There is a vast difference between our God and us: “we are measurable and he is not. God is infinite, unbound by limits. He defies measurement of any kind.”
Today, we continue our journey through the book None Like Him by Jen Wilkin
We as humans want to measure everything, including ourselves and others, which we use to make comparisons. “But unless our measure of comparison is smarter, richer, and more moral than we are, we will preserve the myth of our own ascendancy. We will believe ourselves to be without rival. And that’s where a measureless God begins to upend our sense of personal awesomeness.” God is different from us: he is immeasurable and yet he knows the measure of all things and sets their limits.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
Isaiah 40:12
No matter how hard we try, we are not able to take a full measure of God; we can’t put him within any boundaries, physical or mental; we can’t control him, and in comparison to him, no one looks good. He is the one that gave us our limits and measurements as he knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. He numbers our hairs and our days on Earth. He established the entire universe’s limits and rules and boundaries.
As Christ followers, our lives are given over to the “celebration of the limits God has ordained for us. He lovingly teaches them to us through his Word, through trials, through discipline. He humbles us through these means to remind us that we are not him, nor is anyone or anything else we know.” We have limits and our limits show us just how great our God is. The teach us fear, reverence, and awe of our Lord because it shows us how unlike us he is. No matter how hard we try, we can’t be like him because we have limits and he does not.
What does all this mean for us? How should the knowledge of God’s limitless nature change the way we live? One way is in how we view the God’s commandments:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 22:37-39
What does this actually say? It asks us limited people to love God and others as limitlessly as we can. But to do that, we need to learn to count things differently instead of measuring and comparing against others. God measures our sorrows (Psalm 56:8) and our sin (Romans 5:20). Because of Christ, our sin is not counted against us (Romans 4:24). Because of Christ, we are asked to count others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). He asks us to change the way we measure success – earthly gain is nothing compared to the worth of know Jesus Christ our Lord (Philippians 3:7-8). And in Christ our adversity is not measured as a curse, but a blessing (James 1:2).
By re-learning how to count as God counts, we start to see everything more accurately. Our mind frame shifts and we start reflecting God instead of rivaling him.