None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

by Matthew Barrett

“One thing I have asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4; cf. 23:6).

Augustine said, “It is not by location but by incongruity that a person is far from God.”

Augustine’s

“To draw near to him is to become like him; to move away from him is to become unlike him.”46

Augustine was called, says in his Expositions on the Psalms: “No matter where you flee, he is there. You would flee from yourself, would you? Will you not follow yourself wherever you flee? But since there is One even more deeply inward than yourself, there is no place where you may flee from an angered God except to a God who is pacified. There i...

The LORD is the everlasting God. . . . He does not faint or grow weary. . . . He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. ISAIAH 40:28–29

“O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed

from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will” (4:31–32).

Nebuchadnezzar lost perspective and forgot who is Lord.

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. (Isa. 40:15) All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. (40:17)

for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” (Dan. 4:34–35)

First, the Creator’s knowledge is a priori in the act of creation, which means one can never say God was somehow ignorant until he created.

Second, God’s omnipotent knowledge not only brings about creation but also sustains creation.

God is omnipotent, so everything exists by his causal power. God is simple: his power is his knowledge; his knowledge is his power. Therefore, all that exists only exists because God knows it to exist.

Anselm

God’s “power is indeed not accidental,” since he cannot “exist without power.” God’s power must be “substantial,” for “it is either part of his essence or the very thing that is his whole essence.” Yet it cannot be “part of his essence,” Anselm qualifies, since God’s essence is not “divided into parts.” Power must be “the very thing that is his whole essence.” And if it is his whole essence, then it is “always and everywhere, so whatever is God is everywhere and always.”23

There is no sphere, no matter how big or small, that is off-limits to God.

“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”

In every single aspect of your life God is at work to accomplish his eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, and gracious will.

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. (Deut. 32:39)

The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. (1 Sam. 2:6–7)

“The LORD gave, the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (1:21).

I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things. (Isa. 45:7)

“In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (1:22).

First, God is equally in control of evil and of good, but we should not assume that he relates to both in the same way.

Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him. . . . But he does not so intend,

and his heart does not so think; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few. (Isa. 10:5–7)

“By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding” (10:13).

Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? (10:15)

Second, although we are not always told the reasons why God ordains evil

(Job never was), we are told in Scripture that God has done so for our good and his glory (Rom. 8:28).

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread, Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.

There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. . . . For the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. . . . The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. . . . For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and on them he has set the world. (1 Sam. 2:2, 3b, 4, 6–7, 8c)

The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. . . . The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. . . . He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. PSALM 103:6, 8, 10

Truly, then, you are merciful because You are just. ANSELM, Proslogion

First, it means God is set apart.

Second, the divine name also communicates God’s covenant presence.

We might call him the summum bonum, the supreme, highest, greatest good that can be imagined.5

“The peculiar love of the Father for the Son, and the Son for the Father” (John 3:35; 5:20; 14:31) “God’s providential love over all that he has made” (Matt. 6)

“God’s salvific stance toward his fallen world” (John 3:16; 15:19; 1 John 2:2) “God’s particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect” (Deut. 4:27; 7:7–8; 10:14–15; Mal. 1:2–3; Eph. 5:25) “God’s love . . . directed toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way—conditioned, that is, on obedience” (Exod. 20:6; Ps. 103:8; John 15:9–10; Jude 21)13

Psalm 12:6 we read, “The words of the LORD are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.”

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. . . . Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities. . . . All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days. (Isa. 53:3a, 4–5a, 6, 10)

First things first: we need to remember that the Creator is not the creature.

Jealousy, on the other hand, is an “ardent desire to maintain exclusive devotion within a relationship in the face of a challenge to that exclusive devotion.”