LORD; Therefore He instructs sinners in the way. (Psalm 25:8 NASB)

Since he is the only perfectly righteous one, he is also the only one who can tell us how to be righteous. It is from of his righteous and benevolent nature he reveals his perfect standards of righteousness to his creatures.

In the Old Testament, God’s righteousness is often closely associated with deliverance. For example:

My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day…. (Psalm 71:15 ESV)

….my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed. (Isaiah 51:6)

God delivers his people because he is righteous. Vindication for his people is a requirement of his righteous character.

What does it mean for us that our God is righteous? That God is righteous means that none of us ever receive less from God than what is right. When we go complaining to God about difficulties in our life, we can’t grumble about the unjustness of our suffering and be showing anything but our ignorance. After the psalmist doubted God’s righteousness and complained that things were not unfolding fairly for him, God vindicated his own righteousness by showing the psalmist the perfect justice coming in the end. Then the psalmist says of his own previously complaining self:

When my heart was embittered
And I was pierced within,
Then I was senseless and ignorant;
I was {like} a beast before You. (Psalm 73:21-22 NASB)

Our God is always right and just, even when we don’t understand how that could be true. Any complaints against what we receive from him are foolish.

And a righteous God is a God who can be believed. There is no room for doubting him, for an upright God keeps his word. If we have been born again, then God has promised us an inheritance and we can bank it. We will be kept for our eternal possession, because from God’s righteousness, come guaranteed promises.

For the LORD is righteous,
He loves righteousness;
The upright will behold His face.
(Psalm 11:7 NASB)