Have you ever thought of how much the concept of time limits our thinking?  Time is finite.   One day it will end.  We live and move within the boundaries of time.  We are limited in our thinking by it’s boundaries.

God is a spirit.  He is eternal.  He has no beginning and no end.  We are His creation.  We exist at His good pleasure.  He makes the rules.  He lives inside and outside of time.  He is not limited by the boundaries of time.

One of the names for God is “I Am”.  When Moses asked God who he should say had sent him, God replied; tell them “I Am” has sent you.  Jesus told the Pharisees; before Abraham was, I Am.  

What does this mean?  It means that God is always in the present. With Him there is no past or future.  He is not limited or confined by time.  He can stand on the outside of time and view the whole as one. He is time’s creator and one day He will bring it to an end.

We limit God in our thinking by defining Him as we define ourselves, within time where sin is the norm.  With God, sin is not the norm.  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8 & 9).

God is sinless.  He is without sin, that is His nature.  Sinful man cannot enter into God’s presence without being destroyed.  

When God dwelt among His people as recorded in the Old Testament, provision was made yearly for the people’s sin.  Once a year the high priest would enter into the holy of holies where God’s presence was manifested by His shekinah glory.  

The high priest would bring the blood of the sacrifice to sprinkle on the mercy seat between the two cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant.  This was the blood of the atonement.  The mercy seat was the meeting place between God and man (Exodus 25:22) when the blood of the proper sacrifice was sprinkled upon it.

God spelled out in His law detailed instructions for the sacrificial animal.  This sacrifice was a picture of God’s provision for our sins. (It pointed to the cross of Calvary where God’s only begotten Son would lay down His life for the sins of mankind and then take it up again.)  If the high priest were careless with this sacrifice for the people or the sacrifice for his own personal sin, God would reject it.  

For Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:

Nor yet that he should offer himself often as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with the blood of others;

For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.  

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.  Hebrews 9:24-28