How Does God Show Himself?

John 14:21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”

God has shown himself to mankind in two ways: 1) by His creation, and 2) by sending His Son, the perfect revelation of himself, and giving us the scriptures that tell of Him – prophesized in the Old Testament, fulfilled in the New.

Creation, the first revelation, was as much a supernatural event as was the second, because God is not part of the physical realm He created. He is beyond nature. He preceded it and is sovereign over it. He controls it. It does not control or limit Him. Yet man, whose physical body is part of nature, can know much about the created universe in which he lives because God, by a supernatural act, created mankind in His own image so that man can comprehend, at least to some extent, what God has made. Albert Einstein recognized this when he said, “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Man, by his own efforts, using the sense organs and power of reason God has given him, can “see" clearly God’s divine nature in His creation. He can see the awesome power and beautiful order God has built into it – both the physical order and the moral order. That order would not be comprehensible to man if his finite mind did not, in some way, correspond to the infinite mind of the Creator. Science, properly understood, is simply the greatly refined natural ability God has given to man to comprehend what God has made. God’s ultimate purpose for giving this tool to man is so that man can, if he chooses, give God the glory He alone deserves.

But like any tool, science is only as good as the artisan using it. If the artisan chooses not to use a tool for the purpose for which it was designed, the results will be limited. In fact the artisan might begin to look like a fool. Early scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler gave God the glory when they made their great scientific discoveries. They were using science for the purpose God intended. But postmodern man does not do that. Instead he increasingly seeks to bring glory to himself, even going to great lengths to avoid the conclusion that there might possibly be a Designer, a Creator, a God. Many postmodern scientists simply choose to believe that God does not exist, absolute truth does not exist, and an absolute moral order does not exist. When Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, saw the incredibly intelligent design inherent in every living cell, he chose to believe that life was brought to earth by intelligent aliens from outer space, rather than admit to the possibility of an all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural Creator with absolute authority over all of His creation. Crick chose not to give the glory for the marvelous design he had discovered in nature to the only One who is worthy.

Sinful man does not want God, absolute truth, or an absolute moral order. That is why God showed himself in a second way. My next meditation will be about love and the condition God has placed upon showing himself, in that second way, to any person, scientist or otherwise. The condition is summarized in John 14:21 above.