I Samuel 3:21
Isn’t it awe-inspiring how much more God becomes, as we study and reason
with Him according to His word? Because what we long for is something
more. We want to be near God and to encounter Him more. We want to hear
Him teach and discuss with us the things of truth. The more our exposure to
God and His word, the more our pace of obedience. A familiar and accurate
grasp of God’s word is only as good as our behavior and determined belief
in it. If our closeness to God is not where we want it, if our slowness to obey
is outpaced by the word, we are to reason that there truly must be more.
There is more of God to know, more of God to love, and more ways we can
deepen our trust and intimacy with Him through faithfully studying, reasoning
with, and keeping His word. This is bringing us to the more of God…
Jeremiah 31:34
When we are learning about God there are so many different directions in
which we can go because of the vastness of who He is. While we can focus
on many different aspects of God’s character and nature, and His names are
all relevant in their own way. Yet, there is one name where the moreness of
God means exceeding greater than.
Isaiah 9:6
We know him in his exaltation. This child, this son, this Son of God, this Son
of man, that is given to us, is invested with the capacity to do the infinitude
beyond deterministic limits. So advanced in dignity, with the name above
every name. His people shall know him and worship him by these names;
and, as one that fully answers them, they shall submit to him and depend
upon him. He is both God and man. His love is the wonder of angels and
glorified saints; in his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, he is
wonderful. A constant series of wonders attend him, and, without
controversy, great is the mystery of godliness concerning him. He is
intimately acquainted with the counsels of God from eternity, and he gives
counsel to the children of men, in which he consults our welfare. It is by him
that God has given us counsel. As a King, he preserves the peace,
commands peace, he creates peace, in his kingdom. He is our peace, and it
is his peace that both keeps the hearts of his people and rules in them. He
is not only a peaceable prince, and his reign peaceable, but he is the author
and giver of all good, all that peace which is the present and future delight of
his subjects. Our default is to call Him God, to call Him Lord. We ask that we
not slight the appreciation and distinguishing as to a thing terrestrial.
I Corinthians 8:5
What He is, is more than we are sure He is, or can be. For He is the Father
and He is the Son and He is the Spirit. He is not the “We Are”, He is the “I
Am”. His love is the wonder of angels. Everything of the triune is by Him. He
is the wisdom of, and the wisdom to, and the wisdom for, all things. He effects
and performs the highest attainable continuation of all things. His doings are
the upmost creativeness of the utmost of all possibilities. He is all that peace
that will preserve the holiness of eternity until there is more than God. What
is referred to in the book of Isaiah eclipses what is revealed to us. We see in
the word, “Jehovah” and “Jah”. We recall the name “Elohim”. These names
could not be more seizing and prehensive. One who is always and forever.
Isaiah introduces us to this name of God who is the mighty God. This is El
Shaddai. So important, because there is an all-inclusive aspect attached to
that name. The word almighty is having absolute power over all. The word El
Shaddai is not the word used for God in the scriptures. It is God’s self
introduction to Abram.
Genesis 17:1
And as we reasoned with Isaiah’s words, we see the all-encompassing of the
far-reaching power of God. We see this God in the interpretation of Isaiah,
who is moved by the Holy Ghost. We see this God to be all the more God, as
He is the God, the name by which Israel knew their God. Until Elohim,
Jehovah, Jah, and El Shaddai took on flesh.
Genesis 1:1
Exodus 6:3
Psalms 68:4
Isaiah 7:14; 9:6
Matthew 1:21, 23
Acts 4:10-12
Therefore, when the Spirit rises within us, we find ourselves crying more
than, “God!” or “Lord!” For the God whom we worship is no vague deity, but
the one who revealed Himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We
too, cry Abba, Father. God is always immeasurably more than our thoughts
can reach...our minds can think. The holiness of God is of such an absolute
distance from all that He has brought forth, that it shows up in His closeness
to all that He has created. The theme of His holiness expounds in
unexpected ways with the gift of the advent of Jesus His Son, coming so near
to us as to be made as we are, and the gift of the pentecostal experience of
the Holy Spirit, coming so near as to fill us with the power of witness. Divine
holiness closely attaches in mysterious ways to both divine justice, and divine
mercy, and is the clearest explanation of how God is always more. Hear the
exclamation…
Isaiah 6:3
It is this great distance that shows the love of God that brings Him ever close
to us. The holiness of God refers to the absolute moral purity of God and
also the absolute moral distance between God and His human creatures.
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty is the description of God repeated
in the three-fold formula to bring great emphasis. God is not just a little bit
holy. God is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY holy. This is God’s reminder to us of
His presence. That God’s holiness is a matter of enormous spiritual
significance. It also serves as a warning that we humans are not holy.
Holiness is a central marker of the fundamental divide between God and the
sinful human creature, but most especially, in our condition of being
redeemed, we are entirely dependent upon God for any holiness that might
reside in us. God is always more than even holiness. He is the very source
and standard of holiness that will reach into the traverses of a never-ending
eternity. Israel had a fear of getting too close to God lest they be
overwhelmed by His holiness. God’s presence was a great comfort to Israel,
while at the same time being a great threat to their own unholy lives. One did
not lightly or superficially come before God. We would need a mediator. God
is so always more, that He manifested His Spirit by coming into the world as
a sacrifice, and an offering, in a body prepared Him that He might be as close
to us as He is to His Son. This is the most awe-inspiring experience ever for
God’s creation…when God “showed up”! He is the real holy of holies. And
the intensity of His presence was entailed by only that proper representative
that could be as He is…that Jesus Christ! For this, we are to all the more
worship God in Spirit, for that is what He is, and in Truth, for that is what our
Jesus is! God is always more, as divine holiness is most clearly attached to
the Spirit of the God who is the Only Potentate. The holiness of God is now
lodged in the person of the triune by which God’s holiness took up residence
in human hearts. The Holy Spirit brought holiness where there was none,
and he is the means by which believers participate in the holiness of God,
personally.
God is always more, even in His creation. God’s driving passion from the
beginning of Genesis, to the end of Revelation, is to make the universe a holy
dwelling place for us with Himself. The consummation of that motive is the
new heavens and new earth. And this consummation completes that which
was lost in the garden, and which was redeemed most fully in Jesus. This
consummation, namely, is the people of God’s own possession that would be
“at home” in His presence and His holiness. We must have an appropriate
response to this. There should be no allowance for us to continue sin. That
mystery of godliness when fully reasoned with, and understood, will present
the reality of how there is no change in God to fully satisfy divine justice, with
the full display of divine mercy. God’s holiness marks out the remarkable
appearance of God into human history in the way that is mysterious and
stupendous. It is the underpinning to the entire narrative arc of scripture.
Christ gives life to our greatest hope – to see God. Yet, without change, our
greatest fear would be to see God. The holiness of God runs through the
entirety of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is why so few of Jesus’
professing followers understand him on the pages of the gospel truth. When
God shows up in history, His presence is an inscrutable change. The first
reaction is unbelief. But with the desire to worship God in spirit and in truth,
and the beauty of holiness with gratitude, afterwards, may a modicum of
understanding emerge.
God is always more than measure. All He wills is providential. And that we
might have no fear to approach unto Him, God gives us the faith in Jesus,
whereby we can behold the holy God in the face of Jesus Christ. The highest
holiness we will ever be, is to be like Christ. We were created after His
likeness. Knowledge is the path of our renewal to His image. We must
practice Jesus in the life. God is always more to us when we model the love
of Christ, the humility of Christ, the steadfastness of Christ, and the
obedience of Christ to the Father.
Christ is always more, but never less, than our beautiful model of holiness
on display for us to watch. We focus on Christ. The Holy Spirit flowing us into
union with him. God in Christ in us is always more…we need simply
remember His name. It is in Christ that God is always more to us. It’s because
we humans need a constant reminder of who we serve, how we need to
prioritize God in our lives, and how He is insurmountably higher than all other
beings in the universe that clamor for our attention. High and lofty, exalted
above all others. God is always more, as the beauty of His wisdom presents
us with both the most sublime of possible thoughts that our reasoning reveals
more knowledge of Him, and the most difficult of theological understandings
bring us closer to the foundation of creation. When we speak of God in unity,
we see the three Persons. When we see the unity intended in the first pair,
we see three persons. God is always more, as the harmonies of relationship
and truth bring meaning to life in significant ways. We affirm the truth of God
though we struggle to articulate it in a way that is meaningful to us. Can God
be more? He is absolute completeness. Then how is God always more? As
we come to understand truth, God becomes more of all things right to us.
More holy, more loving, more merciful, even more godly. He lacks nothing
but what He possesses in His character, is everything. Try to conceive of this.
God is absolute perfection: the perfection of power, the perfection of love,
the perfection of justice, and the perfection of faithfulness. Perfection is
simply the attribute of everything that He is. And all He is corresponds to,
more than we could ever come to know. God is always the more because He
has no limits, no bounds. He possesses all of His perfections to their fullest
potential degree and yet in His endlessness, God allows us to reasonably
understand that His infiniteness is personal. All expressions of God are
eternally situated in His self-giving love, with eternal results to be always in
the three Persons and in those with whom He will dwell. This love expression
of God becomes more in the drama of the incarnation and life of Jesus.
We have given to us an unveiling of the inherent self-giving glory of the Son. This
is even the more of God that we come to see. The cross was so profane that
we learn of it from Moses structuring a serpent upon a pole and in connection
with the purpose of the counsel asking “who will go for us”. The cross would
seem completely out of place in a discussion of beauty. How could there be
any beauty in it? The essence of the beauty of it, is self-giving love. This is
how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. This is God
being always more, than we can come to know. The cross gives finite human
beings a taste of what it is like to be a member of the triune family. In the
moment of his sacrificial death, Jesus gave to us what he had given to the
Father for all eternity: everything! The total surrender of self. The cross is
love’s highest expression and beauty’s ultimate source. If we could but reflect
our life in the cross, we could once more intertwine humanity’s capability to
reflect the image of God. Our faith in Him would be of a different and more
wonderful kind. Rather than seeing God in Christ, we would be preparing to
see God in His Person. It is in Christ that God is always more…Jesus is the
exact representation of what God is like. Jesus doesn’t show us what God is
like by being similar to Him; he shows us what God is like by being the same
as Him. Similar to the way a sunray carries the essence of the sun, Christ is
of the same essence as God. He is an extension of God’s glory. He is the
radiating glory through a human nature like ours. What a beautiful change.
God became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. This is
the more truth that God reasons with us. When we see and know and
understand Him as scripture reveals Him, we are actually seeing and
knowing the essence of God’s character. We reason this to be a wonder that
grips our soul. A wonder that leads to the truth of worship. This is 'veiled' from
the carnal understanding of sinners. God is always more because He brings
us full circle to our created purpose…to be like the One who is God.
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