What does it mean that God is transcendent?

We read, however, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." It is clear from this first verse in the Bible that God existed before the creation that He is transcendent, that is to say, as to God's being He is supreme, beyond all limitations, distinct from all that creation which has proceeded from Him.

If God created He existed before He created. The carpenter must exist before he can make a table. God is transcendental, that is, He exists before and outside the universe, which is the result of Divine mental conception, so that through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that "things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb. 11:3).

The Pantheist professes a god who is immanent in Nature but not transcendent above it. The God of verse 1 is clearly One outside of Nature and infinitely above it, seeing He made it, and therefore existed before it. From Him all that which we call Nature proceeds.

God is outside and above all that He created and made. Thus, on the seventh day when creation was what we may call "a going concern," God is said to have rested. Thus Pantheism — the idea that God is only to be conceived of as immanent in creation, pervading all nature — is wholly denied. He may indeed act in nature, but He is transcendent, essentially above it in Person and Being.

Genesis 1:1 alone is decisive, for who could be the transcendent creator but the Supreme Being?

"For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."

There is an immense contrast! A Being so great as to fill all things, to inhabit eternity, yet so gracious, so condescending as to stoop down and dwell in the humble and contrite spirit.

God inhabits eternity. He fills all things. He is everywhere. He is the uncreated, self-existent source of all things, yet knowing no source for Himself. He created all things out of nothing. Such a conception satisfies because it is beyond conception. We bow before this glorious Being with holy joy. Our hearts trust Him, for He is utterly beyond the littleness and frailty and sinfulness of men.

How amazing that the High and Mighty One, who inhabits eternity, should so value the love and remembrance of a poor worm of the earth! Yet so it is, and we ought to bear it more in mind.

He would have Job look up into those very heavens which he thought were against him, and ponder the character of One who is infinitely perfect, unaffected by the puny activities of men on earth, who are as grasshoppers in His sight. How could such an One, infinitely holy, divinely sufficient unto Himself, act unjustly toward one whose conduct may and does affect himself and his fellow-men, but cannot penetrate those serene heights?

This is the wondrous meaning of "Emmanuel," (God with us); not merely as omnipresent, filling heaven and earth and transcending all the bounds of His vast universe, but (amazing thought!) in the person of One who emptied Himself and took a servant's form and was made in the likeness of men — of One who was perfect Man in the fullest sense of the word, spirit, soul and body — "the Man Christ Jesus."

We do not go further into details of this transcendent fact which God has been pleased to reveal to us. "Will God in very truth dwell with man?" — there had been glimpses of this, but now it is an accomplished fact.