12. CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 12 SELF-ABASEMENT BEFORE THE MAJESTY OF GOD Think about the excellence and majesty of God Consider your unfamiliarity with him Meditate constantly in a way that leads to a proper sense of shame, and an appreciation of your own vileness. The EIGHTH direction: Consider the majesty of God and how little you know of Him.

1. Think about the greatness of God, and who you are by comparison. Be thoughtful about the excellence and majesty of God and your infinite, inconceivable distance from him. It will not be long before you are filled with a sense of your own vileness. This realization will strike deep at the root of any indwelling sin. When Job clearly discovers the greatness and excellence of God, he is filled with self-abhorrence; he is pressed to humiliation.175 And when Habakkuk grasps the majesty of God, he affirms the state he is in: “When I heard, my stomach turned; my lips quivered at the voice: decay entered my bones and I trembled, hoping I might be left alone in the day of trouble.”176. “With God there is terrible majesty,”177 says Job. For this reason, those in the Old Testament thought that when they had seen God, they would die. The Scripture is filled with this self-humiliation. When compared to God, it describes men as “grasshoppers,” “worthless,” the “powder left on the scales after weighing the mountains.”178 Maintain this train of thought to degrade the pride of your heart, and to keep your soul humble within you. There is nothing better to insulate you from the deceits of sin than this frame of heart. Ponder extensively the greatness of God.

2. Think about how unfamiliar you are with him.

Though you know enough to keep you low and humble, that is such a small part of knowing him! Contemplating his own ignorance is what threw Solomon into such a fearful understanding of God. “Surely I am as stupid as a cow, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor do I know holiness. What man has mounted the skies, or climbed down from them? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has enclosed the seas in a mantle? Who has defined the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his Son’s name, if you can tell me?”179 Wrestle with this to knock down the pride of your heart. What do you know of God? How little it is! How immense God is in his nature! Can you look without terror into the abyss of eternity? You cannot bear the light of his glorious being. Because I consider this very useful in our walk with God, I will continue emphasizing it. I want it to leave a lasting impression on those who desire to walk humbly with God. Keep in mind, it must be offset with that brotherly boldness we have been given in Jesus Christ to approach the throne of grace.

Consider, then, keeping your heart in continual awe of the majesty of God. Appreciate the fact that people of extraordinary accomplishment, those who know the most about communion with God, still know very little of him, and very little of his glory while they are in this life. God reveals his name to Moses, and reveals the most glorious qualities of the covenant of grace.180 Yet all of these are only the “back” of God.181 All that Moses knows is miniscule compared to the perfection of God’s glory. For this reason, with specific reference to Moses and in contrast to Christ, it is said, “No man has ever seen God,”182 not even Moses, the most eminent among us. We speak a lot about God. We can talk about him all day long: his ways, his works, his guidance; the truth is, we know very little of him. Our thoughts, our meditations, the way we speak about him, are unworthy of his glory; none of them truly reflects his perfection.

You may say that Moses was under the law when God wrapped himself in darkness, cloaking his mind in clouds of smoke and hidden practices. But through the glory of the gospel, which brought life and immortality to light, God candidly revealed himself. We now know him much more clearly and accurately. We now see his face, and not just his back, as Moses did. To which I reply, 1. I acknowledge there is a vast difference between the acquaintance we now have with God after speaking to us through his Son,183 and the acquaintance the saints had under the law. Their eyes were as good, sharp, and clear as ours, and their faith and spiritual understanding were equal to our own. The object of their affection was as glorious to them as he is to us. And yet things are indeed clearer to us today. The clouds are blown away and scattered.184 The shadows of the night are gone and fled away. The sun is risen, and the means of sight are better and clearer than before. Even so, 2. The unique image that Moses had of God in Exodus 34 was a gospel-image, a sight of God in his “graciousness,” etc.; and yet what he saw is called God’s “back.” That is, it was inferior to the full extent of God’s excellence and perfection.

3. The apostle extols this glory of light above that of the law. He demonstrates that now the “veil” which caused the darkness has been taken away. With “open” (or uncovered) “face we behold the glory of the Lord.” 185 How do we behold? “As in a glass.”186 And how do we see in a glass? Clearly? Perfectly? Unfortunately not! He tells us how “we see through a glass, darkly.”187 He is not speaking of a telescope that helps us see things far away. We are still far short of the truth of things, even with the help of such instruments! It is a tarnished mirror he alludes to. There are only obscure images of things in its reflection, not the things themselves. This is the kind of sight he compares our knowledge to. He also tells us that everything we look at [NT:991 bepo) “by” or “through this glass,” is in “a riddle” [NT:135 enigma). It is dark and obscure. And speaking of himself, someone much more clear-sighted than any of us, he tells us that he saw “in part” [NT:3313 meros) . He saw only the back of heavenly things. He compares all the knowledge that he accumulated of God to a child’s understanding.188 It is an interest [NT:5426 phroneo) that comes short of knowing it well [NT:1987 epistemai), more like coming to know [NT:1097 ginosko). In any event, “it shall be destroyed,” or done away.

We know the limited comprehension and the uneasiness children have with things that are difficult to understand. We know that as children grow up those conceptions vanish, and they are ashamed of them. We instruct a child to love, honor, believe, and obey his father; because of the child’s limited grasp of science and other notions, his father accepts his childishness and folly. Despite all our confidence in our accomplishments, all our notions about God are childish compared to his infinite perfection. We lisp and babble like a child. In what we say, we show our ignorance in our conceptions and notions about God. We love, honor, believe, and obey our Father; and because of that he accepts our childish thoughts, for that is what they are. We see only his back, and we know very little of him. For this reason we are often comforted in our distress by the promise that, “we will see him as he is.” We will see him “face to face.” We will “know him as we are known, comprehend that for which we are comprehended.”189 But for now, “we see him not.” We see only his back. We see him not as he is, not in his perfect glory, but in a dark, obscure representation. The queen of Sheba heard a lot about Solomon, and fantasized about his magnificence. But when she actually came and saw his glory, she was forced to confess she heard only half the story. We can assume we have great knowledge, clear and high thoughts of God. But when he finally brings us into his presence we will cry out, “We never knew him as he actually is; one-thousandth of his glory, perfection, and blessedness never entered our hearts.” The apostle tells us that we do not know what we will be like.190 We are even less able to conceive what God is, or what we will find him to be. If we consider God who is yet to be known, or we consider the way through which we might know him, then the following will become apparent:

(1.) We know so little of God, because it is God we are trying to know. That is, God has told us repeatedly that we cannot know him. What else could he mean when he calls himself invisible, incomprehensible, and the like? We do not, and cannot, know him as he is. We know more about what he is not than what he is. So when he describes himself as immortal and infinite, we know only that he is not mortal, finite, and limited as we are. This is the reason for that glorious description of him as one, “Who alone has immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach, whom no man has seen, nor can see.”191 His light is the kind no creature can approach. He is not seen because we cannot bear the sight of him, not because he cannot be seen. The light of God, in whom there is no darkness, forbids all access to him by any creature whatever. If we cannot look directly into the bright sun, we are certainly too weak to bear the beams of God’s infinite brightness. When we consider his glory, as was said, the wise man calls himself “a cow without the understanding of a man.”192 That is, he knew nothing to compare to God. And so he seemed to have lost all his understanding when he began to consider God’s work and his ways.

Let us get down to some specifics in this matter:

[1.] As far as the being of God - we are so far from a knowledge of it, from being able to instruct each other by words and descriptions of it, that if we were to frame any conceptions about it in our mind, we would make an idol for ourselves. We would worship a god of our own making, and not the God that made us. We may as well carve him out of wood or stone as try to form an image in our minds. The best we can do with our thoughts of the being of God is to have no thoughts of it. Our knowledge of a being is worthless when all we know is that we do not know it.

[2.] There are some things about God which he taught us to speak of, and to control our speech concerning. But when we have done so, we do not see these things themselves, nor know them. All we can do is believe and admire. We are taught, and we profess, that God is infinite, omnipotent, and eternal. We know what arguments and theories arise concerning infinity, omnipresence, immensity, and eternity. We have words and ideas about these things, but what exactly do we know or comprehend of them? Can the mind of man do anything other than be swallowed up by such a black hole? How can it conceive of what it cannot express? Our understanding is “beast-like” when we contemplate such things. We are trying to understand as if we were not beast-like. The best our understanding can do is not to understand, and to rest there. We only have a glimpse of the back of eternity and infiniteness. What can I say about the Trinity, or how distinct persons can have the same individual essence? It is a mystery that many deny because they cannot understand it. Who can describe the generation of the Son, the procession of the Spirit, or the difference between them? But I will not go any farther in particulars. That infinite and inconceivable distance between God and us keeps us in the dark. We have no sight of his face, nor clear understanding of his perfection.

We know God more by what he does than by what he is, more by doing us good than by his essential goodness. As Job puts it, how small a portion of him is heard by all this!193 (2.) We know little of God, because it is by faith alone that we know him in this life.

I will not talk about nature impressing the hearts of all men with the knowledge that there is a God. Nor will I discuss whether men may be rationally taught concerning God from the works of his creation and providence - they can see and behold it. But it has been the regrettable experience of all ages, that no one ever glorified God as they ought to based on these evidences. Despite all their knowledge of God, they were “without God in the world.” The primary and perhaps the only acquaintance we have with God and his revelation comes by faith. “One who comes to God must believe that God exists, and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.”194 Our knowledge of him, and of his rewards, comes by believing. It is the foundation of our coming to him, and of our obedience. “We walk by faith, and not by sight;”195 [NT:1223,4102 dia pistis “caused by conviction”]. It is by faith, so that we will not have any express idea, image, or form of the One in whom we believe. Faith is all the proof we have of “things not seen,”196. Based on the nature of it, and from all its related concerns, what little we know of God is by faith alone. As to the source of our faith, it is built purely on the testimony of Him whom we have not seen. As the apostle asks, “How can you love him whom you have not seen?”197 That is, how can you love someone whom you know only by faith? Faith accepts everything, including Christ, based on his testimony alone. As to its nature, faith is the result of an assent based on testimony, not the result of evidence based on a demonstration of some kind. And the object of this faith is beyond us. For this reason our faith, as observed before, is called “seeing through a glass darkly.” Everything we know in this way is dark, and obscure - and all that we know of God, we know in this way.

You may say, “All this is true, but only for those who do not know God as he is revealed in Jesus Christ. For those who do, it is otherwise.” That too is true. “No man has ever seen God but the only-begotten Son. He has revealed him,”198 “The Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true.”199 “The illumination of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God,” shines upon believers.200 “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shines into their hearts, to give them the knowledge of his glory in the face of his Son.”201 So that “though we were darkness,” yet we are now “light in the Lord.”202 And the apostle says, “We all with open face behold the glory of the Lord.”203 We are now so far from being in such darkness, or at such a distance from God, that “our communion and fellowship is with the Father and with his Son.”204 You say, the light of the gospel through which God is now revealed is glorious. It is not a star, but the sun in its beauty is risen upon us, and the veil is taken from our faces. Although unbelievers, and perhaps some weak believers, may still be in some darkness, those who have grown or realized any substantial progress in their walk, do have a clear view of the face of God in Jesus Christ. To which I answer, (3.) No matter how much more we know through Jesus Christ, we still know very little.

[1.] The truth is, we all know enough about him to love him more than we do. We know enough to delight in him, serve him, believe him, obey him, and put our trust in him, beyond all that we have accomplished so far. Our darkness and weakness is no excuse for our negligence and disobedience. Who can say he has lived up to the knowledge that he has of the perfection, excellence, and will of God? God’s purpose in giving us any knowledge of himself here is that we may “glorify him as God.” That is, we are to love him, serve him, believe and obey him, and give him all the honor and glory that is due from sinful creatures to a sin-pardoning God. We must all acknowledge that we are not thoroughly transformed into the image of that knowledge which we have received. Had we used our talents well, we might have been trusted with more.

[2.] Comparatively speaking, the knowledge which we have of God, by the revelation of Jesus Christ in the gospel, is outstanding and glorious. It is better than any knowledge of God that might otherwise be attained, or that was delivered in the law under the Old Testament. That revelation was only the shadow of good things, not the express image of them. The apostle pursues this at length in 2 Corinthians 3. Christ has now revealed the Father from his own heart in these last days. He has declared his name, and made known his mind, will, and counsel in a far clearer, exalted, and distinct manner than he did under the law.

[3.] The difference in knowledge between believers and unbelievers is not so much in the matter of their knowledge as in the manner of their knowing. Some unbelievers may know more and be able to say more of God, his perfection and his will, than many believers. But they know nothing in the way they should, nothing in the right manner, nothing in a spiritual and saving way, nothing with a holy and heavenly light. The excellence of a believer is not that he has a broad understanding of things, but that what little he does understand, he sees in the saving, soul-transforming light of the Spirit of God. This is what gives us communion with God, not intellectual curiosity.

[4.] Jesus Christ, by his word and Spirit, reveals God as a Father, as a covenant God, and as a rewarder to the hearts of all his people. He does this sufficiently in every way to teach us to obey him here, to lead us into his presence, and to enjoy him there for eternity. And yet, [5.] Despite all this, we know only a little portion of him; we see only his back. That is because,

1st. The intent of all gospel revelation is not to unveil God’s essential glory so that we can see him as he is. It is merely to declare as much of him as he knows will suffice to make a foundation for our faith, love, and obedience, and for us to come to him. That is, it is to make a foundation for the faith that he expects from us in this life, and the kind of services appropriate for creatures in the midst of temptations. But when he calls us to eternal admiration and contemplation without interruption, he will make a new way to discover him. The whole shape of things that now appears before us will depart like a shadow.

2nd. We are ignorant and hesitant to receive the things that are revealed in the word. Because of our infirmity and weakness, God keeps us in continual dependence on him to teach us about and reveal himself out of his word. God never brings anyone to a complete understanding and discovery of what is in the word. Although revelation in the gospel is clear and evident, we really know very little of the things that are revealed.

Let us review the purpose of considering how little we know of God. An appropriate understanding of the inconceivable greatness of God, and the infinite distance we stand from him, should fill the soul with a holy and awe-filled fear of him. If it does, the soul will be put in a frame completely unsuited for any lust to thrive or flourish. If we keep the soul continually accustomed to reverential thoughts of God’s greatness and omnipresence, then it will be on its guard for any inappropriate behavior. Consider the One with whom you have to deal. “Our God is a consuming fire.”205 In your greatest shame in his presence and sight, know that your very nature is too limited to comprehend his essential glory.