God's Aseity for Kids—and Grownups, Too

From Big Truths for Young Hearts by Bruce Ware:

God is so amazingly great, so perfectly strong, and so completely different from everyone and everything else that he is able to live fully as God without any help from anyone or anything. God doesn’t need air to breathe or food to eat or water to drink. He doesn’t need help with the work that he decides to do. Rather, God always has, within his own life, everything he needs for being who he is as God and for doing all that he chooses to do. He doesn’t need anything at all in the whole world, even though everything in the world needs God. So, God is God—completely and perfectly—without anything in the world helping God to be God.

It is hard to think of God this way, but it is important to learn that this is who God really is. Everything else, and everyone else, in all of the world has to depend on certain things or on certain people. If we listed all of the things that we need—things that we don’t have in our own lives but must receive in order to live and to do what we want to do—we would be amazed at how long the list would be. But God has no such list! Nothing in the entire world can add to God or can give to God something that he lacks. He has everything—yes everything!—that really is good, and he has all of this within his own life as God. There is not one single good quality that is not contained within God’s own life as God. Anything that you can think of that really is good—all truth, all wisdom, all power, all kindness, all love, all righteousness, and every other good thing—is in the very life of God, and it has always been this way. It is simply impossible for God to lack any good thing, because by his very life and being he is the one who has everything that truly and really is good. So, God is God, fully and completely, apart from us and apart from the world he has made.

God's Holiness

Yes, another attribute of God repost. And now you know what this week’s Theological Term is, don’t you?

Writing about God’s attributes hasn’t been easy, but of all the attributes that I’ve written about, this one has been the most difficult, because it’s not been easy for me to to understand exactly what it means that God is holy. Is it even right to think of God’s holiness in the same way we think of the other attributes of God? It doesn’t seems to be so much one among others, but rather, God’s overarching attribute—the attribute into which all the other attributes fit.

From what I can tell, his holiness is the attribute of God mentioned most often in scripture and the only one triply emphasised.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!

This triple emphasis comes twice—as quoted above from Isaiah 6:3 and once again in Revelation 4:8.

That God is holy tells us, first of all, that he is the “one and only.” He is transcendent (or other), and distinct from everything else in a way that makes him superior to all the rest. He is in a class by himself far above everything else that exists.

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
(Exodus 15:11 ESV)

There is none holy like the Lord;
there is none besides you;
there is no rock like our God.
(1 Samuel 2:2 ESV)

God’s holiness is closely associated with his glory and majesty. His holiness is equivalent, it seems, to his deity, his godness.

That God is holy means that we must hold him in singular esteem. Because God is holy, we must have no other gods before him, worship and serve only him, and treat his name with unique reverence.

Also included within God’s holiness is his moral perfection. God is set apart from all else by his purity; He is, in fact, the measure of purity. Out of his moral perfection comes his abhorrence of all moral imperfection. Habakuk tells us that God’s purity makes him unable to look on wickedness with approval, and Psalm 24 tells us that only those who are similarly pure may stand in the presence of our holy God.

Isaiah, then, had exactly the right response when he was brought face to face with the holiness of the Lord.

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5 ESV).

The more clearly we see God’s holiness, the more clearly we see our own sinful state. There is not one of us who can remain standing in the presence of our holy God, because we all fall far short of his glory.

The proper response to God’s holiness is fear. Fear of our holy God is the beginning of true wisdom. Fear of God is, Proverbs tells us, a fountain of life turning us away from the snares of death (Proverbs 14:27). It is because we fear God’s holy response to our unholiness that we throw ourselves on his mercy. It is because we fear God that we understand the true value of what Christ has done for us by saving us from God’s holy judgment against our sin.

Our knowledge of God’s holiness is a driving force in our sanctification. Reverance for God motivates us to turn away from evil (Proverbs 16:6). It is out of our reverence for a holy God that we submit to him in obedience and conduct ourselves circumspectly before him. Those of us who are belong to him are called to be holy as he is holy. We are called be holy in our behavior so we can be like the One who called us (1 Peter 1:15-17).

Of course, since God alone is holy, the holiness that we are called to show in our conduct is never our own intrinsic holiness, but holiness derived from the only Holy One. Our Holy God separates us to himself by making us like him. He make us holy as he is holy.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)

Why does he make us holy? So that we may proclaim the excellencies of the only Holy One, the one in a class by himself far above all others. He makes us holy so that we may give him the glory due unto his holy name.

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!”
(Rev. 4:8 ESV)

God's Power

Another attributes of God post re-edited and reposted so I can link to it in this week’s Theological Term of the Week.

For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. (Romans 1:20 NET)

Although there are statements about God’s power throughout scripture, we don’t need the revelation of scripture to know something of it, for creation itself is a clear witness to the power of God. Every person who sees the natural world we live in knows that its origin was at the hand of an unfathomably powerful God. Anyone who denies that they see God’s power in creation is suppressing what they really do know. We all understand, deep down, that there is a God who possesses eternal power and those who deny him are are choosing, on some level, to fool themselves into believing otherwise.

Not only did God create the world by His power, but we know from scripture that the created order is maintained “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1). The universe keeps on functioning because of God is constantly exerting his power to sustain it. God spoke the universe into existence and he speaks its continued existence.

That God is omnipotent means that he has the power to execute his will. When Psalm 115 tells us that God does whatever he pleases it is telling us that God is omnipotent. So, too, when Paul tell us in Ephesians 1 that God works all things after the counsel of His will. What God decides to do comes about with certainty because he has the power to accomplish whatever he wills.

If God desired, he could do more than he does. His power could raise up children of Abraham from stones, but He chooses not to work that way (Matthew 3). God had the power to free Jesus from the multitude that took him, for Jesus tells us that he could have called upon the Father and the Father would have sent more than twelve legions of angels to rescue him (Matthew 26:53); but it was God’s will that Christ be delivered over to be crucified in order to work the salvation that had already declared in scripture (Matthew 26:54).

That God is omnipotent doesn’t mean that he can do absolutely anything at all. We are told that God cannot lie, he cannot sin, and he cannot deny himself. What keeps him from doing those things, however, is not lack of power, but steadfastness of character. It is the constancy of God’s perfections, not a shortage of power, that determines that there are certain actions he cannot do.

Every single person knows God’s power through his creative work, but those of us who belong to him have another witness of his power—his re-creative work within us. We know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:19ff). The power that called Lazarus from the tomb and raised Jesus from the dead has also “called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

And we have no excuses for our failures, do we? We cannot excuse ourselves because we are weak, for while it is true that we are weak, the same power that raised Jesus dwells within us. The power of the resurrection is ours for our sanctification. It is by the work of the One who accomplishes all that He wills that we are becoming righteous. We have no excuse for not doing the works of our salvation, for it is the omnipotent God who is working in us, “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

God’s “power toward us who believe” means that we have security despite our weaknesses. The God who spoke the universe into existence, who sustains it by his word, who raised Christ from the dead, and who is always, ever working all things according to the counsel of his will keeps us by his power (1 Peter 1:3-5). The God of all ability is on our side. Who can stand against us?

It is through the power of the One who accomplishes all that he pleases that we are overwhelming conquerors in the most difficult circumstances, so that

…neither death nor life,
nor angels nor principalities nor powers,
nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth,
nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:38,39)

The limitlessness of God’s power is one more reason for us to trust in him.