How can you trust a God you can’t understand?

My atheist friends insist that they couldn’t have faith unless God first answered all their questions.

My Muslim friends say they can’t have faith in Jesus because there’s questions they don’t have the answer to.

Many of my Christian friends insist that to exercise faith you have to work out answers to questions.

In fact, much modern apologetics is based on an assumption that we need to answer people’s questions as some kind of a scaffolding, funnel or necessary step to help people get faith… …to help people trust God.

Atheists, Muslims and many Christians struggle with this question:

How can you trust a God you can’t understand?

Today is Trinity Sunday—a day dedicated to the God we certainly know through Jesus Christ, but whom we certainly do not understand.

God is one God, who has always existed as three persons. What does that mean? I can’t even imagine that.

Today’s reading comes at the end of Romans 9-11, where Paul has described a paradox about which we have many questions:

As I look at Jesus, I see that I only trust him because God chose me in Christ.

But those who refuse to trust Jesus do so only because they chose to resist his grace in unbelief.

Paul tells us these things are true, but not how they fit together.

So what do you and I do with that? When God reveals himself clearly like this, but leaves some questions unanswered, how do we trust him?

Well, Paul comforts our confusion by saying two things:

1) Trust that depends on understanding isn’t trust (v. 33)

2) But what you can’t understand you still know: God’s grace depends entirely on him, not you (vv. 34-36)

So, first, 1) Trust that depends on understanding isn’t trust

Please look at v. 33 with me:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Paul literally tells us we cannot understand God’s ways.

And a major reason people wander into error here, is because they take something unrevealed, that we’re explicitly told we can’t understand: God’s methods.

And use it to draw our own conclusions about something that is revealed: God’s motives.

And the conclusions people draw about God’s motives are wrong.

Trust that depends on understanding isn’t trust

Immediately before, in v. 32, Paul tells us God’s motives:

God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

Why does God use this method of consigning all to disobedience? I don’t know. Because: You cannot create trust in God from your own understanding.

And that’s true, no matter what that understanding rests on:

—Seeing amazing miracles.
—Hearing persuasive apologetic arguments.
—Feeling the power of amazing music or experiences.
—Watching someone else’s, or your own, moral progress.
—Working things out for yourself from books or the Bible.
—Thinking through all the arguments.

All these things are different, but they all boil down to the same misunderstanding: That trust in God is created, or sustained, by your own understanding.

Back in Deuteronomy 29:29, Moses said to Israel:

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Some things are spoken by God: his words create a relationship of trust in him.

But other things are not spoken by God: and those things remain secret.

Here in Romans, Paul is telling you that you cannot work out things about God he has not said, even if you start from what God says.

His ways—which Paul has just spent 3 chapters explaining—are inscrutable—you can’t “scrute” them.

So, You can’t generate trust from your own understanding.

God creates trust in us through the means of grace. Back in chapter 10, verse 17, Paul said:

faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Why? Because you and I are by nature legalistic. Later in Romans 14:23, Paul will say:

whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

We all want to create trust from our own understanding, because in our hearts we all naturally think in terms of Law: getting what you deserve.

This is why other Christians struggle so much with our church tagline: God is in a good mood with you! And you see that when you look at Jesus!

The pushback that we keep getting is: No! You can’t tell people God is in a good mood with them—because they don’t deserve it! They need to have faith first!

As much as people try to soften the wording, that’s what they’re saying: That God is in a good mood with me because I have faith. But he can’t be in a good mood with that person, because they don’t have this thing—faith—that makes them deserve it the way I do.

Because, even when God does give us faith—we still misunderstand it.

We still think of it as something about me that makes me different. But that’s not what faith is at all: faith is receiving what’s already true.

God’s already in a good mood with you. That’s already true because of Jesus. And that doesn’t make any sense.

That’s why I can only receive it through trust that he gives me. I can’t create that trust from my own understanding. Because I can’t understand it.

That’s what Paul now explains in his second point:

2) But what you can’t understand you still know: God’s grace depends entirely on him, not you (vv. 34-36)

Just look with me please at v. 34:

“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?”

Paul is quoting Isaiah 40 verse 13, where God announces he will have mercy on his rebellious people in exile, and bring them home.

Nobody needed to persuade God to do this. Nobody had to argue the case and explain it to God. No apologetic or logical arguments were needed.

Paul’s unpacking the inexplicable claim he made in v. 32:

God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

Paul has explained in Romans 9-11 that everything God does is so that everyone may receive mercy:

He chooses some, so that as they hear the Gospel they will receive mercy.

He hardens some, so that the Gospel will go out to others, so that these others will receive mercy.

And he provokes those he hardens, so that as the Gospel goes out to others, it may provoke the hardened to jealousy, and perhaps lead to them receiving mercy too.

It sounds pretty convoluted to me. What’s God’s doing sounds really complex.

To be honest: I cannot understand it. But what I do know is his motives, because Paul tells me:

God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

God wants everyone to be saved. And Romans 9-11 describes God’s work in people which is all ordered toward that purpose, even though, finally, not everyone will be saved.

God needs nobody to advise him to do this. But Paul goes a step further, just look at v. 35:

“Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?”

Nobody puts God in their debt. He’s quoting the book of Job, where the idea is this: God operates on the basis of pure grace, and so his favour doesn’t need to be bought.

That’s what the book of Job proves, by the way. That’s what it’s about.

The book of Job is not primarily about why suffering happens. It’s about why Satan is wrong to say: people only love God because of what they can get from him.

The book of Job answers that by saying: No, God operates on the basis of pure grace. And when all blessings are taken away from Job, even his terrible sufferings can’t shake the trust that God has given him.

God does not need to be bribed, bought or bargained with to gain his favour.

He is already in a good mood with you. He’s not offering to change his attitude toward you in exchange for something he wants from you.

Paul said exactly that back in vv. 5-6:

So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

So, how does that work out logically? I have no idea!! Because I’m a human being, and what did Paul say about us human beings back in Romans 2:15?

the work of the law is written on theirhearts,

The work of the law is written on my heart, so God’s grace makes no natural sense to me. I can’t understand it. Which means God’s grace depends entirely on him, not me

That’s how Paul lands the whole discussion in v. 36. Please look at that verse with me:

For from him and through him and to him are all things.

How can you trust a God you can’t understand? Well—how could you possibly trust a God you can understand?

Because Trust that depends on understanding isn’t trust

God’s purpose is to have mercy on all. Because he is a God of pure grace and kindness. But, I am a creature with the Law written on my heart. So I can’t understand his grace. And I can’t use my understanding to create trust in his grace.

2) But what you can’t understand you still know: God’s grace depends entirely on him, not you

His grace is from him: in Christ he elected us for salvation, nobody has to advise him to be gracious.

His grace is through him: in Christ he bore the punishment of sin on the cross, nobody has to bribe, buy or bargain to get his grace.

And his grace is to him: so look at Christ, not at your own understanding.

Nobody can know God better than how Jesus reveals him to us.

Everything God says and does directs us at all times in this same direction—toward Jesus alone.

Because God is in a good mood with you.

And you see that when you look at Jesus.

To him be glory forever. Amen.