God is omniscient; He knows everything about everything; His understanding is infinite. (Ps 147:5) He knows about all of reality, what has been, what is and what will be (Is 46:10), and He also fully understands every possible variation of reality, even things that will never actually happen. (Mt 11:21) Yet does this mean God actually experiences everything? Can God know something perfectly without personally experiencing it?
Since God cannot be tempted with evil (Ja 1:13), it must be that we experience reality differently than God experiences it; God knows with perfectly infinite understanding and awareness exactly how we feel and experience these sinful tendencies without Himself experiencing them. In other words, God knows what it’s like to sin without ever having sinned. (He 4:15)
So, yes, God doesn’t need to personally experience anything in order to fully comprehend all of its detail. Yet this doesn’t mean God is aloof from human experience, that He doesn’t engage intimately with His creation. Evidently, this is especially true of innocent suffering; He so identifies with His elect that He suffers in and with us. (Mt 25:35-36) While He allows pain and suffering in His children, it is not without personal sacrifice: God is willing to enter into our suffering Himself, and actually does so, being one with us. (Co 1:24)
While nothing exists apart from God (Co 1:17), and while all being and activity is of God and by God (1Co 8:6), it is incorrect to say God is any created thing, or that any created thing is God, or even part of God’s divine essence or being. (Panentheism) It is also evidently incorrect to say God is in (in the sense of inhabiting or indwelling) anything physical other than His earthly temple (Ha 2:20) and the bodies of the saints. (1Co 6:19)
While God is ultimately sovereign, controlling all things (Da :35), He is entirely distinct from the entire physical universe and independent of it. He forbids identifying Himself with any particular aspect of His material creation (Ex 20:4) other than His bride: the church. (Ep 5:30)
To say God is some created thing, is to claim that thing captures some aspect of the divine essence, that it is indistinct from God himself, that it is an extension of God, that it ought to be respected and honored as a manifestation of God. This kind of thinking tends to idolatry, the worshiping and serving of the creature rather than the creator.
Similarly, to say that God is in some thing, in the sense that he inhabits it or indwells it, is to associate God’s presence with that thing as a placeholder for God, a place where God resides or manifests His presence. It is too define a habitation for God or a house for God.
Unless God tells us that he end a particular thing, then we ought not to presume that he does. Even though he is omnipresent, occupying all space all the time, he does not inhabit everything.
There are some things God tells us He does inhabit, such as the human body of the believer, the earthly Tabernacle and Temple, which the Jews have participated in, and the Scriptures, which God has inspired to reveal Himself. Each of these things, therefore, imposes upon us the duty of a special reverence and care in how we interact with it lest we should defile it.
Tim,
Amen to your comment:
There are some things God tells us He does inhabit, such as the human body of the believer, the earthly Tabernacle and Temple, which the Jews have participated in, and the Scriptures, which God has inspired to reveal Himself. Each of these things, therefore, imposes upon us the duty of a special reverence and care in how we interact with it lest we should defile it.
stephen