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Psalm 145:3
“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.”
Continuing our look at the divine names and attributes and the metaphors used for God in Scripture, we now turn to another incommunicable attribute of our Creator—namely, His infinity. When we refer to the infinity of God, we mean that He is not limited in any of His attributes. Our Maker is infinite goodness, infinite holiness, infinite presence, infinite wisdom, infinite righteousness, and so on. Although we will look in more detail at these attributes and many others, we need to understand that in His attributes, God possesses no limitations.
Scripture frequently expresses divine infinity by stressing the greatness of God. Psalm 145:3, for instance, reveals that the greatness of the Lord “is unsearchable.” Something unsearchable lacks boundaries. It is unsearchable precisely because we can never reach the end of it, we can never enclose it in our minds as we might be able to do with other entities or facts. The Dutch Reformed theologian Petrus van Mastricht comments on today’s passage as he discusses God’s infinity: “There is no end to [the greatness of God]. For whatever is finite is fully searchable, and in turn, whatever simply cannot be searched is also infinite.”
Divine infinity is taught in passages such as Psalm 145:3, but it is also the necessary consequence of other truths about God, such as His self-existence and absolute independence. The Lord is before all because He has always existed, having the power of being in Himself, and because He depends on nothing, whereas all creation depends on Him. Van Mastricht also writes that God is infinite because “he is (1) the absolutely first being, who for this reason does not admit a prior being which would bound and limit him. He is, accordingly, (2) independent, bounding and limiting all things, and thus, he is limited by no one.” God’s infinity also means that He is incomprehensible, not in the sense that we cannot know God truly but in the sense that we cannot know God fully or know Him as He knows Himself. As many theologians have stated, the finite cannot contain the infinite.
Our Creator’s infinity is good news for His people and bad news for the impenitent. Because the Lord’s love and goodness have no limits, we can trust that God will never harm His children. Because His righteousness has no limits, we can trust that the impenitent will not finally escape their just punishment.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Because God is infinite, His goodness is far greater than we can fathom. Indeed, His goodness has no limits. Thus, we never need think that He will one day exhaust His goodness toward us. If we trust in Christ Jesus, we can be confident that He will be good to us forever and that He will be good to us in ways that we cannot yet imagine.
For further study
- 1 Chronicles 16:25
- Psalm 77:13
- Isaiah 40:13
- Ephesians 1:19
The bible in a year
- Deuteronomy 20–22
- Mark 14:26–50