Churches often say true things about God: God is loving, holy, sovereign, just, and near. Yet even faithful Christians can carry an understanding of God that is narrower than the God revealed in Scripture. In Your God Is Too Small, British theologian and Bible translator J. B. Phillips argues that many people reject not the living God, but an inadequate mental image of God—perhaps a stern policeman, an indulgent grandfather, a distant ruler, or a religious figure confined to Sunday worship. Such images may contain fragments of truth, but they become harmful when mistaken for the whole.
A church can broaden its congregation’s understanding of God by first encouraging honest examination. What assumptions about God have been shaped by childhood, culture, suffering, authority figures, or disappointment? Do we imagine God primarily as one who watches for mistakes? Do we treat God as a source of comfort who never challenges us? Do we assume God belongs more naturally to the past than to the complexities of modern life? Phillips’s central insight remains valuable: spiritual maturity often requires the dismantling of inadequate ideas so that a fuller biblical vision can emerge.
Scripture itself resists every attempt to reduce God to a manageable definition. God is both transcendent and near: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8), yet “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). God is holy enough to expose sin and merciful enough to forgive it. He is the Creator of galaxies and the Father who notices a falling sparrow (Matthew 10:29). He cannot be controlled, yet he makes himself known. A healthy congregation learns to hold these truths together rather than emphasizing one while neglecting another.
The clearest way to deepen understanding of God is to place Jesus Christ at the center. Jesus tells Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In Christ, God’s character becomes visible: compassion that touches the excluded, truth that confronts hypocrisy, authority that calms storms, humility that washes feet, and sacrificial love that goes to the cross. The resurrection further declares that God’s power is not defeated by suffering, injustice, or death. Christians therefore do not build certainty merely on abstract arguments; they trust the God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
This kind of certainty should not be confused with having an answer to every question. Biblical faith includes lament, mystery, and seasons of doubt. The Psalms repeatedly ask, “How long, Lord?” and the father in Mark 9 prays, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Christian certainty is fundamentally relational: confidence in God’s character even when God’s purposes are not fully understood. A church strengthens that confidence not by silencing questions, but by bringing questions into Scripture, prayer, worship, and compassionate community.
Congregations can cultivate a larger vision of God through deliberate practices. Preaching should draw from the whole counsel of Scripture, including passages about holiness, justice, mercy, creation, lament, judgment, reconciliation, and hope. Testimonies should include not only dramatic answers to prayer, but also stories of perseverance when answers were delayed. Small groups can discuss the inadequate images identified by Phillips and compare them with biblical portraits of God. Worship can include reverence and celebration, silence and proclamation, confession and assurance. Service among the poor, lonely, and marginalized can help believers encounter dimensions of God’s heart that remain theoretical from a distance.
The church should also welcome insights from the worldwide and historic body of Christ. No single culture, generation, denomination, or personality type perceives every dimension of God with equal clarity. Christians from different backgrounds may help one another recognize blind spots and recover neglected truths. This does not mean treating all ideas as equally valid; Scripture remains the church’s governing witness. It does mean approaching one another with humility, aware that the infinite God exceeds every culture’s preferred categories.
Phillips’s title is ultimately an invitation, not an accusation. The answer to a “too small” god is not simply a larger concept, but deeper communion with the living God. As believers study Scripture, contemplate Christ, pray honestly, worship together, endure suffering, and practice love, their confidence can become both stronger and humbler. They become less certain of their own limited pictures and more certain of God’s revealed faithfulness.
A broadened understanding of God should produce visible fruit. Awe should deepen without destroying intimacy. Conviction should increase without erasing grace. Confidence should grow without becoming arrogance. Mission should expand because God’s love extends beyond familiar boundaries. The goal is not merely to think bigger thoughts, but to become a people whose worship, courage, compassion, and hope bear witness to the God who is always greater than our understanding—and yet has graciously made the Great I AM known.
Source: Phillips, J. B. Your God Is Too Small. London: Epworth Press, 1952.