When we speak of God’s Transcendence we find the Scripture dripping with the idea and teaching that God is transcendent. Far beyond what was read this morning we find the idea of God’s transcendence dancing throughout the Scripture.
Allow me to give you just a small tour of some of the passages that we see that testify to this attribute of the God to whom we are called to serve.
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain
And spreads them out like a tent to live in. Isaiah 40:22
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
I Chronicles 29:11 Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and on the earth; Yours is the dominion, Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all.
Solomon confesses that God transcends containment by the temple
II Chronicles 2:6 But who is able to build a house for Him, since the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain Him?
I Kings 8:27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the [a]highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!
Job 11:7 “Can you discover the depths of God?
Can you discover the limits of the Almighty?
8 They are as high as [a]the heavens; what can you do?
Deeper than [b]Sheol; what can you know?
Elihu declares the Lord to be beyond reach
The Almighty—we cannot find Him;
He is exalted in power
And He will not violate justice and abundant righteousness. Job 37:23
Psalms
145:3 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
And His greatness is [a]unsearchable.
113:4 The Lord is high above all nations,
His glory above the heavens.
97:9 For You, Lord, are most high above all the earth;
You are exalted far above all gods.
148:13 Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For His name alone is exalted;
His glory is above the earth and heaven.
Stephen reciting Solomon’s testimony
Acts 7:49‘Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
What house will you build for Me? says the Lord,
Or what is the place of My rest?
Acts 17:24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.
Jesus Christ is above all, in the place of highest honor and authority thus as God is of course Transcendent. We see this in
Ephesians 1:20 which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all principality[a] and [b]power and [c]might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.
Hebrews 7:26 For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, [a]harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens;
So, there you have it… the repeated testimony of God’s authoritative word is that God is Transcendent. Of course none of this denies the truth that God is also God immanent. Scripture asks the rhetorical question, “Am I God far off and not also a God nearby saith the Lord.” This speaks of God’s immanence – that He is closer to us then our next breath.
That God is also immanent is declared by God Himself in Isaiah 57:15
For this is what the high and exalted One says—
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
He who is the blessed and only [e]Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen. I Timothy 6:15
But this morning we consider the reality of God’s Transcendence. Luther would speak of God being so Transcendent that Luther could speak of God as “God hidden.” We speak this way, consistent with Scripture in order to warn against the idea that God is merely man said loudly. We speak this way, consistent with Scripture in order to eliminate the idea that somehow man can arrive at a place where he can say with finality that He knows God completely.
A thousand times NO. As God is transcendent man the creature can only make but small beginnings in knowing God. The result of this admission is a proper submission of the creature before the creator. The creature, given that God is Transcendent will always be in the place of being awed by God and overwhelmed by what he has yet to learn of God.
When we speak of God’s transcendence we understand that Transcendence is a theological term that, when referring to the Christian God, states that God is outside of the universe and is independent of it and its properties. God is thus “other,” and “different” from His creation. He is independent and different from His creatures (Isaiah 55:8-9). He transcends His creation. He is beyond it and not limited by it or to it. God as the creator is sui generis … one of a kind.
There is thus in the truth of the creator God’s transcendence the immediate need for the creature to fall on his face before His majesty … His splendor … His opulence.
Immediately, I hope that we begin to see that this God … the Transcendent God is a God that Western man has long ago forgotten. It is the God that is not spoken of in Churches where we casually and haughtily come into His presence with our hyper relaxed worship atmosphere. When the Priests of all came into the Transcendent God’s presence they did so with a holy dread. When we come into the Transcendent God’s presence we come so lightly with such disregard.
And while we would not push away moderns from our gatherings because of our lifting unnecessary barriers of clothing and habits that might communicate awe and respect of God transcendent we should still strive as a people to capture God’s Transcendence in our Worship. I long for getting just a little of Isaiah’s worship which wrung from him the cry “Woe is me for I am undone,” in our Worship. This was Isaiah’s response to coming face to face with God’s transcendence.
When we talk about God’s transcendence of course we are not talking about His remoteness as if He is far removed from us distance wise … as if He exists beyond our solar system. When we talk about God’s transcendence we are talking about the nature and quality of God’s being. His person … His being is exalted. Isaiah spoke of His being as being “High and Lifted up.” There we find the language of Transcendence.
God is Transcendent because unlike us He has un-created being. We are created beings and as such we are earth bound in our creaturliness. But God is spoken of as Transcendent precisely because He knows no and has no creaturely limitations. Moses had some understanding of that which we speak of now. It is this that was part of the reason that Moses trembled in God’s presence. It is this Transcendence that stands as the foundation of God naming Himself “I am that I am” – Meaning that He is defined only in the context of Himself. As transcendent He is the source of all definition and so is beyond definition and is the transcendent “I am that I am.”
This same Transcendence our Lord Christ claimed for Himself when He took to Himself the name “I am.” This transcendence came leaking through and frightened the three disciples out of their whits on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is this Transcendence that found those that came out to arrest him, instead falling at His feet.
Here we find the record and reality of God’s transcendence in the Scripture and yet that transcendence sits upon us and the modern church so lightly. We sing playful songs while we stoke up the smoke machine and glitz with the light show. We bring in ballet dancers such as Tim Keller did thus removing the Word from its central place. We put men in the pulpit who admit that they have attraction for other men and who even speak of “gay culture” being brought into the Kingdom of God. All of this are merely the symptoms of a people … a church who have lost a sense of God’s transcendence.
The modern church has no gravitas precisely because it no longer seeks to come to terms with God’s Transcendence. Having lost God’s transcendence we have become weightless ourselves. We leave no footprints for the generations to follow because God sits so lightly upon us.
The irreverence of the modern person in the pew is shocking. The lack of any sense of God’s Transcendence colors nearly everything the modern Church does.
In our prayer lives then we should be begging for a kind of Reformation that bespeaks once again the great and awesome reality of God’s transcendence. Indeed, without God’s transcendence once again coming to the fore in the minds of God’s people I think I can authoritatively say that we will never see Reformation. The Reformation we need, needs to be characterized by this sense of God’s transcendence that leaves us so awestruck that our thinking becomes leavened with where God leverages His transcendence – that is in His Law Word.
Away then with all expressions of Christianity and Revival that would play upon our emotions while leaving us absent of this sense of God’s Transcendence. Away then with any Reformation that leaves our thinking unaffected by God’s transcendence so that we think we can have Reformation and our humanistic authority at the same time.
If we should ever learn this Transcendence of God we will experience what Scripture sometimes refers to as the Dread of God. Even this idea runs contrary to what the modern church offers. The modern church demands that people leave church feeling good about themselves. The modern churchmen is forever asking, “What did I get out of the service,” and the last thing they want to get out of the service is the dread of God. But I tell you, when we understand increasingly God’s transcendence it is the dread of God that will be our company. We will not be chirping about “our best life now” or about our “purpose driven life.” Instead a vision of God’s transcendence will shatter our little worlds with the dread of God.
Already, I hear the catcalls from the internet cheap seats. What is it with you McAtee that your always so negative … so pessimistic. I get that frequently.
To which I respond that I can not offer you the healing found in Jesus Christ until I first diagnose and then treat your disease. Your disease is that your God is weightless. You have lost His transcendence. You are unfamiliar with the Holy dread of God and before you can be of any use to the Kingdom you must face this reality of God’s Transcendence and become familiar with it.
He whom God will heal He first wounds. And so I seek to wound you with the reality of God written large … of God who sits upon the rim of the earth … of God Transcendent.
When I speak of this dread of God as our response to His transcendence I speak as the Scripture speaks.
In Genesis 31 God is defined as the fear of or the dread of Isaac.
In Genesis 38 after encountering God in the account referred to as Jacob’s ladder Jacob said “How dreadful is this place!”
And Peter cried out … “Depart from me Lord for I am an unclean man.” (Luke 5:8)
John the Revelator falls down as dead when he comes face to face with the Transcendent Lord Christ.
Here you see it. This dread of God. Men coming face to face with the Transcendence of God … the awfulness of God … the absolute otherness of God… what some of our Christian poets have called the “mysterium tremendium” – the tremendous mystery.
Upon this happening the creature sees himself in light of the reality of God and he experiences a dread that will drive from him any future dread of anything else he might ever come up against.
The man who has come face to face with the transcendence of God and has found solution in the cross provision of Jesus Christ is a man who knowing real dread will never dread anything else again.
Where is the Holy dread of God in the Church today. Where is the man who dreads dishonoring God transcendent? Where is that man? Where is that Church? Let loose the dread of God that comes with coming to terms with the transcendence of God and the effect will be a Gideon’s army that will sweep away all that opposes it.
Now, we might ask should we have to live forever in this dread knowing God’s transcendence. Well, the answer is yes and no. The answer is “no” in the sense that no man can live in that state 24-7. Further, the Christian who has come face to face with that initial dread knows that He has peace with God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ lets us know that God is no longer a terror to us.
But the answer is “Yes,” in the sense that the God we serve remains Creator and we remain creatures. For that reason there should forever be an episodic sense when we become familiar anew with the distance between God as Creator and ourselves as Creature… a periodic outburst, perhaps only to ourselves, admitting and confessing the sense of God as transcendent … that God will always be other and never be man said loudly.
God’s Transcendence means that we can’t guess at God. Man cannot, by his philosophical musings or his artistic intuition arrive at God. Instead this Transcendent God must make Himself known before we can have any beginning idea of who He is. God, because Transcendent is inscrutable… His ways past tracing out if we were left to ourselves to try and trace out His Transcendent ways. It is why first, Isaiah, and then Paul could write,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” for “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is 55:8-9).
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Rom 11:33-34).
What are the consequences then to owning a Christianity absent the Transcendence of God? I have already hinted at this but let us speak plainly and explicitly.
1.) Limited and small views of God are dishonoring to God with the result that the god man considers is not the God we find in the Scriptures.
God minus this incommunicable attribute of transcendence is not the God of the Bible and so the service of God minus transcendence is service as unto an idol. Those who serve such a God as thus idolaters.
2.) Limited and small views of God make for small and insignificant men. Man can only be as great as the God he knows, worships, and serves. If man’s God is absent transcendence then man will always be a prisoner to the little times in which he lives since a man will never transcend his times apart from a God who is transcendent. Another way of saying this is that without God transcendent man is a prisoner to his times. He will merely be a reflection of whatever fallen culture he inhabits.
If you desire greatness … and what man doesn’t, then you must discover the humbleness that comes with reckoning with the transcendence of God. If you desire to be one of God’s mighty men doing deeds of renown that are spoken of generations later in poems and narratives then find and see and reckon with the transcendence of God and then your own littleness.
There is nothing wrong with the desire to have conquered kingdoms, slain dragons, and rescued damsels in distress. Men are made for such things. The wrongness is seeking to do them apart from swearing one’s allegiance to the totally transcendent God thus desiring a greatness for yourself apart from making the name of God great. You will never make your name great … never do truly awesome deeds until you first come face to face with God’s transcendence.
May God grant His Church a return to the God who sits upon the rim of the earth.
