We are dependent creatures. We are conceived and grow inside our mother’s before we enter the world. Even then we rely on them for years to feed, clothe, teach, and take care of us. We rely on our parents to listen to our whining, our angst-filled teenage searching, and our early adulthood decisions.
More broadly we rely on each other in community for food production, water, shelter, etc. Our entire lives are spent in interdependence with other humans and our environment for surviving and thriving. Even if you live alone in the middle of nowhere Alaska, you rely on the environment around you for the raw materials for shelter and food.
We live such dependent lives we are either minorly aware, or unaware unless it is pointed out. It’s so much a part of who we are we can begin to think that God is dependent on us.
Let’s be clear. God doesn’t need us.
We were not created because he was lonely and needed someone to talk to. After all, God is in perfect harmony and communion in the trinity. More on that in another post.
Before creation, God was. He existed before he brought anything into existence. Our Bibles begin with the statement, “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1) This beginning was not his beginning, but creation’s beginning. Look at how Jesus prays in John 17:5 “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” God was in perfect harmony and unity in the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before the creation act.
Why is this important? Why do we care about divine aseity? Aseity is the attribute of God which is his self-existence and self-sufficiency. He does not need anyone or anything.
This matters because if God were not self-sufficient and self-existent, he would not be God. If God is dependent on his creation, then he is part of that creation and is not the ultimate cause for it. If God depended on creation, he could not have caused it to be as he would have depended on it to exist.
You and I depend on a great many things without which we would not exist. The air we breathe, water, and food being but a few. This is not true of God. He created air, water, food, the ground we stand on, stars, gravity, quarks, the higgs-boson particle, and everything else we know about and a whole lot we don’t know about.
He exists outside of his creation.
If creation, the universe, time, basically all that there is could be placed inside a box, God would be outside of that box. He is not contingent upon the box for his existence, but the box is contingent upon him. He does not need us, the universe, or anything. Read here what Paul says of the preeminence of Christ in all things in Colossians 1:15-20.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
He was before all things. All things were created through him and for him. In him all things hold together.
God is pre-existent and self-sufficient. He is eternal and does not rely on his creation for his existence.
Far from that, we rely on him. We exist for him. We are here because he wills us to be here. Our lives are to glorify God.
May your life glorify God through a life of repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. His relationship to us merciful if you are in Christ, and it is for his glory. He does not have to save anyone, and would be justified and glorified if he so chose. Yet he chose to save some and show his mercy which glorifies him yet more.
Friends it is a good thing that God does not need us. He would not be God if he did. We need him. Rejoice in his glorious grace and magnify his name!
“Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name forever!” (Psalm 34:3)
