Luke Scallon
Published in The Des Moines County News on December 22, 2016.

Have you ever stopped to consider what defines God?  Most people have a basic conceptualization of who God must be.  If He is God, then He is eternal; He has no beginning or end.  He is the all-powerful Creator of all things; He brought the universe into existence.  He knows everything.  There’s nothing He cannot do.  He is a moral Being.  He is above all, completely beyond us.  We would assume all these things to be a part of His nature, in order for Him to truly be God.  After all, who is God if He is limited in any sense: temporal, unknowing, powerless, immoral…

How do we respond to a God who is so far beyond us?  As humans, we are by nature limited in every sense:  temporal, unknowing, powerless, and immoral.  As such, we struggle to relate to God, fighting for power, cowering in fear, trying to behave, or even rejecting God.  He is far greater!  Even the great Apostle Paul wrote:  “Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33).

Can we know God?  Can we come to Him?  The amazing reality is that the unknowable God makes Himself known.  He has given us the Bible, which affirms all those truths that He is far beyond us… but He brings Himself into reach by telling us who He is, and by one amazing and incomprehensible event – He became man and walked the earth.  “And the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  The God beyond us became the God among us.

Can you imagine?!  The man Jesus embodied the God beyond us.  He is eternal.  He affirmed that when He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58).  He is our Creator.  He knows everything.  He is sinless.  And He demonstrated His power when He rose again from the dead.  Jesus is the amazing, unreachable God – and He came to us, and we can know Him.

Christmas is about this mystery.  “‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us'” (Matthew 1:23).  How things changed when He became the God among us!  We are not meant to overcome our limitations; we are meant to come to God and relate to Him in our limitations, and enjoy God for His infinite wisdom, power, and holiness.  We come to Him by faith in Jesus, our Savior, who forgives our sins and empowers us to learn to overcome sin and enjoy life lived for Him.

May this Christmas find you refreshed in looking to the God beyond and knowing He is with you!