How can I understand God’s infiniteness?
This is a question regarding gods infinitness and lack of limitations.
Isn’t the fact that god hates sin a limitation on god as it means that he
cannot love sin. If i say god is a joke shouldn’t god have every possible
reaction on every possible level to that statement all at once, for ever,
never, again and again etc. Surely, to say that at that moment his only
reaction was to be offended and disgusted would be to suggest that god can
have such petty and humanistic reactions and thus to imply that god is not
infitly powerful and without limitations…....
God is infinite in aspects such as wisdom, power, eternity, faithfulness, and in his presence everywhere within the universe. He is ‘limited’ only by his own character. For example, God cannot lie (1 Samuel 15:29) or break a promise (2 Corinthians 1:18-20). God is not limited by anything outside of himself. This is the most helpful way to think of God’s infiniteness.
God is not an impersonal collection of all possible reactions. Rather God is a Person with the right reactions. He is perfectly faithful, reliable or dependable. It is not a limitation for God to have the correct response. Compare this with you and I, limited by our finitude due to being created and due to being deeply flawed by our bias away from God (our sin). We make promises that we can’t keep because we are just unable to, or that we won’t keep because it costs us too much.
But God is faithful to his promises. The evil that has infected our world does not limit his ability to carry out his purposes. God gave us life, he provides for us, and he desires our good. But we reject God, the source of life, instead choosing to construct our own myths about who we are, where we come from and what our purpose is (Romans 1). This is what sin is – rebellion against God, the God who is perfectly loving and wants us to thank, trust and obey him. But God will not let sin and evil have the last word. God’s purposes for the world will prevail.
God’s plans centre on Jesus. In Jesus we see the Son of God choosing to become in some sense finite. He humbled himself to live as a man in a specific time and place, just as finite as any human life. Yet, unlike every other human, Jesus did not yield to temptation. Jesus committed no sin (1 Peter 2:22-24), and so God had no reason to be angry with him. But Jesus died on a cross because of our sin, so that we might be able to be forgiven and avoid God’s anger (see Philippians 2:5-11). The infinitely powerful God chose to offer us salvation through through Christ crucified, a seemingly paradoxical means, but ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength’ (1 Corinthians 1:25).
Answers are kindly provided by our friends at Christianity.net.au
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