The Gospel Depends on a God Who Does Not Depend on You

God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself, and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, nor deriving any glory in, by, unto, and upon them.

—The Westminster Confession of Faith

Did God create the world because he was lonely? On more than one occasion I have heard Christians answer yes to that question. This answer is a penetrating look into how many Christians think about God. But is this what Scripture teaches? What implications would such a view have for worship? And how would such a view affect our salvation?

Doctrine of Divine Aseity

We must begin by asking if God needs us to exist or to be fulfilled and happy. The God of the Bible is one who does not need us at all. In theological language, this is the doctrine of divine aseity (from the Latin, a se), literally meaning “from-himself-ness.” God is the fullness of everlasting life in and of himself. Our God is without measure—infinite in his beauty and blessedness, immense in his goodness and bliss. Therefore, he exists independent of the world, as one who is self-sufficient and self-existent. He is not a needy God, dependent on the world “to be.” Nor is he lonely, reliant on the world for his fulfillment. He is, rather, a vast ocean of happiness. As Jonathan Edwards said, “God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself, in perfectly beholding and infinitely loving, and rejoicing in his own essence and perfections.”

God exists independent of the world, as one who is self-sufficient and self-existent. He is not a needy God.

As I explain in None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God, God’s aseity is the reason why we can say our God is supreme. As the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury explains, if God is supreme through something else, then something else is greater than him and he cannot be the supreme being. But if he is the fullness of life in and of himself, he must be self-excellent. Absolute in his excellency, there is none like him. He is perfect being.

One of the most powerful passages supporting God’s aseity is Acts 17. The apostle Paul reveals that he is not only an Old Testament scholar but a philosopher, capable of interacting with the most astute intellectuals of his day. Paul enters the Areopagus and when he addresses the men of Athens he is resolved to explain who this “unknown god” is that they worship: “The God who made the world and everything in it, 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” (17:24–25). According to Paul, God is the Creator who has no creator himself. He is what their Greek forefathers called the Uncaused Cause or the Unmoved Mover. As the one who is infinite life in and of himself, he can then give life to the cosmos. In a strategic move, Paul quotes one of their own, Epimenides of Crete (c. 600 B.C.), who once said, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

What does Paul mean when he says in God we live and move and have our being? In theology, we call this participation. Man is created (God’s offspring, as Paul calls us) and must share in God’s life to have his being. God, by contrast, participates in no one. For he depends on no one to live and move and have his being. Paul confirms as much when he says next, “Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man” (17:29). God has not been made in our likeness, but we have been created to participate in his likeness. Paul has identified the difference between the Creator and the creature, as well as the dividing line between true and false worship.

Implications for Our Worship

Now that we have seen that aseity is affirmed in Scripture, what implications does it have for the God we worship? What implications does it have for our salvation?

In Psalm 50 and Isaiah 40 we learn that God is not like the pagan gods of the surrounding nations. These gods are fashioned by man (Isa. 40:19–20). Using much satire, Isaiah explains that the same wood used by man to keep himself warm and cook his food by fire he also uses to form a god so that he can bow down to it in worship, praying “Save me; you are my god” (Isa. 44:15–17). This is not a God who saves but a God you must save.  However, true, biblical worship is due to God not because he needs us, but because we need him. Consider the words of the 24 elders who fall down before the throne of God, worshiping him, casting their crowns before him saying, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Rev. 4:11).

If God is not independent of us, he is not worthy, qualified, or able to save us let alone to receive worship and praise. If God is not a se, then he is weak and pathetic. He may be a God like us, but he is not a God better than us. He may be a God in our world, but he is not a God distinct from our world. And all of this relates to the gospel for, as Michael Horton says, “If God were not free from creation, we might pray for him, but not to him” (The Christian Faith, 235). It is precisely because God is free from creation that the Son of God is able to enter into creation by means of his incarnation in order to save lost sinners (Eph. 1:7–8).

If God is not independent of us, he is not worthy, qualified, or able to save us let alone to receive worship and praise.

There are two dangers that need to be avoided in this discussion. First, one could conclude that we do not matter to God if he does not need us. Second, one could also conclude that God is impersonal, as if we cannot enjoy communion with him if he is independent of us. But both of these conclusions would be wrong. While God does not need us, he created us in his image and made us to have fellowship with him (Gen. 1–2). We matter because God determined that we would be meaningful. We are created to participate in his likeness from the start.

Even when sin ruined and destroyed our fellowship and access to him (Gen. 3), he voluntarily entered into a covenant of grace with us, though he was in no way obligated to save us. He has every right to condemn us for all eternity (Matt. 25:41). “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4–5). The gospel depends on a God who does not depend on you. What this means for us, as believers, is nothing short of amazing: While God does not need us, he has given us the privilege of serving him. We would not have it any other way.