by A. W. Pink

The title of this article is perhaps not sufficiently explicit to indicate its theme. This is partly because so few today are accustomed to meditating upon the personal perfections of God. Comparatively few of those who occasionally read the Bible are aware of the awe-inspiring and worship-provoking grandeur of the Divine character. That God is great in wisdom, wondrous in power, yet full of mercy, is assumed by many to be almost common knowledge; but, to entertain anything approaching an adequate conception of His being, His nature, His attributes, as these are revealed in Holy Scripture, is something which very, very few people in these degenerate times have attained unto. God is solitary in His excellency. “Who is like you, O Jehovah, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” – Exodus 15:11.

“In the beginning, God” (Gen. 1:1). There was a time, if “time” is could be called, when God, in the unity of His nature (though subsisting equally in three Divine Persons), dwelt all alone. “In the beginning, God.” There was no heaven where His glory is now particularly manifested. There was no earth to engage His attention. There were no angels to hymn His praises; no universe to be upheld by the word of His power. There was nothing, no one, but God, and that, not for a day, a year, or an age, but “from everlasting.” During a past eternity, God was alone: self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied, in need of nothing. Had a universe, had angels, had human beings been necessary to Him in any way, they also had been called into existence from all eternity. The creating of them when He did, added nothing to God essentially. He does not change (Mal. 3:6); therefore, His essential glory can be neither augmented nor diminished.

God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That He chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on His part, caused by nothing outside Himself, determined by nothing but His own mere good pleasure; for He “who works all things after the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). That He did create was simply for His manifestative glory. Do some of our readers imagine that we have gone beyond what Scripture warrants? Then our appeal shall be to the Law and the Testimony: “Stand up and bless Jehovah your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise” (Neh. 9:5). God is no gainer, even from our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of His grace which arises from His redeemed, for He is glorious enough in Himself without that. What was it that moved Him to foreordain (foreknow) His elect to the praise of the glory of His grace? It was, as Eph. 1:5 tells us, according to the good pleasure of His will.

We are well aware that the high ground we are here treading is new and strange to almost all of our readers; for that reason, it is well to move slowly. Let our appeal again be to the Scriptures. At the end of Rom. 11:1-36, where the apostle brings to a close his long argument on salvation by pure and sovereign grace, he asks, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that it might be paid back to him?” (Rom. 11:34-35). The force of this is, it is impossible to bring the Almighty under obligations to the creature; God gains nothing from us. If you be righteous, what give you Him? Or what receives He of your hand? Your wickedness may hurt a man as you are; and your righteousness may profit the son of man (Job 35:7-8), but it certainly cannot affect God, who is all-blessed in Himself. When you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants (Luke 17:10) — our obedience has profited God nothing.

Nay, we go further: our Lord Jesus Christ added nothing to God in His essential being and glory, either by what He did or suffered. True, blessedly, and gloriously true, He manifested the glory of God to us, but He added nothing to God. He Himself expressly declares so, and there is no appeal from His words: “I have no good apart from you (Psa. 16:2). The whole of that Psalm is a Psalm of Christ. Christ’s goodness or righteousness reached unto His holy ones in the earth (Psa. 16:3), but God was high above and beyond it all. God only is the “Blessed One” (Mar. 14:61).

It is perfectly true that God is both honored and dishonored by men; not in His essential being, but in His official character. It is equally true that God has been “glorified” by creation, by providence, and by redemption. This we do not and dare not dispute for a moment. But all of this has to do with His manifestative glory and the recognition of it by us. Yet had God so pleased He might have continued alone for all eternity, without making known His glory unto creatures. Whether He should do so or not was determined solely by His own will. He was perfectly blessed in Himself before the first creature was called into being. And what are all the creatures of His hands unto Him even now? Let Scripture again make answer: “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, He taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted to Him less than nothing and vanity. To whom then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare unto Him?” (Isa. 40:15-18). That is the God of Scripture; alas, He is still “the unknown God” (Act. 17:23) to the heedless multitudes. “It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: that bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity” (Isa. 40:22-23). How vastly different is the God of Scripture from the god of the average pulpit!

Nor is the testimony of the New Testament any different from that of the Old: how could it be, seeing that both have one and the same Author! There too we read, “Which he will make known in his own appointed time, the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of those who reign as kings and Lord of those who rule as lords, the one who alone possesses immortality, who lives in unapproachable light, whom no human being has seen nor is able to see, to whom be honor and eternal power. Amen” (1Ti. 6:15-16). Such an One is to be revered, worshipped, adored. He is solitary in His majesty, unique in His excellency, peerless in His perfections. He sustains all but is Himself independent of all. He gives to all but is enriched by none.

Such a God cannot be found out by searching; He can be known only as He is revealed to the heart by the Holy Spirit through the Word. Creation indeed demonstrates a Creator, and that, so plainly, men are “without excuse;” yet, we still have to say with Job, “Look, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” (Job 26:14). The so-called argument from design by well-meaning “Apologists” have, we believe, done much more harm than good, for it has attempted to bring down the great God to the level of finite comprehension and thereby has lost sight of His solitary excellence.

Analogy has been drawn between a savage finding a watch upon the sands, and from a close examination of it he infers a watch-maker. So far, so good. But attempt to go further: suppose that savage sits down on the sand and endeavors to form to himself a conception of this watch-maker, his personal affections and manners; his disposition, acquirements, and moral character — all that goes to make up a personality; could he ever think or reason out a real man — the man who made the watch, so that he could say, “I am acquainted with him?” It seems trifling to ask such questions, but is the eternal and infinite God so much more within the grasp of human reason? No, indeed! The God of Scripture can only be known by those to whom He makes Himself known.

Nor is God known by the intellect. “God is Spirit” (Joh. 4:24), and therefore can only be known spiritually. But fallen man is not spiritual. He is carnal. He is dead to all that is spiritual. Unless he is born again supernaturally brought from death unto life, miraculously translated out of darkness into light, he cannot even see the things of God (Joh. 3:3), still less apprehend them (1Co. 2:14). The Holy Spirit has to shine in our hearts (not intellects) in order to give us “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Co. 4:6). And even that spiritual knowledge is but fragmentary. The regenerated soul has to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus (2Pe. 3:18).

Christians’ principal prayer and aim should be that we “So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the accurate knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).