Glory Be to Our Great God | Day 3 - God is Self-Sufficient
Give Thanks to the Independent, Inexhaustive, and Living God
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise him, all creatures here below
Praise him above, ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Amen
- Thomas Ken, “Doxology”The Lord our God is but one only, living, and true God . . . God having all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself: is alone in, and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any Creature which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them, he is the alone fountain of all being . . .” - The London Baptist Confession of 1689 (emphasis added)
In Yourself, You have all power and might
In Yourself, You are the fountain of life
With no lack—none else can give to Thee
You're fulfilled in Your self-sufficiency
- Timothy Brindle, “Self-Sufficiency”Come, thou Fount of every blessing;
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above;
praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of God’s unchanging love!
- Robert Robinson, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
Can You Deplete the Fountain of Life?
If you live in South Florida, you are familiar with shortages due to natural disasters—particularly hurricanes. Ever since I moved to Fort Lauderdale, I’ve seen supermarkets completely out of items like toilet paper and water bottles and gas stations with all their pumps covered up. Just because we live in an era of modern conveniences and structural protections, spinning tropical cyclones disrupt our regular patterns of life and deplete many resources for us to prepare for these hard-hitting storms. We, humans, with all our technological advancements, stand feeble before high windspeeds and torrential downpours.
But can God be exhausted like us? Does God lose any power, energy, or life? In fact, is God dependent on any source of life outside of himself for his being? Does God grow tired and weary when executing his works and dealing with his creation, including us human beings?
Thanks be to God that he is not exhaustible, dependent, or prone to fatigue and weariness. Instead, according to Scripture, God is a se or “of, from, in, or by himself.” Welcome to the doctrine of God’s aseity.
God is From Himself, Thus All-Sufficient in Himself
It is very hard to encapsulate the total meaning of God’s aseity in one sentence, but, for our purposes, a good working definition is “[God] has life in himself and draws his unending energy from himself.”1 Theologians throughout the ages have used other terms in addition to aseity like “independent,” “living,” or “self/all-sufficient,” but each one only communicates a facet of what God’s a se-ness implies. Let’s reflect on several of these realities.
First, in the positive sense, God is the source of his being. John Webster rightly concludes, “Aseity is life: God’s life from and therefore in himself.”2 It is quite the statement that God calls himself the “I am,” because he is stating that he just is (Exod. 3:14-15). This messes with our brains because if God doesn’t have an initial cause and he is without measure (infinite) in all that he is, then we can’t say that he grew from one degree of power to another. Instead, God just is—beyond space, time, matter, power, etc., and because he is a spirit without a physical body, he thus cannot be hindered in any such manner. Therefore, it is because God is a se that he is the creator and sustainer of all things (Rev. 4:11; Rom. 11:35-36). As Isaiah writes, “The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable” (Isa. 40:28).
Second, in the negative sense, God’s aseity means he doesn’t rely on anything else for his existence. Some Christians wrongly see God’s act of creation as an expression of God being lonely or needy for fellowship, but that can’t be the case due to him being all-sufficient in himself. In fact, because God is Triune as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “Aseity is not only the quality of being (in contrast to contingent reality) underived; it is the eternal lively plenitude of the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Spirit who proceeds from both.”3 Therefore, God is not caused by any other thing nor did he have a beginning point of his self-existence; God just is! How stark the contrast is between God and all the idols of this world. Wellum writes, “Since the idol is dependent on its maker, it is silly for the maker to worship it. In contrast, Paul describes true worship: God is not worshipped because ‘he needs anything’; instead, God gives us ‘life, breath, all things’ (Acts 17:25).”4
Third, because God is all-sufficient, independent, and living from himself, he therefore is inexhaustible and infinite in all his perfections. Remember, God is undivided in himself because he is a simple being, and because he has life in himself, “All that God is, he is of himself.”5 Therefore, every attribute of God is from himself and thus perfect because he alone is the absolute, perfect being. No wonder he is without measure in his power (omnipotence/almighty), knowledge (omniscient), and presence (omnipresent) and can’t be contained by time, space, and matter which he created (eternal). He cannot experience degrees of change within himself (immutable/unchanging and impassible/unable to suffer), and he is perfect in his goodness, righteousness, holiness, and sovereignty.6 In short, because God is living from himself, there is none greater than him. He alone is the everlasting God that is beyond any measure (Isa. 40:12-28; 44:6-8). As he says himself, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Isa. 44:6).
Praise God that You Will Never Exhaust Him.
So why is God’s aseity something we should thank God for being? Matthew Barrett writes
If God were not life in and of himself, if he were not independent of us, then he would not be worthy, qualified, or able to save us, let alone worthy to receive worship and praise. . . . it is precisely because God is free from creation that he is able to save lost sinners like you and me (Eph. 1:7-8). If God were a needy God, he would need our help just as much as we need his. What good news it is, then, that the gospel depends on a God who does not depend on us.7
Webster writes, “God is from himself, and from himself God gives himself.”8 It should floor us that the one, true, and living God would not only create us but also choose to save us from our rebellion against him. In fact, “we will never understand the purpose of our existence apart from knowing God, and the attempt to do so will only result in futility and our inability to know ourselves!”9
We are not a se; we are insufficient, contingent, and exhaustible creatures, and due to sin against God, we cannot save ourselves from the wrath that we deserve from him. But because God is a se and chose to save, can you imagine how immeasurable his love, power, mercy, and grace is toward those who trust in Jesus, the Son of God incarnate?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
- Isaiah 40:28–31
Father, thank you for being the self-sufficient God who lacks nothing. You are truly independent and free not needing anything outside of you. Because you are all-sufficient, you can save us to the uttermost. We, infinitely needy sinners, need an infinitely all-sufficient savior, and you sent your eternal Son to save us to the uttermost. You will never be exhausted, and thus we can entrust our exhausted, weary hearts to you who by your Holy Spirit renews us day by day. Help us as our brother, Augustine, prayed to remember that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
J.I. Packer, Concise Theology (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 27.
John Webster, God without Measure, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (New York: T&T Clark, 2016), 19.
Ibid., 1:20. More of this will be covered in future posts regarding the Trinity. Stay tuned!
Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology, Volume 1: From Canon to Concept (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 605.
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003-2008), 2:151.
See Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 65-67.
Ibid., 69.
Webster, God without Measure, 1:19.
Wellum, 606.