Why does God ask questions if He is omniscient?
Scripture is full of moments where the all-knowing God puts a question to one of His creatures. "Where art thou?" He calls to Adam. "Where is Abel thy brother?" He asks Cain. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" He demands at the cave. "Lovest thou Me more than these?" He presses upon Peter. Since God already knows the answer, the question plainly cannot be for His information — it is for ours.
To awaken the conscience
The very first question God ever asked a human being was "Where art thou?" (Genesis 3:9). C. H. Mackintosh opens up the force of it:
C. H. Mackintosh"Where art thou?" This question proved two things. It proved that man was lost, and that God had come to seek. It proved man's sin, and God's grace. "Where art thou?" Amazing faithfulness! Amazing grace! Faithfulness, to disclose, in the very question itself, the truth as to man's condition: grace, to bring out, in the very fact of God's asking such a question, the truth as to His character and attitude, in reference to fallen man. Man was lost; but God had come down to look for him — to bring him out of his hiding place, behind the trees of the garden, in order that, in the happy confidence of faith, he might find a hiding place in Himself.
God did not need Adam to reveal his location. The question was a lamp held up to Adam's conscience — forcing him to see where he now stood. Mackintosh draws the contrast sharply: conscience alone drives a man away from God; revelation draws him back:
GENESIS1Conscience drove Adam behind the trees of the garden; revelation brought him forth into the presence of God. The consciousness of what he was terrified him; the revelation of what God was tranquillised him.
Frank Hole makes the same point more concisely:
Frank HoleThe Lord God might instantly have discarded the guilty pair and consigned them to their doom. Instead of that He sought them out; a sure indication that He had designs for their ultimate blessing. His call was, "Where art thou?" In response to this Adam had to reveal his whereabouts, and by attempting to cover his nakedness he uncovered his sin.
Hole then adds a remarkable observation about how God's questions thread through the entire Bible:
GenesisWhat is man's position as a fallen sinner? Where is he, now that he has broken loose from the Divine control? This is the first question of the Old Testament, and the rest of it works out the answer in all its hideous detail, till we come to the closing chapter of Malachi, ending with the significant word, "curse." We open the New Testament and not without design do we find the first question on record to be "Where is He …?" (Matt. 2:2).
That we might know ourselves
James Boyd, writing on Psalm 139, states the principle directly:
James Boyd"O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me." Evidently not for His own information. Why then were we searched? We were searched that we might know ourselves. This is what we have to learn in the beginning of God's dealings with us. We naturally do not desire to be searched, for nothing good morally is found in us. Our Lord says to His disciples "If ye then, being evil" (Luke 11:13). What shall God learn by His searchings? Nothing from us. But we may learn a great deal, and we shall learn very much if we answer to His searchings, and we are glad that we are searched.
This is the key: God's questions are His searchings — not the activity of an investigator looking for clues, but the work of a physician exposing the wound so that it can be healed. Boyd continues:
Gods_SearchingsNow he may learn something of the great thoughts of God. God is love, and all the thoughts of God spring from the great love of His heart. … Instead of being troubled by those divine searchings, his earnest prayer might be "Search me, O God, and know my heart, prove me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
To expose the roots, not just the fruit
The risen Lord's three-fold question to Peter — "Lovest thou Me?" — illustrates a further purpose. God's questions reach deeper than outward acts; they probe the hidden springs of the heart. C. H. Mackintosh writes of this scene:
C. H. MackintoshThree times Peter had denied his Lord, and three times his Lord now challenges the heart of Peter — for the roots must be reached if any permanent good is to be done. It will not do merely to have the conscience purged from the effects which have been produced in practical life; there must also be the moral judgement of that which produced them.
W. J. Hocking brings out the searching quality of the Lord's questions:
W. J. Hocking"Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?" The question was a simple one, but it had a dagger point. "More than these!" What had Peter said to the Lord when He forewarned him? Trusting in his own love and fidelity, Peter had boasted, "Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee." … Now the Lord asks him, "Lovest thou Me more than these?" The boastful one had denied the Lord; they had not!
The Lord did not forget Peter's boastful words, lifting himself above his brethren. He brought them back to his remembrance, very gently, with consummate skill and power, with such loving tenderness. Yet the keen knife entered, searching the reins, dividing between soul and spirit.
Peter's final answer — "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee" — is itself an appeal to God's omniscience. As the article on Omniscience in The Christian's Friend (1875) puts it:
article on OmniscienceThe Lord, in order to get at the bottom of our hearts, may have to remove a great heap of rubbish, such as self-confidence, pride and vanity; but He knows what His own grace has done for us, and He will find His love at the bottom of our hearts.
To bring out how little we know
In Job 38–41, God asks a torrent of questions — not about Job's sin, but about Job's ignorance. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" W. Kelly comments:
W. KellyGod is going to ask him a number of questions. Job had been questioning the dealings of God. Now God retorts upon him; now He says, I am going to ask you, and answer Me like a man if you can. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" What an overwhelming question! What did Job know about it?
The purpose here is not to humiliate Job but to bring him to the place of reliance on God rather than on his own understanding:
job11lecWhat is the effect, then, on a pious man that really believes in Him and His guidance? What is the effect of knowing our ignorance to be so immense? Reliance upon God. There was the great thing in which Job failed, murmured and found fault.
To expose self — even in a true servant
When God asked Elijah "What doest thou here?" at the cave in Horeb (1 Kings 19), He was not asking for a travel report. W. Kelly brings out the real thrust:
W. Kelly"What doest thou here?" brings out the state of his heart. "I have been very jealous." "I have been very jealous." There was the point. It was Elijah. Elijah was full of Elijah. … It was not what God was for Elijah, but what Elijah was for God.
God asked the same question twice. Elijah gave the same answer twice. And God then gently set him aside and appointed Elisha in his place — not because Elijah was wicked, but because his self-occupation had blinded him to the seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal. The question was meant to draw this out.
So the pattern is consistent throughout Scripture. God asks questions not to learn what He does not know, but to bring His creatures to the point where they know themselves — their sin, their ignorance, their self-confidence, or their love. The question is the instrument of His searching; and His searching, as Boyd puts it, is "evidently not for His own information" but for ours. A God who announced verdicts without questions would be a judge only. A God who asks questions — knowing the answers already — is a physician, a shepherd, and a father, drawing out confession so that He can apply the remedy of His grace.