What is God like? Transcendent

“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’” (Exodus 3:14)


First up, we read in Scripture that God is transcendent – outside and above and beyond everything else in the world. He can’t be contained by anything or constrained by anything. But how do we know this from the Bible? And what difference does it make to how we view and interact with Him?

Where do we see the truth of God's transcendence in the Bible?

We actually get it right from the first line! Genesis 1:1 starts like this: “In the beginning God…” That is, God was there in the beginning, before anything or anyone else. He is outside everything else in all the created universe. That should be obvious because He created it! And it’s a cause of praise as all creation worships Him in John’s vision in Revelation 4:11. We also see God’s transcendence encapsulated in the way He describes Himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3: “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’” That is, God cannot be defined, contained or constrained by anything or anyone else. He simply IS.

Why does this matter?

First, because lots of the other things we know to be true about God flow out of this one truth. How can we know God is omnipotent? Because He can’t be constrained by anything in all creation – because He is transcendent! How can we know God is omniscient? Because there are no limits to His knowledge of creation – because He is transcendent! What a glorious God we have!

But here’s why it matters personally to us right now: we need to know that there is no limit to God’s attributes because we depend on them. We depend on God’s sovereign power, and the fact that no evil can stop Him fulfilling His good plans (see Isaiah 46:9-10). And it’s true! And we depend on God’s infinite love, and the fact that nothing can separate us from His love (as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:38-39).

Perhaps a (rather silly) comparison might help: I’m diving into the world of DIY at the moment around my new house – but I have to admit I’m not awfully good at it. I’ll start a job confidently and then discover some kind of snag: either something I don’t have the right tool to fix or something I don’t have enough expertise to fix. So then I have to ring my father-in-law (again!) to come and help. The doctrine of God’s transcendence is basically the guarantee that God is absolutely not like me and my shaky DIY abilities! We can trust that God always has the knowledge and the skill to do what He needs to do, because He has no limitations. We can trust God’s infinite power, infinite knowledge, infinite love, infinite justice, precisely because He is transcendent. As Nick Tucker says in his book, 12 Things God Can’t Do, that knowledge will help us to sleep better at night!