The Aseity of God

It is important that we understand that God did not create us because God was lonely, because God had a need inside of Him that was unmet by Himself. God did not create us because there was a hole in His holiness, or He did not create the universe to fulfill some need that He had. No, God was and is all sufficient in Himself.

He is in need of nothing outside of Himself. Why did God create us? Why did God send His Son to save sinners? I've heard it said that God was lonely, desiring companionship, that God is sitting in heaven desiring to save us so that we could be with Him, yet unable to save any of us unless we first choose Him. That is not the description of God found in the Bible. Welcome to the Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we continue our study of the attributes of God according to the Bible with this week's teacher, Stephen Lawson. We are made in the image of God, yet it can be easy to make God in our image unless our minds and thinking are renewed according to God's Word. Today, Dr. Lawson will consider one of the attributes that makes God so distinct from us, His aseity or self-existence. You and I are dependent. We get lonely. We have needs, but not so with the God of heaven and earth.

Here's Dr. Lawson. In this session, we want to consider the first attribute of God to which we want to fix our attention. That attribute is the self-existence of God.

Some refer to it as the aseity of God, that God has all life in Himself. God is not dependent upon anyone or anything. We as His creatures are entirely dependent upon Him. The life that we have, both physical and spiritual, has been derived from Him. It is in God that we live and move and have our being, but God does not derive life from anyone or anything else. God is self-sufficient. God is self-contained in that sense.

God has life in Himself. That is our focus in this session. By way of introduction, let me say again that there is no higher subject that any mind can ever contemplate than the subject of the study of God. No truth is so mind-expanding, and no truth is so heart-enlarging, and no truth is so life-changing as the study of God. In 1855, a mere twenty-year-old preacher in London, England, who is to become the prince of preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, stood in the pulpit as he began his exposition of Malachi 3.6, and in the introduction, this twenty-year-old young preacher said these profound words, �There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity. It is a subject so vast that all of our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity.

Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with. In them we feel a kind of self-content and go on our way with the thought, �Behold, I am wise.� But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb line cannot sound its depth and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with a solemn exclamation, �I am of but yesterday and know nothing.� But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man as a devout, earnest, continuing investigation of the great subject of the deity.� Spurgeon was right.

He hit the target. There is no subject so humbling as the study of the subject of God. We stand, as it were, as a moth on the surface of the sun, gazing into the brilliant, shining glory of the sun and realize that we are but nothing. And at the same time, no subject so energizes us, so enfuels our faith and builds us up and edifies us. No subject so comforts us and consoles us as a study of the subject of God.

That is our focus. Now, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, written in 1647, sets forth this following statement of faith regarding God. �God is spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.� That is but a summary of the essence and the attributes of God. We want to now begin our focus on these attributes with the main lead attribute that uniquely distinguishes God, His self-existence. The Bible begins with this simple statement in Genesis 1-1, �In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.� Before creation, God was already in existence. God was already in existence as we look back into eternity past. In fact, there has never been a time when God did not exist. Psalm 93, 2 says, �Your throne is established from of old.� We would ask, how old is the throne of God? The second line of this verse tells us, �You are from everlasting.� That's impossible for us to wrap our mind around that thought. We have all had a beginning.

You can pull out your driver's license and see the date of your birth. We can go to a cemetery and see the year someone was born and the year that they die, but not so with God. He is without beginning.

He is without end. In fact, we know that God existed from before the foundation of the world, from before time began. We read in Micah 5, 2 of Christ the Messiah, �His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.� What that means is when Jesus came, He stepped out of eternity and into time. All of these verses indicate His eternal existence, that God is uncreated. He is the uncreated Creator.

He is uncaused. One other verse in the Psalms, Psalm 90, verse 2, �Before the mountains were born, or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.� From eternity past to eternity future and everything in between, God is God. So we can conclude at no point did God not exist. There was never a time when God was not God.

R.C. Sproul writes in a profound way, �If anything exists, then something has always existed.� If there was ever absolutely nothing, then nothing could possibly be now, because you cannot get something out of nothing. Conversely, if there is something now, then that in and of itself demonstrates that there was always something. And that which always is exists in and of itself. That is the one who has the power of being within himself, the living God, close quote.

What R.C. Sproul is saying is that because there is something now, you and me and the universe and the earth, that presupposes by necessity that there has always been something, and that something is God, the eternal God. Isaiah 43 verse 10, God says, �Before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me.� No God preceded God, nothing preceded God, and nothing will follow Him as well. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. A. W. Pink has written a marvelous book called The Attributes of God, and in that book, Pink writes, �There was a time, if time it could be called, when God in the unity of His nature, though subsisting equally in three divine persons, dwelt all alone. In the beginning, God, there was no heaven where His glory is now particularly manifested.

There was no earth to engage His attention. There were no angels to Him His praises, no universe to be upheld by the word of His power. There was nothing, no one but God and that not for a day, a year or an age, but from everlasting.� During a past eternity, God was alone, self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied, in need of nothing. Had a universe, had angels, had human beings been necessary to Him? In any way, they also had been called into existence from all eternity. The creating of them, when He did, added nothing to God essentially. He changes not. Therefore, His essential glory can be neither augmented nor diminished.

Now listen to this. Pink concludes, �God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That He chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on His part, caused by nothing outside of Himself, determined by nothing but His own mere good pleasure. For He works all things after the counsel of His will.

That He did create, Pink writes, was simply for His manifested glory.� We feel overwhelmed by thoughts like this, and that is a good place to be. It produces humility within us to think of the vastness and the greatness of our God, who has always existed and yet chose to create time and creation and the universe and even us. The more we contemplate the majesty and the greatness and the grandeur of our God, the more it humbles us. And God gives grace to the humble, does He not? God gives strength to those who are weak.

This is a good place for us to be, under the shadow of the Almighty. Revelation 4 verse 8, �He is the God who was and who is and who is to come.� Isaiah 57, 15, �For thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever.� Psalm 102, 27, �You are the same and your years will not come to an end.� Now this eternal God, as we have already said, is self-existent, meaning He is not dependent for anything or anyone outside of Himself for His existence. God is not caused by anything outside of Himself.

He is not upheld by anyone outside of Himself. He instead is the source and the cause of His own existence. God has all life in Himself, and the basis of our life has been derived from God. John 1, 4, �Concerning the word Christ, in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.� This life is all in God, and so therefore our physical life is from Him. Our spiritual life is from Him. Our eternal life is from Him, but He is this self-existent life.

John 5 verse 26, �The Father has life in Himself.� In John 11, 25, Jesus said, �I am the resurrection and the life.� John 14 verse 6, �I am the way, the truth, and the life.� Romans 9 verse 26, �He is the living God.� Acts 17, 28, �It is in Him that we live and move and have our being.� God, who is life and has all life in Himself, is self-sufficient in Himself. It is important that we understand that God did not create us because God was lonely, because God had a need inside of Him that was unmet by Himself. God did not create us because there was a hole in His holiness, or He did not create the universe to fulfill some need that He had. No, God was and is all sufficient in Himself.

He is in need of nothing outside of Himself. Romans 11, 34 says, �For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?� God doesn�t go to anyone for counseling. God is self-contained and self-sufficient in His own wisdom.

We must seek Him for counsel and wisdom. The next verse, verse 35, �For who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again?� God is not obligated to anyone. God has never received something from someone that God therefore now is in an obligatory relationship that owes something back. No, God is self-contained, He is self-sufficient, and perhaps the most extraordinary statement of that is the next verse, Romans 11, 36, �For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.� That's an all-inclusive statement, that it's all from Him, it's all through Him, it's all to Him. That all things are from Him means that God is the source of everything. That all things are through Him means that He is the means of all things, and that it is to Him means that He is the goal of all things. There is nothing outside of that statement.

There is no reality outside of that statement. From Him, through Him, to Him are all things. In the Reformation Study Bible, in the footnote at that point, it says all things are from His sovereign will, through His sovereign activity, and to His sovereign glory. He is the self-existent, self-sufficient God from which everything flows and through which everything functions and for whom everything exists.

Is that not a staggering statement? Nothing originates in itself, nothing proceeds in itself, and nothing is for itself. The happiest and most joyful moments of our lives are when we truly contemplate and meditate upon this truth. Our hearts were made for God.

Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, and the greater our understanding of who God is, our own heart is equally enlarged and filled with contentment and satisfaction and pleasure in our God. 1 Corinthians 8, verse 6 says much the same, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. Colossians 1, 17, Christ is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Hebrews 1, verse 3, Jesus upholds all things by the word of His power. The immensity and the infinity of our God is beyond our comprehension. It is beyond our ability to truly grasp, and yet we must come and lose ourselves to be swallowed up in the vastness and the greatness, the grandeur and the glory of our God.

We, as a result of this, must learn what it is to truly trust Him in everything. Sometimes we think, can I bring small things to God, or should I only bring large things to God? One day, G. Campbell Morgan, who was the predecessor of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, was preaching at Westminster Chapel in London. He had been preaching on the greatness of God, and after the service, a very proper Victorian-like lady came to the front door of the church as Dr. Morgan was greeting the parishioners as they were leaving, and she took Dr. Campbell's hand with her white-gloved hand and said, Dr. Morgan, may I bring little things to God or only big things?

Dr. Morgan looked at her with a twinkle in his eye and he said, ma'am, everything in your life is little. There is nothing big in your life, not compared to God, right? God is God, and we are but the creatures of His hand. Therefore, we must bring everything to God.

We must trust Him with everything, trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. What an encouragement for us as we think of this self-existence of God. There is not a need that we have in our lives, but that He is the supply.

There is nothing that we are lacking in our lives, but that God has infinite resources to provide for us as we follow His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So as we begin our study of the attributes of God, we begin at that place where there is no beginning. We go back to eternity past, and when we cannot go back any further, there is our eternal God, self-sufficient, self-satisfied, self-contained, possessing all life in Himself, ready to uphold us, ready to strengthen us, ready to encourage us as we live our lives. The greatness of our God will encourage greater faith that we put in Him as we look to Him and rely upon Him who is infinitely capable of meeting our every need.

May the Lord bless us with this great truth. That was Stephen Lawson on this Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind from his series, The Attributes of God. Some say that we don't need doctrine, that theology is theoretical, but as you heard today from Dr. Lawson, to understand God's attributes, to understand His self-existence is immensely practical and a great comfort for the believer. If you'd like to own this 16-part series and the companion hardcover book by Dr. Lawson, Show Me Your Glory, you can request both resources when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Perhaps in 2024, you'll choose to slowly read and ponder and work your way through Dr. Lawson's book, considering afresh and in great detail who God is. Give a year-end gift in support of Renewing Your Mind and all of the podcasts produced by Ligonier Ministries at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800 435 4343 and we'll make both resources available to you as our way of saying thanks. God does not have a body. He is invisible. That's what Stephen Lawson will consider tomorrow as he teaches on the spirituality of God here on Renewing Your Mind.