If there is one thing that I have learned in my 41 years of studying the Scriptures it is that there will always be things that will lie outside of my scope of understanding. And the reason is obvious. It is simply not possible for a finite being, like me, to totally understand everything about an infinite God. While it is true that as I study more, God will reveal more about Himself and our universe to me, but a finite being can never fully understand an infinite Being.
It’s kind of like asking a one-year-old baby to read the Wall Street Journal. He or she just doesn’t have the capacity to understand how to read at that age. And when it comes to understanding everything about our universe we too just don’t have the capacity or the ability to.
Questions such as how can Jesus be 100% God and 100% man, or how can God exist as a Trinity are just not totally comprehensible to our finite minds. Or how can God exist in the past, the present, and the future, all simultaneously, will always remain a mystery to me. And what about doctrines like election and predestination? While I have often wrestled to understand these difficult doctrines I find great comfort in leaving these mysterious issues in the hands of a God who I know is always fair.
I believe that A. W. Tozer has a great perspective on how to handle these difficult and perplexing areas of Christianity when he shared: “God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination, and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, ‘0 Lord, Thou knowest.’ Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God’s omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.”1
Are you struggling with understanding all the ways of the Lord? Well welcome to the club – for we all do. Scripture clearly states that there are just going to be doctrines that are way above our paygrade for we read in (Isaiah 55:8-9): “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
I encourage you to study the Word but when you find that you can’t reconcile difficult passages and doctrines leave them in God’s hands for not only can He make senses of them but relax because we don’t have to. Too often, we try to analyze God too much instead of just trusting and loving Him and resting in the knowledge that our Lord is infinitely fair in all He does.
1 Quote by A. W. Tozer : “God will not hold us responsible to understand …” (goodreads.com)