The Immensity of God

Lately, I've just been really feeling the fact that we have no clue as to the immensity of God. I think in the modern church, we've gotten comfortable with the idea that we understand God - I mean, He took human form in Jesus, so, everything that Jesus is/was, is all that God is, because it's what we could see. But I think that God only made part of Himself understandable, relatable, and that's the part that became Jesus.

But God is so much bigger, even bigger than Jesus.

And I think that's where the church gets stuck.

Because we tend to see Jesus as the end product of our search: if you have Jesus, you have everything you need.

But if we look closely, Jesus himself told us otherwise.

He is our conduit to the Father God: "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" (John 14:6)

God is greater than Jesus: "...If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I." (John 14:28b)

The whole point of Jesus coming was to reunite us with God. The Israelites had a terrible history of coming to God, worshiping Him wholeheartedly, and then turning away to idols. God LOVED them so much - loved all of humankind so much - that He decided the only way He could be close to us, the way He really desired, was if He sacrificed Himself. And so He placed a part of Himself into the person of Jesus and did just that - God sacrificed Himself to be with us.

Jesus said He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17). He became the fulfillment of all the laws of cleanliness, sacrifice, and offerings that we could never live up to - all the laws that God established because He is holy and we fell from His presence - so that we could easily be reconnected with God Himself. That was why Jesus came - to tear down the walls that we humans had put up between ourselves and God - because GOD wanted to be with us.

Is Jesus important, then?

Absolutely.

Without Him, we would not be able to connect with God.

But let us not miss the point of His coming. We have turned Jesus into the only God - almost all of our focus ends up on Him.

But He came to be our connecting point to God, who Jesus Himself claims is so much greater than He is.

I think that, by boxing God into the person of Jesus - essentially limiting God's immensity to what we know of the person of Jesus - we are limiting our relationship with God, and we are missing out on a whole lot of awesomeness.

Even in the Old Testament, David and others cried out to know God, longing for Him, for His presence ("As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God." Psalm 42:1). At that time, they didn't have the law automatically fulfilled for them. There was a process to go through to be able to connect with God, and the average person couldn't do it directly, but had to go through a priest.

Jesus came so that we no longer have to jump through hoops to get to God. He came because God is, and was, and always has been, our ultimate goal.