Question
Could you elaborate on God’s omniscience and further explain sonship prayer?
Response
I have been asked this question a number of times. And in order for me to give you my understanding I first need to say something about the function of God’s omniscience in general. Or in other words, before specifically addressing the issue of God’s omniscience and our sonship, I think that it is important to understand and appreciate a few things about the overall function of God’s omniscience when it comes to the relationship and dealings that He has purposed to have with His creation.
Very simply put (and without making any attempt to either prove or defend what I am saying) what I want to point out is that God makes it evident in His word that He has purposed to have a relationship with His creation that is very personal and very real, which involves Him genuinely interacting with His creation in various ways, as well as to various degrees of interaction and personal involvement. As such God’s relationship and dealings with His creation are not contrived in any way, nor are they pretended or make-believe. They are not faked in any way, nor in any sense of the word are they phony. Likewise, they are not forced, nor insincere. Neither are they artificial, affected, or anything else that is less-than genuinely true and real. Moreover this very personal, very real, and very genuine relationship that God has purposed to have with His creation (and does have with it) is not compromised at all, nor is it violated or breached (or rendered in any manner or form to be anything less than genuinely real) by any of God’s infinite attributes, capacities, or abilities (like His omniscience) nor by any of His creation’s finite attributes, capacities, or abilities. Instead the opposite is the case. For in view of the very nature of the makeup that God gave to His creation, as well as by the very nature of His interaction and dealings with it from the time that He brought it into existence and began interacting with it. God not only has shown in the record of His word that all of this is true, but He has also shown that He deliberately keeps His infinite attributes, capacities, and abilities in perfect balance with, (and even subservient to), the kind of personal one-to-one (and one-on-one) relationship that He has purposed to have with His creation.
Now this is indeed something that God can do, and that He does do. Not only because God is God, but especially because He is the very kind of God that He says He is, He therefore has the capacity and ability to have it so that none of His infinite attributes either compromise, or interfere with, or in any way lessen the reality of the genuine ‘in-time’ and ‘at-the-moment’ relationship that He has designed to have with His creation. And this is true both for Himself and for His creation. Therefore, God is able to employ and/or exercise any of His infinite attributes to whatever degree or extent that He wants to (even not employing them if the circumstances of the relationship that He is having calls for it) in order to have the specific kind of personal and real relationship that He wants to have with His creation at any given time, and also in order to have it so that His creation is able to respond to that relationship accordingly.
God, therefore, is able to fully and truly (with all genuineness and without one whit of pretense, or hypocrisy, or feigned activity) condescend Himself to function in whatever way He needs to in order to have the specific kind of relationship and interaction that He wants to have with His creation at any given time. And in so doing He is able to have it so that His infinite attributes do not ‘interfere with’ or ‘get in the way of’ so to speak, the sincerity and genuineness of the relationship that He is having at any given time. Instead of interfering, or getting in the way, they function in perfect subservience to whatever relationship God is having with His creation (or portion of it) at any given time. Hence, they do not become matters of pretentiousness either to God Himself or to His creation, which if they otherwise did they could make the relationship to be less than real both for Himself and for His creation, or could make any relationship and its interactions to be something less than exactly what God says that it is.
Now it is my understanding that God expects us to understand and appreciate these kind of things as part of what I call ‘the God-ness of God’ and hence we should know these kind of things before we ever get to the doctrine of our sonship relationship with God.
Wherefore, when we doctrinally arrive at Romans 8:14ff and begin to learn about our sonship relationship with God in this present dispensation of His grace (with its Father-son relationship, and all of the corresponding interactions that are going to be taking place between us and our Father) we are expected to realize that our sonship relationship with God our Father is a real, genuine, ‘in-time’ Father-son relationship. It is a real ‘in-time’ and ‘at-the-moment’ relationship in which God both positionally and actively functions ‘as a Father to us’ and we both positionally and actively function ‘as sons to Him’. And as such we are to understand and appreciate that neither our Father’s infinite attributes, capacities, and abilities (like His omniscience) nor our own finite attributes, capacities, and abilities are going to make our Father-son relationship and mutual interactions anything less than genuine and real, both for God Himself and for us.
Therefore, our Father’s relationship and interaction with us is one of a perfect father-son relationship and interaction, with Him functioning towards us, and with us, just as we should expect a natural father to do, and with us responding to Him as our Father just as we should respond to a natural father. For it is God Himself who has defined our sonship relationship with Him, and has described its nature, when He said to us, ‘I will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me my sons and daughters’. Wherefore, in being ‘a Father to us’ God is not going to have His infinite attributes, capacities, and abilities either govern His relationship with us, or be the basis of His personal interaction with us, or cause Him to be anything less than a ‘real and unpretentious Father to us’. And likewise, with us being ‘sons to Him’, He is not going to have it so that any of His infinite attributes cause us to think of Him, or cause us to interact with Him, in any way that is less than Him being a ‘real Father to us’ and we being ‘real sons to Him’.
Therefore, in view of the very genuine and real ‘Father-son’ relationship and mutual interactions that we and our Father are designed to have one with another, it is my understanding that our Father expects us to understand and appreciate that He is actually going to relate to us and interact with us as a genuine father does. For He is genuinely our Father both by regeneration and by “the adoption of sons”. Hence, He is not going to be simply ‘acting like a father’ to us in our sonship. Or in other words He is not going to have it so that His infinite attributes make it so that He is only pretending to be functioning as a father to us. Instead in accordance with His ability to make His infinite attributes, capacities, and abilities to be subservient to the relationships that He wants to have with His creation. He describes our sonship relationship with Him as one that does not operate upon His infinite attributes.
So in view of how God defines and describes our sonship relationship with Him, He also expects us to fully participate in our real ‘Father-son’ relationship with Him because it is a genuine and real relationship, without a shadow of any pretense whatsoever on His part.
Hence, it is my understanding that our Father expects us to understand, appreciate, and participate in sonship prayer for exactly what it is, which is the natural time for us to have genuine and real communion and information-based fellowship with Him, just as is designed to take place between a ‘father and son’ in connection with providing for the full effectual working of our sonship education and edification in our daily lives. And in view of this, God our Father also expects us to understand and appreciate that the provision of “help” described in Romans 8:26-27 is a provision that we naturally need to know about, and also naturally need to operate upon in connection with our “infirmities”. And this is because the relationship and interaction that we have with Him as our Father is a real and unpretentious ‘Father-son’ relationship. Hence even He is going to benefit from it as described, since He is functioning as a ‘real father with us’ and so we too are able to benefit from it as described, since we are functioning as ‘real sons with Him’.
Keith Blades
Enjoy The Bible Ministries
20070715 A45 S