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God's Transcendence
What is God like?
Fred Smith, Sr.

Topics:	Character, Experiencing God, Presence of God, Service
Filters:	Discipleship, Mentoring, Pastor, Shepherd, Small group leader
Purpose:	Discipleship
References:	Isaiah 55:8-9
Date Added:	July 01, 2006

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Posted: October 23, 2008
Pastor John (Guest)


Mr. Smith challenges us to keep the balance between the transcendence and immanence of God. While He is certainly immanent in Emmanuel, He is not like us. I also appreciated his categories of sin. Compare them to the inspired categories in 1 Jn. 2:16.

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"My thoughts are completely different from yours," says the Lord. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

Many of us are tempted to respond, "Like us." We so can overemphasize the God who is so involved with out lives that he begins to look like us, and in so ding, we diminish his complete holiness and transcendence. A friend said to me, "All our sins can be classified under three categories: deifying of man, humanizing of God, and minimizing of sin." This insight has been very helpful for me in evaluating my concepts of God.

We humanize God when we think he is motivated in the same ways humans are. For example, we subconsciously feel more secure if we believe God needs us rather than believe that he only loves us. This thinking implies that God uses us to satisfy his selfish need. Since we strive to satisfy our needs and value those people and things that fulfill our needs, we reason that God appreciates and rewards our satisfying his needs.

But God has no needs because God is sovereign. God loves us; he doesn't need us. Our security is based totally on his love and not on our satisfying his need of us.

Christian leaders can harbor the arrogant notion that God needs them around. Some will say, "I will live as long as God needs me." Yet many great saints died young or during their prime years of ministry. Service is no more a guarantee of long life than good works are an assurance of prosperity.

Another danger is that when we try to obligate God by service, we can become very possessive of our efforts and resent sharing the recognition with others. We are anxious to receive the credit for our service, as if God valued the work rather than the motive. We become selfish in our service, not wanting to share the work for fear God will not recognize our sacrificial works of piety.

A great spiritual release came to me after five years of strict Calvinist teaching on God's sovereignty. I came to the spiritual conviction that God does not need me. He loves me. He gives me the opportunity to perform for my maturity in Christ. It is for my good, not his good.

—Fred Smith Sr.

Reflection

Do I spend some time regularly—in worship, in private devotions—simply extolling the majesty and awesome otherness of the Almighty? How might this be a corrective to the subtle trap of "domesticating" God?

Prayer

Read Psalm 145.