“You must unlearn what you have learned.” Yoda’s teaching is helpful when it comes to our understanding of God. Our presuppositions about God are often wrong. We automatically imagine him after our own likeness, projecting ourselves on to him, rather than letting him define himself for us by his own revelation. This is almost always problematic, because God is unlike us. “I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hosea 11:9), so, he points out, he doesn’t act according to our expectations. We can’t anticipate him and we need him to make himself known to us, not just because we possess limited faculties, but because we are warped and wrong in our unholy (sin) nature which is antithetically opposed to him.
So, when we hear that God is “almighty,” we suspect that it means one thing, when really it means quite the opposite. We think God’s almightiness is what we would possess if we were all-powerful, if we could always accomplish whatever we liked. This is, basically, the power to get, to manipulate reality for the sake of ourselves. But this is the devil’s version of power. In absolute opposition, God’s true almightiness, his holy power, is the power to give. His power is the administration of the kingdom of love, where he defines reality in accordance with his own being, the being of love. His almightiness is the freedom to give himself away in love.
Jesus said, “I lay down my life… No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority [the Greek word exousia is also translated power] to lay it down” (John 10:17-18). This is what it means that God is almighty. In the Person of his Son, he didn’t shut off his power in order to die for our sins; it was the great exercise of his kind of power. His power is seen most clearly in his utter self-gift, in his complete self-sacrifice, in the pouring out of his life unto death, in the greatest act of love the world has ever seen. This is characteristic of God’s very being as the One who exists in three Persons in perfect, mutual self-gift. His almightiness is the freedom to give himself away in love, even to those who have spurned his love.
Think of the power wielded by historical rulers and masters in this world; how is that power different from God’s kind of power as we’ve defined it? Are you aware of any particular non-Christian philosophies or religions that would portray God’s almightiness (or power in general) in an unbiblical way? What could be some results of believing a wrong version of power? Why is it so easy for us to have a wrong conception of God’s almightiness? Can we trust the biblical definition of God’s power? What could be some of the results of believing in the biblical definition of power? Is it possible for us to imitate God in his kind of power? If so, what would that look like?
