Summary
The God Who Cannot Be Measured
From infancy onward, human beings make sense of the world through measurement—height marked on a doorpost, weight at the doctor's office, time tracked along a chronological line. We measure length, depth, width, volume, and area, and we instinctively try the same approach with God. We want to fit Him into a box so we can understand Him. But as Job asks, "Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? It is higher than heaven—what can you do? Deeper than Sheol—what can you know?" Job 11:7-9. No box is big enough. As Luther observed, God cannot be subjected to any human judgment or measurement.
When the Lord declares, "I am the Alpha and the Omega... who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty" Revelation 1:8, the words sound at first like a measurement—first letter, last letter, beginning and end. But in rabbinical usage, pairing the first and last letters of the alphabet was a way of expressing totality, entirety, the whole. God is not merely the bookends of time; He is the fullness of all that is. He is, as Isaiah testifies, the first and the last, with no God formed before Him and none after Isaiah 44:6.
This is what the word eternal means when applied to God. Infinity is a numerical concept; it has a symbol and a value. Eternal is something else entirely. God is outside of time and space, unconstrained by any of the limitations that govern creatures. There has never been a time when God was not. The opening of John's Gospel makes this plain: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" John 1:1. The Word—Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity—was not Plan B. Before creation, before sin, before time itself, the victory of God over death already is. The cross was never a reaction; it was eternally the plan “Eternal” 7-3-22.
Because God is eternal, He is also eternally just. Sin is eternally wicked, and an eternally just God cannot let it stand. No human payment—no money, no pleading, no labor—can settle the sin debt. And yet, in mercy that is just as eternal as His justice, God humbled Himself. The Alpha and Omega, fully divine and fully other, willingly subjected Himself to the constraints of space and time, entering humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. He marched toward Calvary, where the fullness of sin from every time and every place descended on Him, and He paid what we could not.
This is why the promise of John 3:16 still stands. We are not eternal in the same way God is eternal—we are creatures, bound by time. But in Christ alone we are given eternal life, and in His mercy God has decreed that His sons and daughters will not spend eternity in sin. When the Father looks upon the believer, He does not see a condemned sinner; He sees the eternal righteousness of His Son Hebrews 13:8.
No measurement we possess can capture this gift. Higher than heaven, deeper than Sheol, longer than the earth, broader than the sea—the love, forgiveness, and mercy of God for His creation are immeasurable. We will never fully know the weight of the sin debt that has been paid, nor the depth of sorrow our sin cost Him. But we do know this: His eternal gift is for you.
Video citations
- “Eternal” 7-3-22 — If you would please open your Bible to the book of Revelation chapter 1, if you're using a Pew edition of the Bible, that can be found on page 217 in the New Testament. We're in Revelation chapter…