Aseity of God

men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious, for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you,

and then he, notice where he starts,

the God who made the world and everything in it.

Right, there's Genesis 1.1.

being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

See, Paul's making very clear he's the creator, we're the creation. He's not like us. He's not entangled with us. He's not dependent on us. We are totally dependent on him, but it doesn't go the other way around. Paul says, God doesn't live in temples made by man. He's not dependent on us for a place to live. You think of Solomon building the temple, he was very aware. I mean, God can't dwell in this temple that I have built. The whole heavens can't contain him. And Paul says, God's not served by human hands. He doesn't need our service or our worship. Nothing that we could bring or give could contribute to him. It's like when God tells the Israelites,

I own the cattle on a thousand hills. If I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you.

He doesn't need us. He doesn't need our worship or our service. He's all sufficient and all glorious in and of himself. And Paul says, look, God is the one who gives to all mankind, life and breath and everything. And then he goes on to say, it's in him that we live and move and have our being. All that we have is from him. So nothing we could ever do could contribute to him. It would be like taking water from the ocean to try to fill the ocean. If God is the creator, he's the source, he's the provider, You know, all that he has is from himself and all that we have comes from him. So God is ase. He is dependent on no one. And all of this flows from the creator-creature distinction we find right there in the very first verse of the Bible in Genesis 1.1. Now, in the interest of time, I wanna hasten on to another passage in the Pentateuch that speaks to God's society, and that's Exodus 3.14. So this is the burning bush passage. God is sending Moses to the Israelites, and Moses, his concern is, but what if they won't listen to me? Or they ask me, well, what's the name of this God that's sent you to us? You know, so God, what's your name? What should I tell them? And in Exodus 3.14, it says,

And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

Now, There's so much we could say about this verse. I'm only gonna scratch the surface of it here. I trust Justin is gonna unpack this a little bit more for us next time. But for now, I just want you to notice God names himself I Am. And especially in that culture, name was meant to convey your character, your nature, your identity, to describe who you are. So for example, the Egyptian god Ra was named Ra because it meant son. or they had a god, Hopi, which was the god of the Nile, and the name derived from the word for the Nile River. You know, pagans would tend to look out at creation and find something majestic or powerful or necessary for life, and they would either worship that thing as a god or else at least define or describe their god in terms of that thing. But notice that when God is asked for his name here, He doesn't point to something in creation to identify himself with. He says, I am who I am. And one of the implications of that is that the only way for God to define or identify himself is in terms of himself. I am who I am. There's no created thing that can adequately reflect or describe him. Now, of course, there are times in Scripture when, you know, Scripture says, God is light, or God is my rock, you know, and these borrow created things to try to describe certain aspects of who God is. But what Exodus 3.14 shows us is that those descriptions in and of themselves are woefully inadequate. Now they're helpful, I mean, God himself uses them in his word to communicate something to us as feeble-minded creatures about who he really is. But I think they're only helpful on the foundation that God is who he is and there's no one like him. You see, if we divorce those things from the creator-creature distinction, and we start thinking as if we could just take a bunch of elements of creation and combine them together to come up with an accurate picture of who God is, we go very far astray. We have to realize from the outset, he's the creator. Everything else is creation. He's utterly unique. And therefore, there's a very real sense in which the only way to know who God is is to know who God is. He can only be known or identified in terms of himself. Now, how does all this relate to God's aseity? Well, first, because the reason why God can't be described or defined in terms of anything outside of himself is because he's not from or of anything outside of himself. All that he is is from himself, and that's why he's so unique. Everything else is just sort of the creation from God, but God himself is of himself. So you have to know him to know him. His aseity undergirds his uniqueness. Secondly, the second way God identifying himself as the I am relates to his aseity is because it shows us that God is the standard of his own being. In other words, it's not just that God possesses certain attributes of himself, it's that these attributes themselves cannot even be defined apart from God himself. Now expect, again, Justin will probably come back to this next week and talk about the simplicity of God. But for now, just think about this. If God could be defined in terms of anything outside of himself, then in some sense, his identity would be dependent on that thing outside of himself. So, for example, if I said this book is 10 inches tall, well, You know, I could do that because I could compare the book against a ruler and measure it. Or I could say, you know, Sister Sue here is a loving woman because we could compare her life against the things that the Bible says are loving and see that Sue exhibits those things. But when it comes to God, the doctrine of aseity means we can't do that. I have no right to say God is good Because I have this ruler of goodness over here that I can measure God up against and show you that he's good. Because where would that goodness ruler come from? My own imagination? The consensus of men? Some ideal form of goodness that just floats out there independent of God? You see, all of those would contradict the doctrine of aseity. God isn't good because he conforms to some external standard of goodness. He's good because God is good. And all that God is, he is from himself. And therefore, whatever goodness is, goodness itself must be defined in terms of God. God is the very standard of what goodness is. So again, I think this is part of what's implied. God says, I am who I am. He's the standard which defines himself. And then a third way that this declaration of God as the I am relates to his aseity is because it tells us that God is who he is in an unchangeable way. So when God says, I am, It means that he's the one who simply is. He's not the God who's becoming something. He's the God who is who he is. He's not the God who came from somewhere. He's the eternal I am. He's the God that is the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity. whose name is holy. He's the God of whom we can say,

before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

He's the God who right here in this passage appears in this burning bush, a fire that's burning and burning in the bush, around the bush, and yet Moses goes over there, why? Because the bush isn't being consumed. It's a fire that's not like any other kind of fire. It's a fire that just keeps burning forever because it has its own energy within itself. And you see, if God is who he is from himself, well then it's impossible that he could ever be anything other than who he already is within himself. For God to change implies that something outside of God is affecting God. For God to change means he's subject to the influence of time. But with God, there is no change. There is no becoming. There is no evolving. He is the God who perfectly and sufficiently and enduringly can say, I am who I am. He's Ase, all that he is is from himself. Well, at this point, I hope we've at least scratched the surface in grappling with this doctrine. Perhaps you can understand why I, even in my prayer, feel intimidated to try to explain this. And yet I hope you can see just how important this is, that this undergirds our whole understanding of who God is, that this is a necessary starting point. To summarize where we've been, when the scripture teaches that God is independent and assay, it means he's self-existent, not meaning that God created himself, but that God is the ground of his own being in and of himself. God's self-sustaining. You know, just like that eternal fire in the burning bush, he himself sustains himself because he has life in himself. He's self-sufficient. He needs nothing from anyone, but he gives all things to everyone. He's the uncreated creator who upholds the universe by the word of his power. He's self-defined. He is the standard by which everything else is judged. No one can hold him to any other standard. But all things are held to the standard of God himself. And he's self-determined. In other words, God is exactly who he wants to be, and he is doing exactly what he wants to do. We so often dream of, being something different. We daydream of one day achieving some goal. God isn't like that. There are no external factors affecting who he is or constraining what he does. There's just the perfect harmony of God being exactly who he wants to be and doing exactly what he wants to do because all that God is is from and of himself. He doesn't grow, he doesn't change, he doesn't evolve. He already has perfection in and of himself. Now what difference should this make for our lives? Well, I wanna flesh this out in four applications. And the first would be worship. I think that the first way we should respond to thinking about God and His aseity is just to bow our knees and worship Him. I think we're confronted with these things and we should just say, wow, God is so far beyond our ability to comprehend. He is so much higher and greater than we are. He's unique. He's the creator. And even as it should lead us to worship God, I think it also should lead us to see why God is the only one worthy of worship. The more clearly we see this, the more clearly we should see that no one and nothing else is even remotely deserving of worship. if we're confronted with some angel that just is blindingly glorious, I think we don't understand this. Maybe you think, oh, I'm just, I should bow my knees and worship this angel because he's just so spectacular and glorious. The doctrine of aseity helps us see that the glory of God is not just higher by degree. It's of another kind altogether. You know, I think if we understand this doctrine, then we'll be a little bit more like Paul in Athens when he sees the idols and his spirit is provoked. I mean, he understands God is so radically different than these created things. How can people worship these things? It bothered him. I mean, a Saiyan should help us see how radically different God is and therefore why he alone is worthy of our worship. Everything else, no matter how glorious it could be, is a created thing from him. He alone is the creator. A second way that we should respond to this would be trust. I think this should help us trust God more. Quoting James Dolezal, he says,

this is precisely why we can depend on him utterly and unreservedly, because he does not depend on anything. If God were in any way a dependent being, all our confidence in him would have to be grounded in something more fundamental in reality than God.

We can trust God because, we can depend on him because he doesn't depend on anything else. He is ase, he is independent. He doesn't depend on any contingencies outside of himself to bring his purposes to pass. He is omnipotent. There are no influences outside of him that could possibly change his mind. He's omniscient, he's faithful. And there's no influence that even time can have on God. He is eternal and immutable. And so this fact that God is, I say, means he's utterly reliable and trustworthy. So we should respond in worship, we should respond in trust. Number three, we should respond in humility. I think this is one of those doctrines that should deeply humble us. Because not only is God totally independent of us, it reminds us we are utterly dependent on him. The doctrine of aseity guards us against the lie that God created us because he was lonely, or that Jesus died for us because he just desperately needed some company in heaven. No, God created us and saved us for his own glory. God set his love on us because he wanted to. We didn't draw these things out from God. These plans and purposes come from God himself. As Martin Luther said,

the love of God is not like the love of man. Man's love comes into being when it finds something pleasing to it. God's love does not find, but creates that which is pleasing to him.

In other words, God's love, as I say, God's love is from himself. And so the fact that God loves us, it shouldn't make us pat ourselves on the back, it shouldn't make us prideful, it should make us humble, awed by the fact that he would set his love on us. The Doctrine of Mercy also means that we should be humble when it comes to God doing things we don't like or understand. You know, if God is the standard of goodness and justice, it helps us see that we have no right to judge God or to point our finger at him when trials or sufferings come that we don't understand. I think of Job. and all of his sufferings, and as those go along, I think there's times where Job begins to sort of point the finger and accuse God, and when God comes to speak to Job, he says,

where were you when I laid the foundation of the world?

I'm the creator, you're the creature. What right do you have to challenge me? Where were you? I mean, it's sort of like arguing with a ruler over how long a foot is, only much worse. God is the standard of justice. As Paul says in Romans 9,

who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? Shall the clay say to the potter, why have you made me like this?

God's a saint, he should humble us. We see him for who he is as the standard. And then a fourth and a final application would be to study, to study theology. I think the more we delve into the doctrine of aseity, the more we can appreciate the way that all theology comes back to our doctrine of God, and then in turn, the way that every aspect of the doctrine of God tightly interconnects. You know, we've already seen something in the way that aseity implies God's eternality and his immutability. God's aseity implies his omnipotence, right? Because if there's anything God could want to do, but he lacked the power to do, well then, something outside of him would be affecting or limiting him. He wouldn't truly be ase. Aseity also implies omniscience. Because if all that God is and has is from himself, then that would include his knowledge. He doesn't know things contingent or learning things from outside of himself. He has his knowledge in and of and from himself. And we've seen how that applies to how we think about his love and his goodness and his justice. He is the very standard of what those things are. So aseity undergirds and interconnects our whole doctrine of God. And then aseity and our doctrine of God, in turn, affect every other aspect of our theology. Just a couple examples, we studied Calvinism and Arminianism some months back. And while at sort of first glance, maybe that seems sort of distantly related to this, the doctrine of asceticism is actually pretty significant for how we think about something like free will. Many Arminians wind up saying that God's knowledge of the future is contingent on the free will of man. So God only knows what we're going to choose subsequent to his choice to create us. And so you see how that brings this real tension or limits us in a certain way because now God's knowledge, his omniscience, is contingent on creatures. Where in Calvinism, it's No, God foreknows the future because he foreordains it. So there's not that same tension. It preserves aseity. And then one other final example of this, and the one I want to end on, is the way that aseity affects our understanding of the cross. In a lot of atonement theologies, and really trying to answer the question, why did Jesus have to die on the cross? They wind up resorting to something outside of God. You know, God has to uphold some standard or satisfy someone or something outside of himself. Whether C.S. Lewis intended it or not, I think you can kind of get this impression from the Chronicles of Narnia, where Aslan dies or sacrifices himself to save Edmund, and then there's a discussion about this deep magic that had to be satisfied, and kind of gives you the idea there's this principle of justice or something outside that even God is sort of submitting to or abiding by. I think, again, whether Lewis intended that or not, I think a lot of Christians can sort of have that idea, and that's how we try to explain the need for the crucifixion. But I think a saiety helps to make clear that no, no, God is the standard. All that God is is from himself. He doesn't have to abide by something outside of himself. No, Jesus has to die on the cross because God is just. It's the nature of God himself that must be upheld. God is acting consistent with who he is. And so, again, to say it, he helps us to appreciate how all that God is, and his love, and his mercy, and his justice, it all comes together so perfectly in the cross. And I'm setting up Justin for next week. It's gonna talk about simplicity and how all of God's attributes are one. So with all that said, I pray that this brief study of God's aseity would lead us to study more, pray that it would humble us, pray that it would help us to trust God more, and especially that it would lead us to worship the God who is utterly independent and higher and apart from us. Let's conclude in prayer. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for this time to wrestle with, to consider who you are. God, we pray that as we delve into understanding you more, that we would respond in worship, that we would respond in faith, that we would be humble. We pray that you would be glorified through us. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.