“How big is God? How big and wide His vast domain?
To try to tell, these lips can only start.
He’s big enough to rule His mighty universe
Yet small enough to live within my heart.”[1]
That’s the question we want to answer in this article: Just how big is God? Tony Evans describes God’s immensity this way: “Immensity refers to that which cannot be contained. God’s presence is so vast that he not only is everywhere in the known universe but bursts through the limits of the universe and fills everything we do not even know about.”[2]
Stephen Charnock suggests that God’s “essence is immense, not to be confined in place.”[3] The height, breadth, depth and width of God are simply beyond imagination. Sound like omnipresence? Well, it is, but Louis Berkhof describes the difference this way:
“In a certain sense the terms ‘immensity’ and ‘omnipresence,’ as applied to God, denote the same thing, and can therefore be regarded as synonymous. Yet there is a point of difference that should be carefully noted. ‘Immensity’ points to the fact that God transcends all space and is not subject to its limitations, while ‘omnipresence’ denotes that He nevertheless fills every part of space with His entire Being. The former emphasizes the transcendence, and the latter, the immanence of God. God is immanent in all His creatures, in His entire creation, but is in no way bounded by it.”[4]
In the words of Stephen Charnock, “But it cannot be said of God’s essence, hitherto it reaches, and no further; here it is, and there it is not. It is plain, that God is thus immense, because he is infinite; we have reason and Scripture to assent to it, though we cannot conceive it.”[5] Further, Matthew Barrett explains, “It is because God is infinite, without limits, that he must be immense, unrestricted by space, transcending all space, able to be present in all places at one with his whole being.”[6] And, “As no place can be without God, so no place can compass and contain him.”[7]
Two more points about God’s immensity from an article by R. Scott Clark. First, what he terms a “negative definition:” “God is not diffused throughout creation as though he is partly here and partly there, but rather he is completely here, and completely there at the same time and with no loss to himself.”[8] But then, he says:
“Put positively, to say that God is ‘immense’ is to say that he fills all that can be filled with all of himself all the time. Put, negatively, there is no place where he is not. Therefore, God cannot be ‘contained.’ There could be no such thing as space or location unless God is immense and in actively filling all things sustains them. ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ (Acts 17:28).”[9]
But what do the Scriptures say about our immense God?
But what does God’s immensity mean for us today? R. Clark Scott suggests,
“It is our immense, triune God who wonderfully and mysteriously took on humanity in addition to his immensity, as the greatest condescension to our weakness. He who by nature fills and upholds all things by his power became a flesh and blood human being. Why? Because the height, depth, and width of God’s love is as great as his immensity. God the Father loved us with all that he is and gave up his only and eternally begotten Son, so that we might know him.”[10]