An Uneasiness About the Uncreated

"Who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of hosts; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen" (1 Timothy 6:15-16)


The human mind, being created, has an understandable uneasiness about the Uncreated. We tend to be disquieted by the thought of One who does not account to us for His being, who is responsible to no one, who is self-existent, self-dependent and self-sufficient.

Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being that they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do know; but that is quite another things from admitting that there  is something which they can never know. To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who exists outside of all our categories, who will not be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason... this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess, so we save face by thinking of God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him.

Lord, forgive my flimsy attempts to comprehend You. I bow humbly before the great Uncreated, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Amen

________________________________________

God Doesn't Need Us

"Neither is worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." (Acts 17:25)

The problem of why God created the universe still troubles thinking men; but if we cannot know why, we can at least know that he did not bring His worlds into being to meet some unfulfilled need in Himself, as a man might build a house to shelter him against the winter cold or plant a field of corn to provide him with necessary food. The word "necessary" is wholly foreign to God.

To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made, but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can bring to Him who is complete in Himself.

So lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God. But the truth is that God is not greater for our being, nor would He be less if we did not exist. That we do exist is altogether of God's free determination, not by our desert nor by divine necessity.

Lord, You don't need me, yet You love me and choose me to be Your child. I don't deserve it, but I accept and thank You for Your gracious gift of life and love. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~