that I should obey Him? - Future Israel Ministries

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION TO THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
A. GOD CANNOT BE KNOWN APART FROM HIS SELF-REVELATION
To consider knowing God presupposes that God is. This being an assumed starting point
(Heb. 11:6), we are specifically concerned here solely with the God of the Bible, the God of
Genesis 1:1, the God of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the prophets, the
God of the Apostles including Paul, and the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, which
God is one and the same in biblical Judaeo-Christianity.
1. God cannot be known through self-discovery.
Can a man, believing in God who he confesses not to know, find God? Man may
attempt this quest, as was the case with Greek philosophy evidenced by its inability to
deal with sin. Such a trail, that attempts to find light in the midst of darkness, is
doomed to failure. When man is seen to take the initiative in the discovery of God,
even though seeming pietistic motives are expressed, or probing ritualistic forms are
employed such as meditation concerning self or the universe, whatever he discovers will
only fall within the realm of his cognitive and analytical capacity. How futile it is for
finitude to discover infinity or mortality to attain immortality. Zophar was correct
when he exhorted Job concerning such an impossibility: “Can you discover the depth
of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? They are high as the heavens,
what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know?” (Job 11:7-8). 1 Carl Henry
well describes man’s arrogant futility at this point.
God is not the Great Perhaps, a clueless shadow character in a Scotland Yard mystery. Far
less is he a nameless spirit awaiting post-mortem examination in some theological morgue.
He is a very particular and specific divinity, known from the beginning solely on the basis
of his works and self-declaration as the one living God. Only theorists who ignore divine
self-disclosure are prone to identify God as the nondescript John Doe of religious
philosophy. 2
Hence as John the Baptist declared: “A man can receive nothing unless it has been
given him from heaven” (John 3:27; cf. Matt. 16:16-17).
2. God can only be known through Self-disclosure.
While man cannot come up to God, yet the wonder is that He is pleased to come down
to man (Ex. 3:7-8; 19:11; Num. 11:16-17). The Scripture is abundantly clear that for
man to know Him, God must take the initiative in finding man and making Himself
known. Man is limited as a creature in being finite while at the same time he is limited
1 F. Delitzsch comments on these verses: “The nature of God may be sought after, but cannot be found
out.” Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job, I, p. 181.
2 Carl Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, II, p. 7.