None Greater By Matthew BarrettSample

Day Five: Is God The Perfect Being? Why an Infinite God Has No Limitations

Scripture: Deuteronomy 32:4, Psalm 18:30, Romans 11:33-36

Many of us are familiar with C.S. Lewis and his beloved The Chronicles of Narnia. There is a reason the Pevensie children could see the world C. S. Lewis called Narnia, while the adults in the world around them could not. It is not because they were gullible; it is because they believed there was wonder in the universe. As much as children ask why, when it comes to the wonder of the world around them, they do not ask why because they are skeptics, but rather they ask because they believe and thirst to know the world’s secrets. The miraculous is everywhere, and children embrace it. There is something about getting older that turns us off to wonder, making our visits to Narnia less and less common.

If this is true with the world we see, how much more so— unfortunately—is it true with the God we cannot see? Perhaps this is why, if only in part, Jesus said that the faith that brings one into His Father’s kingdom must be a childlike faith. It is a faith filled with wonder and awe as it fathoms the One who is infinite in beauty and steadfast in mercy. God is the perfect being. And since there is none greater, He is a being without limitations, a being who is His perfections in infinite measure; He is a boundless ocean of being, as our friends journeying with us this week like to say. This premise is the backdrop to which many attributes of God are placed.

What does perfection entail? What must be true of God if He is to be that "greater than" which nothing greater can be thought? There must be great or perfect-making properties if God is the perfect being. Part of God’s perfection is His limitlessness. To assume God can be measured, as if He were merely a bigger version of us, is what I call a superhero syndrome. Christians like to think of God as their superhero, like us but with superpowers.

But that is a terribly unbiblical portrayal of God’s infinite nature. He is not a God who simply possesses our powers but in endless measure. No, an infinite God transcends our characteristics altogether. The creation may be great in size, but God is unlimited in His very being. His greatness is one of essence. He is His attributes absolutely. That is what it means to be perfect.

Does God’s immeasurability lead you to ponder His greatness? What in nature propels you to contemplate God as infinite?