Preface To The Second Printing
1. Must God Plead With God?
   
2. How The Spirit Leads
   
3. Physical Reinforcements of Faith
   
4. Jesus' Physical and Spiritual Death
   
5. Is There Merit in Pain?
   
6. The Six Days of Creation
   
7. Adding Guilt to Anxiety
   
8. Wine and The Disciple
   
9. Revolution or Evolution
   
10. I Am That Disciple
    
11. When People Disagree
    
12. Is Unity Based Upon Seven Doctrines?
    
13. Our Seven Sacraments
    
14. Instrumental Music
    
15. The Mood of Worship
    
16. Justified Then Sanctified
    
17. Is Christian Our Name?
    
18. The Lord's Table
    
19. Righteousness That Exceeds
    
20. Neither Destroyed Nor Nailed To The Cross
    
21. The Right of Self-Protection
    
22. A Tree of Error
    
23. God is Limited
    
24. You Are Here
    
25. God is In Charge
    
26. Hook's Points
    
27. Lamentations of A Mediocre Preacher
    

GOD IS LIMITED

God is all powerful, all knowing, and present everywhere. Yet God is limited. Unless we are willing to admit that everything in the world is in harmony with His desires, we must think of Him as being limited.

Limitation may be through inherent weakness or by self-restraint. Any boundaries of God are self-imposed. We will notice some of His self-limitations.

1. Angels and Men. Angels sinned. This could occur only because God gave them freedom of choice and then withheld forceful domination over their wills. Evidently, Satan is a fallen angel permitted to operate, not through the inferior power of God, but by the sufferance of God. And man was given a will and the power to choose to work contrary to the desires of God. Is man stronger than God? God has restrained his dominion over man's will. The overpowering will of God could have made man as responsible and as non-moral as a robot. God's limitation gave liberty to angels and to man.

2. Knowledge and Foreknowledge. Conceivably, God could know all things past, present, and future. But to declare that God knows all things that man will ever think or do in the future presents some problems. It would mean that God, from the "beginning of eternity," knowing all things that would come to pass, chose to create man and to put him in a circumstance where most of his kind would ultimately endure eternal torment. How, then, could God repent that He made man when He saw man's perverseness? Would God's sorrow for man not have been felt even before He made man?

God must have chosen to limit His foreknowledge in order to give man power to choose. God's restraint is man's liberty and glory. Otherwise, man is ruled by determining forces which negate his will and choice. If this prevails, man's life is as though it were programmed into a computer, pre-set for a predetermined response. His career would be as a Rube Goldberg contraption of cause and effect.

3. God's Patience. In his omnipotence God could destroy the evildoer and his evil at once. Mercy brings restraint. The long-suffering of God waits. In this instance, God's limitation is man's opportunity for salvation.

4. His Limitation of Flesh. The Word was God. The Word became flesh. When born of the Holy Spirit and Mary, He became the Son of God and the Son of Man. Any thought that He was all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere at the moment of His conception, at his birth, or at the age of twelve is incredible and contrary to the Scriptures. In His humiliation He divested himself of these infinite traits. He limited Himself in strength, wisdom, and locality. Taking the limitations of flesh, he was dependent upon his mother's milk and tender care. He could hunger, thirst, grow tired, and suffer pain. It was needful that he increase in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. Although the unlimited God cannot be tempted, Jesus found an appeal in sin. His infinite powers were so restrained that he was abandoned to Satan for a while to suffer spiritual death, which is separation from God, in our place. After His resurrection He received all power and infinite glorification again. Love moved Him to become weak for us.

5. Evangelism. Surely the Almighty could save a man without the feeble help of his fellowman. But God has withheld himself in order to give man this honor of working to help save. The message was put in earthen vessels and is now being proclaimed by those whom He is glorifying.

These observations should inspire deeper appreciation in us for the glorious place God has given us in His creation. He not only shared his life with us, but He has also shared His powers of intellectual reason and the will to act by them. Thanks to God's limitations, we share some of the liberties of divinity.