Doctrine is simply a teaching of the Bible. The Bible is the revelation of God. Therefore, the Bible is the revelation of God in all He is through certain doctrines or teachings. The infinity of God, then, would have weight on each doctrine taught. Each doctrine of Scripture reflects something of the glory of God. If God is infinite in all of His attributes, then to understand God means that we must come to grips with the infinity of God. If it is thought that a doctrine is perfectly understood in all of its lines and trains of thought, which shows how ignorant one really is of God. Doctrine is a glorious thing and men can know particular doctrines well and thoroughly in one sense. However, each doctrine reflects the character of God and one can always grow in understanding God and so one can always grow in terms of the doctrine and how it reveals the character of God.
When we think of the doctrine of heaven, for example, the infinity of God helps us to understand God as inexhaustible in glory. Heaven will never be less than the fullness of joy since finite beings can never empty God. Hell is the same but in reverse. Believers cannot imagine the degree of love and joy they will have, but those in hell cannot imagine the degree of torment that they will have either. We can know that we can never reach the end of the knowledge of God on earth or in eternity. Since there is no end to the glory of God, man can always learn more and more of the glory of God and of how doctrines reflect His glory and tie in with each other.
If God is infinite, then doctrine must be understood in different ways. The mind cannot understand or hardly even apprehend what infinity is, so to know God is not just the providence of the brain. God must be seen by the eye of faith in order to see God in the doctrine. God must be understood as infinite with the eye of faith that beholds His glory in ways that academics cannot teach one to do. Eternal life is to know God (John 17:3). In fact, Christ came to give us understanding so that we could know Him and that is eternal life. “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life” (I John 5:20). Jesus also gives us another reason for why He came to make the Father known: “and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).
As we think about the verses above, we can see that eternal life (life for an infinite amount of time as in eternity and sharing in the life of the infinite God) rests upon knowing God. So what man can know is true about God, that is, what man can know about God is in fact the way God really is. But can man know all about God in all ways? “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:9). Even though man can know God, he cannot discover the full depths of God. Neither, then, should man be surprised when he finds that he continues to grow in understanding of the teachings or doctrines that are meant to reveal God to man.
Many seem to think of seminary as a place to go and learn some truth and then spend the rest of their lives teaching that same truth. If people only teach what they learn at seminary, then they will never grow in their knowledge of God and will always be teaching the same old dry and dusty teaching. The infinity of God delivers the Church (or should) from dry and dusty teaching. Men should constantly strive to understand more and more of the glory of God through Scripture and its doctrines. There is always more to understand and love. How man must learn to worship as he studies the glory of God in doctrine and in all of life. Preachers must learn to look for more of the glory of God in the text because it is there and it must be brought out and displayed. The infinity of God should drive the soul to greater and greater expansion as it reaches and longs for Him knowing that it will always have the hunger for more and yet the hunger itself as well as the filling is pleasure.
If God is but a bigger way of being finite, then man has no hope. Man will eventually reach the end of knowledge and will grow stagnate. That sounds like a lot of churches and a lot of preaching. Man must never forget the infinity of God and so be caught up in worship and perhaps rapturous desire for His glory. To teach a God that the brain alone can comprehend and is just a lot bigger than man is the way to dead preaching and churches. We must recover this glorious teaching of God that permeates all of doctrine and of life.
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