God Made Small

In the past, I have made reference to J.B. Phillips’ book, Your God is Too Small. Phillips’ argument is that many people don’t think God is big enough to handle their problems. That is still true of many people today. I don’t mean to contradict Phillips, but I am going to suggest that there is a sense in which God had to become small for us poor mortals to begin to understand Him. In reality, the God who created the universe and revealed Himself through the Bible is so big we can only get the slightest glimpse of who He really is and what He is doing.

For the finite human mind to even begin to accommodate the concept of an infinite God, an adjustment must be made somewhere. God chose to adjust His revelation to us by condescending to our human limitations. This is one of the reasons we cannot take everything in the written Word literally. I have written elsewhere (see Related Posts) that historical context and the genre of a particular passage of Scripture must be taken into consideration when determining whether a word or concept is meant literally. We also need to consider the broader context of all Scripture if we are to begin to understand who God is.

A glaring example of this can be seen in God’s use of the ancient Jewish concept of the universe in spite of the fact that He knew it to be a poor representation of reality. The ancients pictured the earth as a table with legs or foundations firmly set in some unknown solid base. They imagined that the sun, moon, and stars popped up on one side of the table and proceeded to sail overhead through the “heavens.” The heavens were triple layered: first the sky where birds and clouds flew; then there was a second heaven where the sun, moon and stars hung; finally, the third heaven which was God’s domain. The denial of this “biblical” cosmology caused the church of the Middle Ages to martyr proponents of the correct understanding. Much harm has been done throughout church history by those who insist on taking all Scripture literally.

By using the limited understanding of the ancients, God became small enough to teach a critical aspect of His relationship to humans: He was the Creator of them and everything they could see. His supreme role in creation gives Him the absolute right to do whatever He wills and ask whatever He wants of His people. We err if we try to make too much of the details of creation. The record of God’s creative work is a theological text, not a scientific one. Our increased understanding of cosmology may have uncovered misunderstandings in the ancient science, but the affirmation of God as creator and all that implies is not diminished by our newfound knowledge.

Another way we enlarge the smallness of God as He is revealed the Old Testament text is to use the New Testament to bring clarity to the Old. The tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews is a good example. The writer of Hebrews explains the purpose of the sacrificial system God required of Israel. The apparently excessive sacrifice of animals throughout Israel’s history is defended as necessary to teach God’s people the costly nature of sin and man’s need to atone. The Hebrew writer also explains that the concept of a sacrifice without flaw was meant to prepare them for the ultimate sacrifice of the flawless Son of God Himself.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that the experiences of the Israelites were intended by God to be examples for His New Testament church. The very human foibles of the children of Israel were recorded, says Paul, to warn the church not to fall into the same traps. By testing them with hunger and thirst and military challenges, God used everyday realities to teach His overriding principles. He brought Himself down to their level of understanding so that He could lift them to His higher purposes.

Jesus did the same thing when used parables to relate everyday things to spiritual realities. He often used very small things – mustard seeds or tiny coins – to reveal the true nature of His Father. He chided Nicodemus for his dullness saying, “If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” The heavenly things Jesus referred to would be the big things God wants us to understand. When Jesus announced to His disciples that He was going to leave them and go to His Father, Philip said, “Show us the Father.” The Lord’s response was, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Jesus is God made small enough for us to see who He is.

The revelation of the Father through the life of Jesus is the most striking example of God becoming small to teach big things. The second chapter of Philippians explains just how much the Son had to shrink to become the Savior of the world. He began as all humans do: in the womb of His mother. He emptied Himself of much of what it meant to be the eternal Son of God so He could truly become the Son of Man. As the entire Christian faith rests on the life, death, and resurrection of this one Man, we can begin to see how God made Himself small to accomplish the biggest task imaginable.

The big picture is even more amazing when you consider what Jesus told His Father in the prayer recorded in John 17: “I have revealed your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you have given them to me, and they have kept your word.” Martin Lloyd-Jones explains this: “These people belonged to God before they became the Son’s people…. and then [the Father] gave these people whom He had chosen to the Son, in order that the Son might redeem them and do everything that was necessary for their reconciliation with Himself.” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings, Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015)

God chose us as His own before the foundation of the world to be given to His Son as His bride on the one hand or as His brothers and sisters on the other – those who will become joint heirs with Him. Choose your favorite human-sized metaphor. In the heaven-sized picture, we believers are the Father’s gift to His Son. That is an idea small enough to grasp, but so big in its ramifications that I can hardly believe it. But I do believe it. Can you?

Related Posts: Take the Bible Literally? Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Understanding the Bible as Literature; The Bride of Christ