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“Canst thou by searching find out God?”

Job 11:7

He who alone is God, the great, solitary God can only be known by revelation. I offer no arguments to prove the existence of God because he gives no arguments to prove it. God’s Being is such a self-evident truth of creation and providence that all men and women are without excuse before him (Romans 1:20). But no man will ever come to know the living God by the light of nature (Job 11:7-8; 26:14). A savage might find a watch in the sand and conclude that there was a watchmaker. But he would never be able to know the watchmaker by the watch. Even so, a man may and does know that God is by the light of nature. But he can never come to know God by the light of nature.

God’s Self-revelation

God cannot be known by man, except as God is pleased to reveal himself to man (John 3:3; 1 Corinthians 2:14). God has revealed himself to men in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:18; Hebrews 1:1-3). God has revealed himself to men in the Inspired Volume of Holy Scripture (2 Timothy 3:15-17). God reveals himself to men through the preaching of the gospel (Romans 1:16-17). Yet, no sinner will ever see and know the living God until God reveals himself in the sinner’s heart by the irresistible grace and power of the Holy Ghost (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Everything depends upon God! God depends on nothing! And even when we have been made to see and know the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, our spiritual knowledge, at best, is a fragmentary knowledge. We need ever to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, “that (we) might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

God’s Forgiveness

Here is the crowning glory of our God’s solitariness as God. — He alone is God who forgives sin freely, without any reparations being made by the one forgiven. We are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24; Micah 7:18-20). Oh, how we ought to thank God for so arranging the affairs of the universe that he might make himself known to sinners in redemption by Christ (Romans 6:17-18; 2 Corinthians 4:6).

Sinful man is brought into a nearer union with God in the Person of Christ our Substitute than we could ever have enjoyed had we not known sin. Had we never sinned, Christ would not be our Surety and Substitute. But now God has assumed our nature in the Person of his Son. We are members of his body (Ephesians 5:30). Christ is our Brother and our Husband. And we are the Sons of God (1 John 3:1). Our temporary separation from God, by sin, has been made the means of our eternal union with God in Christ by redemption (John 17:20-23). The saved sinner, by reason of his sin, has greater and fuller knowledge of God, his glory, his grace, his justice, his holiness, and his love than he could ever have possessed had he never sinned. We see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ our dying Substitute (2 Corinthians 4:6). And in his death, we have the love of God commended to us (Romans 5:8). This will be the theme of our heavenly praise forever and ever (Revelation 1:5-6).

Don Fortner

Pastor Fortner’s