God isn't holy, He is the definition of holiness. God doesn't love, He is perfect love. God doesn't have a sense of justice, He is justice. God doesn't act mercifully, He is mercy. God isn't gracious, He is the essence of grace. God doesn't hold eternity, He is eternal. He is all these things and more, all intricately tied together. One cannot talk about God's justice without considering His love. One cannot consider His love without also considering his holiness at the same time. He is always everything that He is. His love does not come to us without holiness, mercy, justice, and grace. God defined Himself to Moses...I Am. If we try to define Him differently than that, then we leave some part of His character out of the picture.
We try so hard to understand God...to conjure ideas and words that describe Him. The main problem with that is that we humans are finite beings and cannot fully comprehend He who is infinite. Because of that, we try to put human characteristics onto God, and that leads to some horribly wrong conclusions. Recently, I heard "How can a loving God willingly send His children to hell? I love my children, and no matter how much they disappointed me, I would never cast them into eternal darkness, to be eaten by worms and burned with an eternal fire." The problem with that question and statement is that the person asking tried to put them self on the same level as God, either by elevating them self, or demoting God. God is beyond our understanding because He is infinite and we are finite. All we know is what we can measure. God, on the other hand, is immeasurable. being measureless, we cannot comprehend Him fully...thus the need for faith.
I'll use "time" as an example of this. God exists in the eternal present tense. He always has been and always will be. That is impossible for us to grasp because everything we know is based on time. Our clock starts ticking when we are born, and it counts down until we die. Our life is measured in years. Years are measured in months. Months are measured in days. Our days are measured in hours. Hours are measured in minutes. Minutes are measured in seconds. That is all we know. God, on the other hand, doesn't operate in time. He created time, but it holds no meaning for Him. If I could get a physicist to explain quantum mechanics to you, in a way you could understand, until you put quantum mechanics into practice in your life, it would hold no real meaning for you. God is the same way where time is considered. He understands it (because He created it), but because He doesn't operate in it, time is meaningless to Him.
Below is an illustration I came up with that shows this more clearly than I could describe. There is a dot above a line. The line has an X at either end. The X on the left represents "creation" while the X on the right represents "judgement day." God is represented by the red asterisk.
Everything that mankind understands and experiences falls somewhere on that line; past, present, and future. God, in the eternal present tense, doesn't experience a past, present, or future. In eternity, creation and judgement can be viewed as simultaneous events.
If that is a mind-boggling concept, then consider that everything about God is equally difficult to grasp. If He is who He claims to be, then logically we cannot expect to fully understand His nature on this side of eternity. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
God isn't afraid of our questions. We can ask anything, but He is not obligated to tell us everything we want to know. God is God, and we are not. He is omnipotent and we know less than we think.
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