Monday, May 25, 2015

How Big is God? - Greg Albrecht

How Big is God?

YOU AND I NEED A BIG GOD. A REALLY, REALLY BIG GOD ... WHOSE RELENTLESS LOVE IS BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US--FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER LIVED OR EVER WILL LIVE!
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
   The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
   The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
   (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, "This is the one I spoke about when I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'") Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. —John 1:1-18
Many Christians seem to believe that Jesus came to this earth as a kind of Plan B. They've been taught that Jesus came to this earth to save us because Adam "fell"—and further, they've been told that when Adam "fell" God had to, in effect, scurry around and come up with Plan B. 

This reasoning is of course, unbiblical—and beyond that, it doesn't make sense. Why would Christmas, the incarnation of God, be Plan B? Why wouldn't Christmas have been on the drawing boards from the very get-go? Why wouldn't Jesus have been planning to come anyway?

Years ago I read a little book by J.B. Phillips titled Your God is Too Small. J.B. Phillips wanted the reader to understand that we, the created, limit our Creator—we shrink him down to our size, into our dimensions. Our keynote passage in John 1:1-18 teaches us that our God is far bigger than we could ever imagine. 

The longer we know God, by his grace, and the longer we walk with him as his transformed and spiritually reborn children, the more we wrestle with trying to get our brains around the infinite. Of course, given our human limitations, we will never, in this flesh, fully get our brains and our hearts around the limitless, infinite God.