Why is the gift of God beyond description? There are several reasons and the first is the nature of the gift itself. The gift is Christ. So, in order fully to describe this gift we must be able fully to describe who Jesus is and what He has done for our salvation, which we cannot do. Think of the difficulties involved in unfolding just that first part: who Jesus is. Jesus described Himself as being one with God the Father, and the Scripture everywhere testifies to that fact. Even His name, Jesus, means “Jehovah saves.” Immanuel means “God with us.” If Jesus is God, we cannot describe this gift because God Himself is indescribable. Can we say what it means for God to be self-existent, having no origins and being beyond the full range of human discovery? Can we say what it means for Him to be self-sufficient, needing nobody? Can we understand what it means to be a spirit or to be “infinite, eternal and unchangeable,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism states the matter? These things are beyond us, so much so that even God (I say it reverently) cannot fully describe Himself when speaking to mere human beings. When Moses asked God who he should say God was, God answered, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you'” (Ex. 3:14).
We have another problem if we are attempting to describe God: we cannot understand the Trinity. Jesus claimed to be God, but at the same time He spoke of God the Father and prayed to Him, thus indicating that there were distinctions of persons within the Godhead. How are we to get a handle on that? We even have difficulty finding language that does not somehow inevitably err when we attempt to describe what the Trinity means. In fact, it took the church more than three hundred years—from the death of Christ to the Council of Constantinople (AD 381)—before it finally ratified the formula of one God existing in three co-equal persons. But even this only kept the church from erroneous statements; it did not exhaust the meaning of the Trinity.
Briefly put, the creeds state that there is one God in three persons and that Jesus is one person in two natures. But this does not adequately describe God’s gift. At best it only keeps us from errors when we think about Him.
Even this is not all we must face when we think of trying to describe God’s gift. For the gift consists not merely of who Jesus Christ is, but also of what He has done. Jesus came to provide salvation for us by His sacrifice on the cross, and we cannot adequately describe this either. God has given us terms by which to understand it. We have words like sacrifice, atonement, propitiation, and reconciliation. But how did Jesus achieve this reconciliation by dying?
The nature and work of the Lord Jesus Christ are beyond our full understanding and therefore also beyond our powers of description.
