In Romans 11:33-36, the apostle Paul concludes the long doctrinal
part of his letter to the Christians in Rome
‘Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and of the
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are
His judgments and inscrutable His ways! For
who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become His adviser? Or who has first given to Him that he might
be repaid? For from Him and through Him
and for Him are all things. To Him be
the glory forever. Amen.’
Part of what Paul praises God for here is the fact that His ways
are so much more profound than we humans can comprehend. We simply cannot begin to understand Him
properly.
Here are some examples of where I find myself just saying that I
don’t know why God has done what He has done or does what He does:
The twelve apostles
Take the 12 apostles. Jesus
chose an inner circle of 12 disciples. Then,
after the defection of Judas Iscariot, we are told that the first Christians
took great care to find a suitable replacement for him (Acts 1:21 -26), and nothing in the text suggests that they were
wrong to replace him.
So, here we are back with 12, God’s 12. We might then expect these men to have been
more prominent and more greatly used in the early church than any other
Christians. But this is not what we find. Instead, God chose Paul, who was not one of
the 12, and arguably used him more greatly than any of them, and certainly more
greatly than most of them.
If the 12 were so important, why didn’t God use them more than
Paul? If Paul was used because of some
talent that he had, why didn’t God choose someone with Paul’s talent to be one
of the 12 in the first place? We can
guess at the answers to these questions, but I don’t think we can reach
confident conclusions.
Similarly, reading between the lines in Acts 12, 15 and 21, and
Galatians 1-2, it seems that at a time when most of the 12 were still alive,
the most important figure in the Jerusalem
Receiving the Holy
Spirit
As another example, take receiving the Holy Spirit. At times in Scripture the mysterious act that
is the laying on of hands is used for new Christians to receive the Spirit
(Acts 8:15 -17; 19:6). But at other times God imparts the Spirit
without any laying on of hands (Acts 2:1-13, 10:44 -46). If He is content to do it without hands
sometimes, then why does He ever want hands to be used? I don’t think we can properly understand it.
And then there is the strange situation in Acts 8:5-17 when there
is a delay in new Christians receiving the Spirit until the apostles Peter and
John go from Jerusalem Samaria Samaria
Commentators are not slow to say why they believe the Christians
in Samaria
Tongues
Consider also the phenomenon that is speaking in tongues. At least as regards the type of tongues-speaking
that Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 14, this involves speaking words that make
no sense to the mind in order to build up the Christian. Why has God established this form of
spiritual edification? I don’t think we
can figure it out.
Similarly, what about the gift of interpreting tongues (1 Corinthians
12:10 ; 14:5, 13, 27-28)? Someone speaks in a tongue, and that person
or someone else then interprets this into intelligible language. This tongue plus interpretation is in effect
the equivalent of a prophecy. But why
doesn’t God just speak through prophecies instead of using this more
complicated method? I think a solution
is beyond us.
Believing without
seeing
Another thing that I have spent some time wondering is why the
Lord wants us to believe in Him without seeing Him. Why doesn’t Jesus manifest Himself to us
visibly? After all, when we are
perfected in heaven we will see Him face to face, so why not now? We can guess at the answer to this, but I
don’t think we are in a position to do more than guess.
Resisting
overconfident explanations
We need to resist the temptation to come up with an explanation
for everything we read about in the Bible at almost any price. I am sure that modern Western Christians are
often overconfident in the explanations they give for why God acts in the ways
He does. Things that I suspect are
actually beyond our ability to know are frequently explained away in
unconvincing and simplistic ways.
Instead, I think we can learn from the attitude of ancient Jews. They were much more comfortable than modern
Westerners are in leaving things unexplained, and in allowing tensions and
paradoxes. They were often happy to
admit that God’s ways are beyond comprehension.
By all means, let us try to find answers to questions when it
looks like that might be possible. But I
think it is usually unwise to expend a lot of effort trying to understand
mysterious things. And if we don’t know
answers, we should admit that, instead of coming up with unconvincing
explanations for the reasons behind God’s actions. Even in situations when we think that we can
perhaps understand why God has done something, I believe there should often be
a lot more hesitancy and caution on the part of many Christians who seem so
quick to make bold pronouncements about what has been going on in God’s mind.
We are finite and God is infinite, and there is much that He does
that we are not going to be able to understand.
We must not pretend that we are wiser than we really are, and end up
trying to fit God into a box. He is far
too big for that.
See also:
