How would you describe God in one word? How is it even possible? Entire libraries have been written on the subject of God, but yes, He can be boiled down to a single word. And this one word is critical to understand because it informs everything else we know about Him.

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SERIES INTRO

Welcome to the first week in our new series: Simple Theology. It’s easy to make theology complicated. But complicated isn’t always helpful… or even understandable. But simple is good. We can wrap our heads around simple.

So, the goal of this series is to take five key theological concepts and explain them with a single word.

Over the next couple of months, we’re going to talking about God, the Trinity, sin, gospel, and sanctification. Along the way, you’re also going to have a lot of conversation around your table.

DEFINING GOD WITH ONE WORD

Let’s start with the biggie: God. How would you define God with only one word? At your table, spend the next 2 minutes, and come up with a one-word definition.

I’d like to propose that there is one term to describe God that supersedes all of those.

Curious? The word is “other.” God is other. Say “God is other.”

What do I mean by this? God is completely different than all other things that exist. God isn’t just a little different; he’s completely, utterly, absolutely different.

There are several core attributes of God that fall under this, but none that are above it.

• God is spirit – He does not possess a physical nature.

• God is infinite – He is unlimited and unlimitable.

• God is independent – He does not need us or the rest of creation for anything.

• God is unchangeable – God is unchanging in his being, purposes, and promises.

Could you see how all of these are subcategories of God being other—completely different than all other things that exist?

GOD’S “OTHERNESS” IS SCRIPTURE

How is God’s total otherness described in Scripture?

Isaiah 55:8-9: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." This passage suggests a profound distinction between human and divine understanding. Say “God is other.”

Job 11:7-9: "Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea." These verses emphasize the incomprehensibility of God's essence and operations. Say “God is other.”

Romans 11:33-34: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" These verses speak to the unfathomable wisdom and knowledge of God that surpasses human understanding. Say “God is other.”

I could go on and one. There are countless verses that describe how God is completely different than all other things that exist, especially us.

THREE IMPLICATIONS

There are three implications for your life of the theology of God’s otherness.

1. It’s a serious sin to reduce God to be like us.

When we forget that God is other, we will make him like us. We can understand different. My wife and I are different. But we can’t understand other. So, our natural tendency is to reduce God to make him more tangible, relatable, and manageable. We shrink God into a statue, a bumper stick, or a cause. And that is a serious sin.

In fact, it is so serious, that God addresses it in the second commandment. He forbids his people to think of Him as being as similar to anything else in the physical creation.

Exodus 20:4-5 – “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.”

This is the sin of reducing God. And it’s an affront to his very nature.

How have you reduced God to make him more tangible, relatable, and manageable?

• Have you domesticated God into a divine helper, crisis hotline, or spiritual Santa Claus?

• Do you focus more on the easy attributes of God (like love and mercy) and ignore the harder ones (like holiness and justice)?

• Do you reject the parts of Christianity that are mysterious or unexplainable.

2. We need God’s self-revelation through Jesus Christ.

How can we as finite creatures relate to an infinite God? How can our puny minds even comprehend a limitless God. We can’t, short of small glimpses. That is why we must cling to on God’s own self-revelation—in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Father sent Jesus to show us what He’s like.

• In John 14:9, Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father.”

• Hebrews 1:3 describes Jesus as the “exact imprint of God’s nature.”

• Colossians 1:15 says, “The Son is the image of the invisible God.”

• Colossians 2:9 says, “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.”

Let me ask you: How well do you know the person, words, and work of Jesus? Not my preaching of him. Not some sanitized Sunday school version of him from your childhood. And definitely not some Americanized or Hmong cultural version of him.

The real Jesus. From the Scriptures. That’s the only way you can know God.

3. God’s otherness demands humility.

I don’t participate in Christian arguments online or in person.

How arrogant is it to presume, without a doubt, the mind of God, the heart of God, or the will of God. And yet, there are Christians everywhere who believe they are right about something and everyone else is wrong.

Following a God who is totally other demands humility.

How presumptuous of us to be offended by something God does, like we could even understand the mysteries of the universe involved a single act in our life.

Following a God who is totally other demands humility.

• It doesn’t mean we can’t have convictions. Just hold them with humility.

• It doesn’t mean we can’t walk boldly in Christ. Just walk with humility.

• And it doesn’t mean we can’t advocate justice. Just advocate with humility. And love mercy while you’re at it.

Truth should never eclipse humility and love. Because God is completely other.

Where have you let truth eclipse humility? What arrogance do you need to confess?

CONCLUSION

There is a promise behind understanding God’s total otherness. When we fully understand God’s otherness, we see how amazing the incarnation of Jesus Christ really is. And we see what an enormous privilege it is to enjoy God’s friendship and be adopted into his royal family.