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Saturday, September 1, 2012

God's Alls: God is All-Powerful and All-Wise

Romans 11:34-36 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR? 35Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? 36For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

Quick Review: God is Infinite, and He is the All-Good God
Yesterday we began consider how it is that God is infinite in terms of His being, and how from that nature we understand Him to be the All-Good God.  Psalm 145:9 tells us: "Jehovah is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all His works...thou openest thy hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing."(KJV)  We are considering God mainly from the text of Romans 11:33-36.  In that text we see God's All Goodness (Romans 11:33).  Today we want to consider to other main "Alls" of God: namely God as being "All-powerful" and "All-wise".

God is All-Powerful (omni-potent)
Since God is infinite, and since He is infinitely good, then it follows that He would have to possess the power to accomplish His good intentions. In Romans 11:33, we discover that His "judgments" are unsearchable and His "ways" are unfathomable. The term "way" speaks of the activites of God, and His judgments of course speaks of the Sovereign ability He has to carry them out. For God to be infinitely good and yet not to be infinitely powerful would make Him no better than a creature.

Biblical Christianity asserts that God is both infinitely good and powerful. To be the Creator of all things, God must be all powerful. In the realm of redemption, the cross is the chiefest example of God's omnipotence, demonstrating the love of infinite God and the power of the Son, God in human flesh, to destroy the devil's works and bridge the infinite chasm between all who by grace through faith believe and God. (Colossians 2:13-14; John 3:8) Then of course God is omnipotent due to the fact that He and The Son will bring about the end of history, with the Holy Spirit regulating such history to its appropriate end in the return and reign of Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:20-28) This is alluded to in Romans 11:34-35, which requires God to be omnipotent in order to excercise His judgments and ways.

God is all-wise (omni-sapience). In Romans 11:25-33 we see reference to God's All-Goodness (omni-benevolence); in Romans 11:33 we also see reference to His All-powerfulness (omni-potence); but now we turn to Romans 11:34-36, where we see God's All-wisdom (omni-sapience). Omni-sapience comes from two Latin words: Omni meaning "all" and Sapiens meaning "wise".  Perhaps you have heard of the scientific name for human beings being that of Homo-sapiens-sapiens.  We are beings who a distinguished from all other creatures as possessing some measure of wisdom, understanding.  As human beings created in the image of God, any wisdom we have is from God, who is the source of all knowledge and wisdom. (Genesis 1:26-28; Proverbs 2:2)

Unlike man, God is Wise in and of Himself, without need of any outside counsel in directing the course of history, redemption and deternity.  The All-Wisdom of God is what directs His All-Good intentions and utilizes the All-powerfulness (omnipotence) to accomplish those intentions to their appropriate ends. Included in the wisdom of God are some other "alls": His omniscience or "all-knowingness", as well as His "all-presence" or "omnipresence".

Seeing God's All-Goodness, Power and Wisdom at work in redemption
Romans 11:36 states - "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. The Triune God's work in redemption is an example of the Trinitarian structure of Romans 11:36. The Father planned salvation by His All-Good, All-powerful, All-wise intentions. The Son, by his assuming full humanity, accomplished salvation by the shedding of blood, while still sharing in His full Deity with the Father.  God's Goodness, Strength and Wisdom is the source of salvation to those who by grace through faith believe. Then of course the Spirit in the Wisdom, Goodness and strength He shares with the Father and the Son, applies salvation to all whom He calls, convicts and believes.