“Why don’t you understand? It’s not rocket science.”

We have all heard it. It’s a derogatory statement about another person’s inability to grasp something which they should be able to understand. Rocket science is used in this statement as a metaphor for something that is beyond normal comprehension. If it is not rocket science, you should be able to figure it out, even if you are not brilliant.

Rocket science is difficult and complex, so it requires someone with a much higher IQ than most. There are things a rocket scientist can comprehend that would dumbfound the normal intellect. No matter how hard we try, we get lost somewhere between the realms of astrophysics and aerodynamics and thermodynamics, and other big words which we don’t really . . . comprehend. I have a friend at church who is, believe it or not, one of these rocket scientists. I appreciate his friendship very much. He is a kind and thoughtful person who has no intellectual airs about him, yet I am certain I possess only a small fraction of his mental capacity.

Comprehending is much more than knowing. It is the ability to encompass all the knowledge in a particular arena. This is why theologians tell us that God is incomprehensible to us. We can never fully grasp who He is. As we try to comprehend the depths of God, we find ourselves lost somewhere between the realms of the finite and the infinite. We can identify with God in some respects because He made us to be a reflection of His image. But that reflection is dim and limited, because it is contained within the boundaries of our human frailty. Therefore, the boundless dimensions of God exist beyond our capacity. The only one who can truly comprehend God is God Himself. The Apostle Paul reflects upon this truth at the end of the eleventh chapter of his letter to the church at Rome.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:33 and 36).

God is transcendent, not only in His Divine being but in His involvement in this universe. Even this statement sounds paradoxical to us. We struggle to contemplate how God can be transcendent over this natural realm and yet at the same time be involved in this realm. The One who exists outside of creation not only shows up in the affairs of this world from time to time but is said by the Apostle Paul to be intimately connected with every second of history that passes. “For from him and through him and to him are all things.” And this same Apostle tells us that God is at work in everything, bringing about His perfect will in this world. For He “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). Jesus reflects upon this truth as He tells His disciples that every hair on our head is numbered and not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of the Father in heaven (Matthew 10:29–30).

This is incomprehensible to us. We fail to fully grasp even the basic idea of God’s earthly involvement, let alone understand “how” God is involved in this natural realm. The third chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith states that “God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”

Now this is a mouthful. But the point the framers of this confession seek to communicate is that God is God over everything; that in His incomprehensibility, He orchestrates even the smallest things that come to pass. It is important to recognize God’s sovereign authority even when we cannot understand how He orchestrates all things.

There is something very humbling and yet comforting about God being beyond our comprehension. It is humbling because we desire to be smart enough to figure God out, but we are not. I have heard it said that for us to comprehend God would be like a bird comprehending the air in which it flies, or a fish comprehending the water in which it swims. And while these analogies point us in the right direction, even they fall short. In our ignorance, the only way we can bring God under our comprehension is to reduce our concept of God to things our limited minds can understand. We end up clothing the infinite person of God with finite attributes of man. In doing this, we form an inadequate concept of a God made in our own image. We view God as a Santa Claus or grandfather figure in the clouds doling out rewards or punishments dependent upon how happy He is with us. Such a picture fails to grasp God’s unfathomable transcendence. God is incomprehensible to us, and we are not to rob Him of that incomprehensibility, or we woefully miss what Paul calls the “depth of His riches.”

The incomprehensibility of God is comforting for the same reasons it is humbling. Life itself is beyond our control. And to have the assurance that there is One for whom nothing is ever out of control gives us a place of rest in our turmoil. This is a rest not easily learned. We are all nearsighted when it comes to our pain and struggles. Our prayers are often focused on the relief we desire instead of the perfect work that struggle is meant to accomplish, for the incomprehensibility of God assures us that even our sufferings are not without purpose. It is often in those sufferings that God accomplishes much more in us than when we do not suffer.

God’s ways are not our ways, and the more we understand that our God is not created in our image, the more we appreciate that He is watching over our perceived uncontrollable situations in life. The more we realize He is involved, not with one hand tied behind His back, but with the unlimited power of His being, the more we find solace in His sovereignty. The more we come to our rope’s end, in which we know not what to do, the more we hunger after the incomprehensibility of God. And the more we taste His goodness in the midst of our trials and turmoil, the more we desire His unfathomable depths. For in those depths we find “the wisdom and knowledge of God.”

Yes, it is true that we cannot comprehend God. But this does not mean we cannot know God. We can know Him in the most intimate way, especially when we recognize that He is incomprehensible. To know God is not to simply have a cognitive acknowledgement of a divine being. When we speak of knowing someone there is a great difference between knowing “of” someone and “knowing” someone. I know “of” many historical people whom I have never even met. But I do not “know” them. I “know” my wife. I “know” my children. I “know” those with whom I have a relationship. In the midst of God’s incomprehensibility, we can know Him. We can be in an intimate relationship with our Creator, for this is the purpose of our existence. It does us no good to know “of” God, if we do not know God, and we come to know God through the incomprehensible depths of the relationship He brings us into. And we grow into an even deeper knowledge of Him through the depths of His incomprehensibility.

The infinite God is involved in our finite lives. He knows us. He doesn’t just know “of” us, He knows us! And in this unsearchable and inscrutable truth, He brings us into a relationship of knowing Him. Paul speaks of this miraculous change in us in his letter to the church in Galatia:

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world” (Galatians 4:8–9).

And in his first letter to the church at Corinth he says:

“But if anyone loves God, he is known by God” (I Corinthians 8:3).

The incomprehensible God has not only known us, He has made Himself knowable to us. I said earlier that in order to conceive of God we are forced in our mind to clothe the infinite with finite attributes. But in the incomprehensible truth of the riches of God’s grace, the infinite God has clothed Himself with finite humanity in order that we may not just know of Him, but know Him in Christ. For as Paul tells us: “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (I Timothy 2:5–6).

As the depths of God are incomprehensible, the depths of His gospel are also incomprehensible. The older I get, the more I realize that I have a greater amount of the gospel yet to learn than I currently comprehend. And I, who possess only a small fraction of “the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God,” will spend my life growing in the knowledge of how great that gospel is.