Thoughts on Christian Living Book #2 by Dr. W. A. Dillard - HTML preview

THE LIMITED AND THE LIMITLESS

There is a conceptual wall separating the mortal and the immortal. Man is finite. God is infinite. The finite simply does not comprehend to any appreciable degree the infinite. In simple terms, God put it simply this way: “As the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways to your ways and my thoughts to your thoughts, saith the Lord.” Isa. 55:9. It then behooves us who are finite to accept in full the presentation of God, and his work to man as recorded in Holy Writ while avoiding the temptation to sit in His chair postulating what he knows, and by which principles He is bound.

Still, it is an apparent, favorite pastime of bible students to build tenants of faith on what they insist God does or does not know based on their finite reasoning of spiritual principles. Perhaps revisiting the book of Job would be helpful. He longed for a meeting with the Creator until he got one. There he found himself as helpless and mentally and spiritually inept as a toddler would be to run a factory.

A popular case in point is the Eden scenario. It goes something like this: God knew man would sin before He created the planet; therefore, Adam and Eve had no choice, but to do what God foreknew they would do. That is fatalism, unfounded, and contrary to the whole presentation of the Bible. If such nonsense were true, God would not have given Adam and Eve the bone fide offer of eternal life in the fruit of a tree. Such would be simple mind games.

Alas! Adam and Eve did plunge themselves and their posterity into a world of sin and death by casting down that perfect order in Eden, but, Thank God, the Lord Jesus, the Christ, stood as a Lamb slain from the casting down of that order. The entire interlude of sin in the world of men provides the opportunity to overcome it through the triumphant cross-work of the God- man: Jesus, and to see that perfect order restored in ages to come. Meanwhile sin is shown to have no intrinsic value by which it may claim the right to continued existence other than in hell reserved for its founder and practitioners who have rejected the grace of God. One may claim he does not understand all of this. Then welcome to the club. It is not to be understood, rather it is to be believed without reservation. By His own revelation to us, the limited may know and live the faith of the Limitless. This is only possible in Christ Jesus. This then is the emphasis of the resurrection; the meaning of Easter; the continuous first day of the week celebration of His churches through the age.

Know Him then, and follow Him at all costs. The limited are on

their way to becoming as the Limitless in many ways, and what a day that will be!

FOR THOUGHT: Since the Bible is written for people of faith to

221