“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?.” (Job 11:7)
There are other attributes of God that must be mentioned, even if only briefly. Contemplation of these divine perfections lifts the soul from earth to heaven, from the petty to the sublime.
· God is righteous, that is, He is just, equitable and fair in all His dealings. He is “a just God and a Saviour’’ (Isa. 45:21).
· God is incomprehensible (Job 11:7,8). He is too great to be understood by the human mind. As Stephen Charnock said, “It is visible that God is. It is invisible what He is.” And Richard Baxter said, “You may know God, but not comprehend Him.”
· God is eternal—without beginning or end (Psa. 90:1-4). Eternity is His lifetime.
· God is good (Nahum 1:7). He is “good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works” (Psa. 145:9).
· God is infinite (1 Kings 8:27). He has no limits or boundaries. “His greatness is beyond calculation, measurement or human imagination.”
· God is self-existent (Ex. 3:14). He did not receive His existence from any outside source. He is the Fountain of His own life as well as of all other life.
· God is self-sufficient, that is, He has within the Trinity all that He could ever need.
· God is transcendent. He is far above the universe and time, and is separate from the material creation.
A final attribute of God is His foreknowledge. Christians are divided on whether God’s foreknowledge determines who will be saved, or whether it is merely a prior knowledge of who will trust the Savior. Judging from Romans 8:29, I believe that God sovereignly selected certain individuals and decreed that all whom He thus foreknew would eventually be glorified.
And so we come to the end of our consideration of the attributes of God. But it is a subject that in another sense has no end. God is so great, so majestic, so awesome that we only see through a glass darkly. Because He is infinite, He never can be fully known by finite minds. Throughout eternity we will dwell on the wonders of His Person and will still have to say, “The half has not been told.”
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His more than over eighty-four works published in North America are characterized by a clarity and economy of words that only comes by a major time investment in the Word of God.
MacDonald graduated with an AB degree from Tufts College (now University) in 1938 and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1940. During the 1940's he was on active duty in the US Navy for five years.
He was President of Emmaus Bible College, a teacher, preacher, and Plymouth Brethren theologian alongside his ministry as a writer. He was a close friend and worker with O.J. Gibson.
MacDonald last resided in California where he was involved in his writing and preaching ministry. He went to be with the Lord in 2007.