One of God’s attributes that uniquely describes His nature is His self-existence. Another term for this is aseity. This is one of His attributes that is His and His alone. This attribute is not shared with or a part of His creation (this is defined to be an incommunicable attribute). In other words, we are not self-existent, only God is.
The aseity of God can be thought of as God having no cause or source. He is not created but Creator of all. This makes Him independent of all things. He has no requirements or needs…He simply is. There’s a great writeup of what aseity is at https://www.gotquestions.org/aseity-of-God.html, which says:
The aseity of God is His attribute of independent self-existence. God is the uncaused Cause, the uncreated Creator. He is the source of all things, the One who originated everything and who sustains everything that exists. The aseity of God means that He is the One in whom all other things find their source, existence, and continuance. He is the ever-present Power that sustains all life. There is no other source of life and none other like Him: “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me” (Isaiah 46:9).
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God’s aseity assures us that His autonomy is absolute. He alone decides what to do, and nothing can ever thwart His purpose to keep His promises. What He promises to do He will do. What He predicts will come to pass. When God says, “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:10), He is emphasizing His aseity and sovereignty.
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Because of the aseity of God, we can depend upon Him as the independent One who is able to deliver, protect, and keep those who trust in Him. Those whom God has purposed for salvation will come to Christ, and nothing can hinder them: “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). If we understand the biblical doctrine of the aseity of God, we will be kept from the error of thinking that God is finite, that He grows weary, or that He will ever be insufficient to meet our needs (see Psalm 23:1 – The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want).
These are some of the very salient points made in this post about aseity. There is more to read, and I encourage you to read the short post in its entirety.
Aseity as Viewed Through the Lens of Creation
One of the main points about God’s aseity is that it means He is the uncreated Creator. So to understand aseity better, let’s examine creation. Creation, by definition, is that act of bringing something into existence and it has a set beginning (Genesis) and a set ending (Revelation). Here’s a definition of creation from the Lexham Bible Dictionary:
CREATION The divine act of bringing the universe and all that inhabits it into existence. The biblical presentation of creation is neither scientific nor monolithic, but testifies to the beauty and complexity of this foundational event in ancient Israel’s consciousness.
It was never just always there and it will never always just be there, see 2 Peter 3:12:
12looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!
It is finite. The finite was built by the infinite.
Now we know that we (who are also God’s creation) will either live forever with God or in total separation from Him. Therefore, aren’t we too infinite beings and from this couldn’t we assert that we are self-existent? Surely not! We too were created and therefore have a beginning. We will live forever in either glory or shame but notice that we have a beginning. We are the created that came from the Creator. The uncreated One has no beginning, but the created ones do. This makes us non-self-existent. We were created by the One who never had a beginning. That is the difference.
His Aseity to His Eternality (Caution, Math Ahead!)
To understand His aseity we must also understand His eternality. Again the idea of the finite and infinite come into play. But how do we understand or even define the infinite with our limited (finite) minds? Well, taking a page from the science and engineering playbook we can attempt to define the undefinable within the constraints of something we can define. Take the finite, for example. We can define the finite as something that has a beginning and an end. Therefore, we can say that: “infinity is not finite”. That seems obvious, but now what science would teach us is to take this and turn it around and look at it from different perspectives. How about reversing this statement, “a finite span (where a “span” could be time, space…consider a person’s life span) that exists within an infinite span. This finite span simply becomes an infinitely small span”. If you took a finite point and placed it on an infinite span and kept zooming out in order to see more and more of that infinite span, the finite span would essentially get smaller and smaller until it seemingly disappears…even though it still exists.
This can get even more difficult if we assign a symbol to infinity (as mathematicians have done) and try to do math with infinity. What would infinity + infinity mean? What about infinity divided by infinity? There is a whole mathematical discipline surrounding the use of infinity within our finite world called Calculus. Without Calculus (er, well, I mean the study of infinity in this context), we could not precisely describe a bouncing ball on Jupiter or put a man on the moon or enable telecommunications via satellite. But that’s not all. There is cancer research, your favorite video game, Artificial Intelligence, economics, weather patterns, and even music reproduction that relies in part on the study of infinity (or to be more precise, the study of infinitely small spans within a larger finite span).
As an aside, isn’t it oddly humorous that we who have a finite mind are using the infinite (which we cannot grasp) to build things and do things that we take for granted? When was the last time you thought of the math of the infinite when you were texting someone? Yet we use that thing which we don’t understand (the infinite) to build the understandable (e.g., putting satellites in orbit, etc.). God is truly marvelous in what He has graciously allowed us to do within the finiteness of His universe!
Does your brain hurt now after trying to comprehend even the simplest of the concepts around infinity? Remember, we’re not trying to look at infinity just to puff ourselves up with knowledge. We are trying (in vain, I might add) to understand infinity in order to better see who God is. The more we can fathom infinity the more we can fathom God’s attributes and the more we can see how small we are in respect to our Creator…as Job did in the OT.
So now we can begin to think about the attribute of His eternality through our vain attempts to corral infinity. Remember that God has already put eternity in our hearts as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:11:
11He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
I think we have an understanding that we as finite thinkers cannot comprehend the infinite. But if we cannot comprehend the infinite, how would we have a chance of understanding God’s eternality? Well, one thought is that God exists outside of time. So we cannot define God within any bounds of time. This allows us to more easily consider Him as having no beginning and no end. For to have a beginning and end you need the measure of time. Without time there can be no beginning and no end. Remember how Genesis 1:1 starts: “In the beginning God created…” When God began His creative work, He had to do it within a framework of time. “In the beginning” shows that God created time within which His creation operated. If you think about it, it’s almost as if God started a countdown timer in Genesis 1:1. Eventually, all of creation (and time as His created thing) would be destroyed. Once the heavens and earth are swallowed in fire there will be no need of time…and we will live in eternity near to God or separated from Him.
One thing we have not added here to our definition of infinity is what Scripture says. This is the most important thing that science/engineering will not allow in their rigid frameworks of what they can “see”. Consider these verses in light of what you have just read:
2 Peter 3:8:
8But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.
2 Chronicles 2:6:
6“But who is able to build a house for Him, for the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain Him? So who am I, that I should build a house for Him, except to burn incense before Him?
Job 11:7–9:
7“Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty?
8“They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know?
9“Its measure is longer than the earth And broader than the sea.
Psalm 145:3:
3Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, And His greatness is unsearchable.
1 Kings 8:27:
27“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!
Isaiah 40:12–17:
12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, And marked off the heavens by the span, And calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, And weighed the mountains in a balance And the hills in a pair of scales?
13Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, Or as His counselor has informed Him?
14With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge And informed Him of the way of understanding?
15Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales; Behold, He lifts up the islands like fine dust.
16Even Lebanon is not enough to burn, Nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
17All the nations are as nothing before Him, They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless.
Notice something here. God never intends us to fully comprehend His infinite eternality or anything about infinity itself for that matter. Rather, we are to know that He is eternal and infinite without comprehending what eternal and infinite are exactly. We are simply to see the smallness of ourselves and all that we can do in respect to God and His ways. After all, if we truly comprehended infinity then wouldn’t we be too much like God? That’s a piece of fruit I don’t want to eat!
Never does the Bible explain infinity so that we may fully comprehend it. On the contrary, God shows us His infinity through the Bible and through Jesus who is God incarnate. This allows us to do the comparison between our finite selves and the infinite majesty of God. Doesn’t that word majesty have a new ring to it after thinking deeper about God’s infiniteness?
This is where the crossroads of who God is and how we are to respond to Him intersect. After beholding His infinite attributes, we have only to respond in repentance, humility, fear of our Lord, and obedience.
As a last point, after reading all of this and trying to understand the infinite God in the confines of our finite minds, doesn’t this verse have so much more meaning and power when you read it in light of God’s (infinite) aseity and (infinite) eternality? Ephesians 3:20:
20Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.