God is transcendent.

TRANSCENDENT træn'(t)sɛn.dənt adjective. Beyond or above the range of human experience.

2. Existing separate from, and not limited by, the material universe.

3. Extraordinary, exceptional.

[Transcendence træn'(t)sɛn.dəns noun.]

Had to start with the definition because when people use the word, they usually go with the third definition. Transcendent is usually just a synonym for awesome—people wanna use an out-of-the-ordinary word for a superlative thing, and sure, “transcendent” works.

But when we use this word in Christian theology, we mean something a lot more specific. We’re affirming not just that God is very different from us, but that he’s significantly beyond us in every way. God is not merely the greatest thing, the greatest being, in the universe. He’s far greater than the universe he created. He’s beyond even that. He’s far, far greater than we can ever describe him.

No, this isn’t just hyperbole; it’s not humanly possible to accurately describe God’s greatness. He’s unlimited by power, by space, by time—so unlimited the only way it’d be possible for us to really get to know him, is he had to come down to our level. Which he did. Emptied himself of all his power (the thing about him we covet most) and became human; became Jesus. Pp 2.6-8 Who then tries to explain how God is to us as best he can, Jn 1.18 considering how astoundingly dense we humans can be.

Try describing the unlimited God with a limited human vocabulary. Try putting an accurate picture of the unlimited God into the limited space of a human brain. Jesus alone is the one who can do it, ’cause he came down from heaven. But even he hasn’t told us everything about God; even Jesus’s apostles haven’t told us everything about him. Jn 21.25 And Jesus preferred to describe God and his kingdom with metaphors and parables, not specific language; probably because specific language will get in the way.

So what we humans typically do instead of specifically describing who and what God is, is we compare him with things and people he’s greater than, and point out he’s obviously greater. We struggle to say what he is, but we can more easily say what he’s not. We talk about how Jesus and the prophets describe him in the scriptures; we have those teachings at least. It’s a start. But we can’t go much further.

Not that various Christians haven’t tried—and gone about it all wrong. Like when Thomas Aquinas tried to fill in some of the blanks with Aristotelian philosophy. That’s how we got the popular Christian myth God doesn’t change—because Aristotle believed change only makes you better or worse. A God who improves doesn’t sound divine enough for him; a God who gets worse definitely doesn’t. No room in Aristotle nor Thomas’s worldviews for a third option—a God who changes and remains at his best. A God who transcends our meager ideas of what’s “best”—who gives up divine prerogatives to become human, yet always remains God.

Our God is an awesome God.

There’s none who compares with God. Ps 113.5-6 His ways aren’t ours. Is 55:8-9 He can control the future absolutely, Is 46.9-11 and it’s impossible for us to second-guess him. Ro 11.33-36 We still foolishly try to, though.

This doesn’t mean we despair of ever understanding God. Making an effort to understand God is a very good thing. He told us what he wants us to know, Mc 6.8 and he’s happy to take prayer requests Mt 7.7-8 and answer questions—though we may not always like his answers.

The usual problem is once people know (or think they know) pretty much everything the scriptures say about God, they presume they do understand God. They presume they know exactly how he’d answer in any given situation. They don’t even have to ask him; they can imagine his responses quite clearly. If you gave ’em a sock puppet… well it might be a really ignoble way to depict God, but still, they could ask it questions and have it answer exactly as God would.

We sometimes find this attitude in theologians: We’ve been studying God—somtimes for decades—so we figure we know how he works. You’ll also find this attitude among older (but certianly not wiser) Christians who figure they’ve been to plenty of bible studies, have a bunch of scriptures memorized, and no longer need to be told anything about God, ’cause they know him, if anyone.

The folks who figure they know God, have lost sight of humility. It’s an attitude which is mandatory when we study God: We don’t know him. Not like Jesus does! The wisest Christians recognize Jesus knows God; we do not. We are wrong. We gotta point to Jesus; we gotta follow Jesus. We can only talk about God provisionally: “This is what I think God is like. This is what I see God doing. This is my interpretation of God. But I might be wrong.”

Though we can’t claim to comprehensively know God, there’s nothing wrong, in the meanwhile, with making absolute statements. It’s okay to believe and state definite things about God. (Like I did at the beginning of this section: “There’s none who compares with God, his ways aren’t ours, he can control the future,” yada yada yada.) I’m not encouraging anyone to have a wishy-washy theology. What I’m doing is reminding you to keep your “box of God,” your ideas and beliefs about who God is and what he’s like, open. Don’t start limiting an unlimited God. Because if you’re wrong about him—and you are; we all are—he’s gonna do something outside of your box, and you’re gonna ignore it, reject it, and maybe even reject him. Not a safe practice!

’Cause if we already think we know it all, there’s nothing more we’re willing to be taught. And the Holy Spirit has plenty of stuff to teach us.

God is greater than our descriptions. He transcends every idea we have about him. He does the impossible for fun. All our descriptions only scratch his surface. He’s bigger than we imagine, more powerful than we imagine, knows more than we imagine, is wiser than we imagine, and loves far, far more than we imagine. God’s far more gracious than we ever suspected.

Put those thoughts in your box.