God Loves… Himself

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

In light of the fact that Christ is the full and sufficient propitiation, Redeemer, and the one who has fully demonstrated and manifested the righteousness of God, there is no room for boasting at all. Sinners have contributed nothing to their salvation but the sin that they are saved from. They have utterly nothing to boast of since they contributed nothing positive. Christ is the One who has done it all and in so doing set forth the glory of the self-sufficiency of God who not only needs no help, but cannot be helped in any way. In Christ and by Christ we behold the self-sufficiency of God in accomplishing all that He is pleased to do.

Rom 3:27 Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one. 31 Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.

The law was not given for man to have a way to obtain all or part of salvation, but instead the law was given to show men their sin and their utter insufficiency to be saved. The law was given, then, to set forth the sufficiency of Christ to save sinners and His complete sufficiency to be their sanctification as well. Man’s justification is by faith (in Christ alone and by grace alone) apart from the works of the Law. In other words, there is a full and perfect sufficiency of Christ to justify men apart from any of their works of the Law. Oh how this should strike fear in the hearts of men who teach that man must keep the Law in some respects in order to be saved. That is simply another way of attacking the full sufficiency of God in Christ to save men according to His own pleasure and glory.

Paul draws some conclusions in verses 29-31 from his remarks about justification in verse 28. Christ is fully sufficient to save Jews and Gentiles since God justifies Jews and Gentiles by Christ alone because He is fully sufficient to do so. There is only one God and He is God of all men, so He alone is sufficient to save any man as He pleases according to His pleasure and glory. The Jew had no room to boast because salvation is according to the sufficiency of God and not of his own, but also because God saves Gentiles as well. A Jew was not saved because he was a Jew, but only according to the electing purposes of God. The living God has no need of Jew or Gentile and so if anyone is to be saved that one is saved by the sufficiency of God in Christ alone. This is to say because of grace and nothing but grace. There is nothing about the works of man that can possibly be sufficient for the slightest bit of salvation. Men must be broken from all hope in themselves and any sufficiency that they find in themselves or anything they can do.

Is the Law completely nullified through faith in Christ? This is a tough question that Paul answers for us. Paul answers this with strong language, giving it a “may it never be!” This requires some balance, but we must never deviate from Scripture with out understanding of the Law, the Gospel, and of God. First, it must always be said that keeping the Law will never convert a person and there is no sufficiency in the Law or our keeping the Law to save anyone. However, in the hearts of the converted there is now a living Christ in that heart. Where Christ dwells there is true love for the Father and where there is true love for the Father and for Christ there will be those who keep His commandments out of that love. The Law, as Jesus taught us, is summed up in loving God and our neighbor. Only Christ is sufficient to save souls, but only Christ in the heart of a saved soul is sufficient to love God and our neighbor and so establish the Law. Keeping the Law is by free-grace and there is no merit or sufficiency in us for justification or sanctification. Oh the wonders of His free-grace which is from His sufficiency!

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In the last BLOG (The Glory of God 31) we started looking at Romans 3:23-26 and noting that underlying this passage of Scripture is the self-sufficiency of God manifested in Christ. Justification and redemption are completely sufficient for sinners because they flow from the self-sufficiency of God and this is seen in and by Christ. It is Christ that God put on display “as a propitiation in His blood through faith.” Was Christ a perfect propitiation or was He not? If so, then He was and is a perfectly sufficient propitiation. There could be no Gospel of the glory of God if there could be no sufficient propitiation found. We see, then, that in Christ the blood of Christ was and is a perfect and fully sufficient propitiation. In Christ we behold the self-sufficient God providing a perfectly sufficient propitiation and as such one in which He took His own wrath away in Christ. No one else could possibly provide a sufficient propitiation, yet what we see and behold is our self-sufficient God providing a sufficient propitiation as no one else could do so. Behold the glory of our God in Christ.

We are also pointed to the demonstration of the righteousness of God in Christ. The great sacrifice is said to be a demonstration of His righteousness for the sins of those in the past and a demonstration of His righteousness at the present time. Christ has fully and sufficiently displayed the righteousness of God so that it is God who is both just and the justifier of those who have faith in Christ. We don’t just need for God to take away His wrath in a sufficient way, though indeed we need that, but in taking away His own wrath in Christ in a perfectly sufficient way He has glorified His righteousness. All the sins of the saints of old were never taken away, though indeed they were pictured as being taken away by the sacrifices of animals. But the animal sacrifices were not sufficient in the slightest to take away sin, but could only point toward Christ who alone could do so.

Behold the perfect sufficiency of God in taking the sins of all those saved in the Old Testament and in Christ having a sufficient demonstration of His righteousness. The demonstration of His righteousness had to be sufficient as He has to be righteous at all times. In the Old Testament it appeared that He was letting sin slide by, but He was not. When Christ went to the cross and died as a sufficient sacrifice, He was doing so for the Old Testament saints as well. In that God is now seen as perfectly and sufficiently righteous in Christ. For being righteous regarding the sins that He just appeared to pass over, His righteousness is put on display now and forever in Christ.

The point that we can see and most gloriously so, is that the sacrifice of Christ was sufficient for God to be just and also for Him to be the sufficient Justifier of those in Christ. Underlying the Gospel, at least in one sense, is the blazing glory of the self-sufficiency of God in Christ. God does not need any help in the slightest and no one can supply something He lacks in having Christ be the perfect sacrifice and having Christ be the focus of all the work of justification. This great justification comes to sinners by a free-grace alone and all the glory is to Christ as the self-sufficient Justifier of the people of God. There is nothing we can add because of our sinfulness and weakness, but also because God is self-sufficient and has no need for anyone to help. Behold the glory of God in Christ!

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

It is not in accordance with worldly thinking to understand the purpose and intent of creation was and is the very glory of God. Since all things were created through Jesus Christ, who is the very shining forth of the glory of God, all things were created to glorify God through Jesus Christ. Since all creation is created through Jesus Christ for the glorification of God through and by Jesus Christ, we cannot but note the reason for the fall and as such for the Gospel. Apart from the fall the glory of grace would never have been as fully known. What we should grab and hold tightly that the ways of God are sufficient to glorify Him because He has created them for that purpose, though it is quite clear that when men stop trusting in the sufficiency of God that they will go to all kinds of crazy activities to help God out. This is when men trusting in their own sufficiency do not trust in His.

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Instead of examining the text just above for all the doctrines it contains, let us be content to look for the attribute of God’s self-sufficiency that under girds this text and all of its doctrines. If we look at it as displaying God and the fullness of His self-sufficiency, we will see the doctrines in a much fuller light and a far more comforting way. Man has fallen and in his own strength he falls short of the glory of God in all that he does. Yet God justifies those sinners. So we have to ask, does God justify out of His self-sufficiency or does He need help in justifying sinners? If God justifies sinners flowing out of His self-sufficiency, then He is sufficient to justify sinners because of what Christ has done. In this we see God’s self-sufficiency in Christ and as such the work of Christ set forth the glory of the attributes of God and so we worship.

When we see that justification comes to sinners as a gift by His grace, which is to say that there is no cause within the sinner that moved God to save sinners, we see the glory of self-sufficiency. In Christ God was and is totally and fully sufficient to save sinners. In Christ there is nothing lacking and Christ is the sufficiency of God put on display. The grace of God is His saving sinners quite apart from any worth or merit on their part, but instead it is His saving sinners who deserve wrath and damnation. But again, God needs nothing from the sinners to save them. Oh the beauty of the self-sufficiency of God in saving sinners totally through Christ and on behalf of Christ.

Part of justification in this text is the redemption of sinners through Jesus Christ. Was and is Christ fully and completely sufficient to pay the full price for sinners? Was and is Christ fully and completely sufficient to buy and purchase the debts of sinners that they incurred because of their sin? Was and is the blood of Christ completely and totally sufficient to cleanse sinners from the guilt of their sin and so wash them that they may be the dwelling place of the Spirit? If so, then we are to behold the full self-sufficiency of God on display in the redemption and justification of sinners. If so, then we are to ask for grace to die to self and all trust in our own sufficiency and all looking to our own sufficiency and ask Him for grace to rest in His sufficiency in Christ alone. When we speak of Christ alone, what we are getting at (if we understand this in light of who God is) is the self-sufficiency of God who needs nothing from us to save us. We simply fall before Him in our complete helplessness and complete and utter insufficiency and ask Him to save us completely to His glory in Christ alone.

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

The self-sufficiency of God is displayed in and through Christ and in and through the cross. Christ, as the outshining of the glory of God, shines the sufficiency of God to us. The Scriptures (John 15:4-5) are clear that apart from Him we can do nothing, so if we do anything at all spiritually He alone is sufficient in that regard. What are the things that we absolutely need that we can obtain ourselves? Can we obtain anything by ourselves if we really think about it?

But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).

Behold the beauty and wonder of the self-sufficiency of God! In Christ and in Christ alone and not by anything we have done or can do Christ has become our wisdom from God. In Christ and in Christ alone and not by anything we have done or can do Christ has become our righteousness from God. In Christ and in Christ alone and not by anything we have done or can do Christ has become our sanctification from God. In Christ and in Christ alone and not by anything we have done or can do Christ has become redemption from God.

If we have spiritual eyes to behold the wonders of the truths and glories of I Corinthians 1:30, we can easily see that all of these things are from the hand of God and His hand alone. Man is totally and utterly insufficient to do one thing to help out God in these matters. God alone is sufficient for these things and He is self-sufficient in these things in Christ and it is utter blasphemy to think of Christ being insufficient for these things. But as we meditate on these things, we can see that the self-sufficiency of God in Christ is one of the major issues regarding the work of Christ and the Gospel. God reveals Himself in a sufficient way, and that sufficient way is through Christ.

Is God self-sufficient in Christ to reveal Himself in the Gospel and to save sinners as He pleases? Does He need us to help Him out just a little? Perhaps an act of our will has some way of helping Him out? Do we have any way, any way at all, to help God save us? Do we or any other fallen human have any way of helping God out (even in the slightest way) of saving us to the glory of His name? If we lack something, which in reality we lack all things, who alone is sufficient to work that which we lack in our hearts? God is self-sufficient within Himself and as such He is sufficient to do all He is pleased to do. There is nothing that He lacks and so we cannot help Him in any way or assist Him in any way.

The self-sufficiency of God as an attribute shines much needed light upon His display of Himself in Christ and the works of Christ. The Person and work of Christ also sheds light on how sufficient God is to do as He pleases. What we must see, however, is that God is sufficient to do as He pleases and Christ is sufficient to manifest His glory as He pleases. God does not save sinners despite lacking sufficiency to save them to His glory through Christ, but instead He saves them to His glory through Christ because He is fully sufficient. There is nothing lacking in Christ and there is nothing that can be added to Him. Who do we think we are to even attempt to add to the work of Christ? When we try to add something to His work, we are essentially saying that God is not sufficient to do that particular work by Himself. The grace of God in Christ is full and abounding and as such fully sufficient to save sinners completely and to the uttermost.

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

In the last BLOG (The Glory of God 28) we saw that the Old Testament worship (and New Testament by implication) is not what can come from the power and sufficiency of man by keeping external laws, but can only be kept when the heart of man is focused and intent on God. Man is not sufficient to worship God in his own strength and power, but instead true worship depends on the sufficiency of God. If God is not served by human hands and does not need anything from us, then we must understand worship as coming from His self-sufficiency rather than anything that comes from us in terms of origin. The worship of God must come from God before it can go to God. True worship is to join in the love God has for Himself as triune and it must come from Him.

Rom 11:35 WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN?

1 Cor. 4:7 For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?

It is so against the pride of man to accept the basic Christian teaching that man is utterly dependent upon God for all things. How man kicks against the goads and refuses to believe that he is anything but in control of himself and is sufficient to do as he pleases. Proud man tries to determine who God is by his deceived notions of himself. This is very deceptive and certainly a terrible way to do theology. This is basically a fallen creature trying to judge God by his fallen mind and deceived notions of himself. Man wants to think that all he has he has obtained by hard work, self-effort, or perhaps his own wisdom and contrivances.

The truth of the matter, however, is that God has created man and upholds man each moment. It is God who has created man and has given him certain talents and gifts so that man can do what God has ordained man to do. All those opportunities that man has to do anything have been ordained by God from all eternity. Man may ascribe those things to his own wisdom or simply luck, but both of those ideas are wrong. Man, who wants to think of himself as superior to other man, has received all he has. Man is dependent on God in ways that he cannot imagine unless he reads the Bible and is illumined by the Spirit. Apart from learning the truth about himself man will go on in the blindness and deception of his fallen understanding in both natural and spiritual things and most of the time a ray of light about his dependent state on God will be met with the suppression of the truth.

The truth of the matter is that man has nothing that has not been received, though he cannot or will not understand this. Some men work hard thinking that it all depends on them, though indeed work is a means of God giving men things. But man depends on himself and does not see God behind and in what man obtains and so man is proud of what he has earned and he uses that for himself. We see this clearly in the Old Testament as kings were proud of what they had done though indeed it was God who did it. Oh how men boasts in their own wisdom, abilities, and accomplishments as if God had nothing to do with it at all. Yet God has created men differently with different abilities and He has given them all their accomplishments in His decrees and in His sovereign power by which He upholds men and gives them their every breath and controls all things so that all happens according to Himself.

In the Gospel and in daily life we see the basic principle that no one can do anything for God and no one can bring Him into any form of obligation. God owes no one anything and only gives in accordance with His pleasure. This is chilling to self-focused and proud man, but it is true. God is self-sufficient in all things and has utterly no needs at all. This is part of the true glory of God and man must bow to this truth or remain in deception and darkness.

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

Isaiah 40:22-24 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, & its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but He merely blows on them, and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble.

How great is the living God in comparison with the earth and all of its inhabitants? He pictures Himself just sitting above this circle of the earth. He is pictured as glorious and the earth is pictured as small and rather meaningless. All of the inhabitants are something like a group of grasshoppers on the earth which is small compared to Him. The heavens are nothing more than a curtain or perhaps like a tent. The entire heavens are pictured as a tent, which surely points to His greatness and glory. The rulers of the earth are reduced to nothing at His mere pleasure. The judges of the earth are meaningless in comparison to His sovereignty over them. Rulers and judges are planted as He pleases, but at His mere blowing on them they wither and are carried away like stubble in a storm.

If we look behind the scenes, so to speak, what we see is the true God who created all things and He has created them for His pleasure. There is nothing that exists that He has not created and all things have their existence from Him each moment. He is sovereign over the rulers of the world who exist by His self-sufficient power, are put into their positions of power by His self-sufficient power, and then are brought down at His good pleasure. He alone is sufficient to put rulers into power and when He is pleased for them to be brought down they cannot maintain their positions apart from His sufficiency. Each human being should learn that his or her position in life is obtained and then lost at the mere pleasure of God.

Amos 5:21 “I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. 22 “Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. 23 “Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.

Here we see what worship is when it is not offered from the heart which can only come from the sufficiency of God and instead is offered in dependence upon our own hearts. From the context it is clear that the Israelites were violating the commands of God and yet they would come and perform the external acts of worship. God hated the very festivals that He had commanded because they people thought they could perform external acts and He would be pleased. He had no delight in their so-called solemn assemblies because they were not truly repentant. He would not accept their sacrifices because they were done without hearts that were broken from pride and self-sufficiency. He would not listen to their songs and harps because they were played without true hearts. What is not seen is that when people live in sin and yet offer sacrifices and go through external things of religion, they are in fact relying upon their own self-sufficiency rather than broken hearts that looked to the sufficiency of God and His grace alone. It is a wicked sin for men to use the things that God alone shows His sufficiency and men use those things trusting in their own self-sufficiency in performing the externals trusting in the fact that they are doing them.

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

Isaiah 40:15-17 Behold, 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. Even Lebanon is not enough to burn, nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before Him, they are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless.

Isaiah 40 is quite an incredible passage of God’s self-disclosure and of how He views things. His view of Himself is not that of the humanists or of liberals, but instead He gives us a picture of His glory and of His own God-centeredness. If for some reason we think that we are serving God as if He needed anything, our worship is in ignorance. If we glance at Acts 17:22-25 for a moment, we can see that the true God is not served by human hands as though He needed anything. That is a basic truth about who the true God is. That is a basic truth that those who worship in ignorance do not know or accept.

The living and true God is the God who fills the universe, or perhaps it should be said that though the universe is filled with God the universe does not set bounds for Him. No one or nothing sets bounds for Him since He made the whole and all things in it. All the nations together are nothing but something like a drop from a bucket. All the nations taken together are regarded as nothing more than a speck of dust on the scales. All the beasts of Lebanon were not enough for a single burnt offering. These verses give us God’s idea of God. It is one where the whole universe is at His disposal and the whole planet earth and all of its inhabitants are nothing to Him. This does not mean that He has not set His love on His people and sent the Son to be a sacrifice in their place, but it shows by comparison who God is and then what the whole world is.

All the nations taken together are less than nothing and meaningless in light of who God is and His sovereign and absolute reign over all. When we think and meditate on this, as far as we can until we know that we only know a very little about God because He is infinite and we are finite, we can see how utterly glorious He is and what we are in light of that. However, when we see that God’s view of our world is that it is nothing and meaningless we can behold the freeness of His grace toward cosmic rebels who sin against Him. What is man that God should even glance at him much less send His only begotten Son to die for the transgressions of sinners? How we should be overwhelmed in great awe and wonder that the God who brought all things into existence would take notice of and then send His Son to die for the worst of those beings.

How we should look upon the wonder of this great God who made the world in great wisdom and understanding and bow our own fallen reason before Him. He is wise, we are not. He has understanding, we do not. Who are we to think that we can counsel Him or inform Him of what is right and wrong? Who are we to think that our vast knowledge of the world that He created should entitle us to cross His will? Who are we to think that we should use anything for our own purposes but instead all we are and all we have are His and should be used to live for His glory by the grace He alone gives freely. We should live in the light of the knowledge that the great and living God exists in and of Himself and that He alone is self-sufficient and as such He alone is sufficient to keep us in being at His mere pleasure. We cannot keep ourselves in being according to our pleasure, but God does. We cannot give ourselves breath, but God alone can do that. The Gospel of Jesus Christ comes to helpless beings but also helpless in their sins. God alone is self-sufficient and He alone saves sinner by the sufficiency of grace alone.

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

The self-sufficiency of God and therefore the utter dependence of men is such a hard concept for modern Americans to get a hold of that it must be stressed over and over. The natural tendency of fallen man is to reject anything that causes an alarm to his own perceived autonomy. Man will fight and suppress the truth of God in order to protect his perceived free-will and autonomy. It is far easier to get a religious man to accept the doctrinal statement regarding God’s self-sufficiency than it is to get that religious man to bow from the heart to the truth of God’s self-sufficiency and therefore man’s utter dependence upon God. Without getting to the Gospel at the moment, this shows how man must be broken from his own perceived self-sufficiency in order to rest alone in the sufficiency of God as found in Christ.

Job 22:1-3 Can a vigorous man be of use to God, a wise man be useful to himself? Is there any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous, or profit if you make your ways perfect?

The verse just above should drive a stake into the heart of all men. In other words, a man with great energy is of no real use to God. A man with great wisdom is of no use to God. If a man is very righteous that man brings no pleasure to God. If a man could make his ways perfect he is still of no profit to God. The point should and must be driven home to the depths of our souls. It must come to us, though indeed it may shatter our inaccurate but high view of ourselves, and that is that we are of no profit to God. There is nothing we can do now or even if we were perfect that we could do to profit God or be of use to Him. Oh the helpless feeling this will bring when it is recognized and perhaps even great anger toward God. For the person without Christ or the person trusting in himself to have Christ this is a terrible thing to realize. I live at the mercy of God and He sustains me though He has no need of me or any human being. I can do nothing to bring Him pleasure and I can do nothing that will be of profit or benefit to Him in the slightest. The very fact that God is self-sufficient points to the fact that the Gospel absolutely must be of free-grace or there is no Gospel at all.

Job 41:11 Who has given to Me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine.

The devastation that the knowledge of God brings to the pride and self-centeredness of man just continues the more we study who God really is. Everything that there is under the whole heaven belongs to God. There is nothing that man can do to pay God back, which is to say that there is utterly nothing man can do to pay God back or bring God into obligation to man. This should shatter the pride of man and leave him in utter helplessness before the living God. Why should it do that? Without any question that is the real state of man as given to us in Scripture. Man is without strength to obtain anything from God based on merit and can do nothing to bring God into his obligation. All things belong to God and man can do nothing and there is nothing man can give to God.

It is one thing to hear about the self-sufficiency of God, but it is quite another to have the reality of it pressed home on our hearts and consciences by the Holy Spirit. While learning the doctrine can actually be a means of our pride being pumped up, the reality as brought home by the Holy Spirit is utterly devastating to our pride. When the light of this great attribute begins to pierce the eyes of the soul, man will see the arrogance and pride that has filled him. Not only that, man will begin to see how he has treated God and tried to be religious in order to obtain something from God and then the reality of the wickedness of works to please God will set in. Oh how men hate this idea but they cannot escape it when the Spirit brings it home. The anguish of their hearts and who they have been and are before God drives them inescapably to a Gospel of free-grace. To the anguished heart there is no other Gospel.

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

It is such a hard thing for man to come to the realization of his own utter helplessness and dependence upon God for all things. It sure seems to fallen man that he has a lot of control and that all things depend upon him, and man even takes great pride in that. When the biblical teaching of the self-sufficiency of God is taught to man, this is very disruptive to man and he hates the idea that he is not in control. Men cannot bear to think that their every breath and all things are in the hands of God and that they cannot serve Him. They cannot build a temple since He cannot dwell in a temple other than in a figurative way, so the building of a temple does not do the least thing for the living God. In the Old Testament, however, it did picture how men were to approach God.

Psalm 115:3 But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.

The passage just above screams out and declares that the true God does whatever He pleases. The implications and deductions from the great truth that God does as He pleases are enormous. If God does as He pleases, then man can go no farther than the pleasure of God which means man is not free to do as he pleases. Now if man cannot do as he pleases and yet God does whatever He pleases, the teaching of that is that man is not free. God is God and man cannot do anything but what God “allows” him to do or ordains him to do. If God does whatever He pleases, then God is sufficient to do all He is pleased to do and to prevent whatever does not please Him. The glory of God’s self-sufficiency shines in this passage since God is sufficient to do all that He pleases and nothing can stop Him.

Psalm 50:9-12 I shall take no young bull out of your house nor male goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and all it contains.

Can poor man who thinks that he is in control and can make a sacrifice actually do anything to benefit God or give God something? The point of the passage above is that man cannot serve God. All the animals in the world are His. Even if God could possibly be hungry, man cannot give God something since all is His. Even if God had no money, man cannot give any property or anything of value to God since it is all His. The earth is the Lord’s, the whole universe is the Lord’s, and everything (including human beings) in the universe and on earth is His. God is self-sufficient and everything that has come into being came into being by His power and is sustained each moment but Him. He cannot be served by man and man can do nothing for Him as He needs absolutely and utterly nothing at any point and at any time.

Self-sufficiency cannot be derived from what we think of human beings when we think of them as self-sufficient. A man is thought to be self-sufficient when he is able to live off the land by growing food, hunting, and making his own clothes. But the definition or concept of what self-sufficiency is regarding men cannot be used and applied to God. A man may depend on the tools that another makes, but no one can make something for God. A man can become hungry, but God cannot become hungry. A man can be injured or sick, but God cannot become injured or sick. A man must depend on food and water to exist, but God depends on nothing but Himself to exist. It is an utterly glorious and beautiful attribute of God which teaches us something of how He exists in and of Himself and yet of how utterly dependent we are upon Him. We should bow low before God in utter nothingness and seek His face. Oh that He would show us this grace that depends on Himself and not us.

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

In moving from the self-existence of God to the self-sufficiency of God, it is most likely quite evident that we are not really moving from one thing to another but instead are simply looking at the same thing from another vantage point. In other words, the attribute of God that we think of as self-sufficient flows from and is an aspect of His self-existence. But then again, all of His attributes are one within Himself and all flow from Him in perfect unity and beauty as we behold Him in His glory. We can also think of God’s self-sufficiency as an application of His self-existence, or it is one way God exists in and of Himself.

Self-sufficiency teaches us that God is sufficient in all manners and ways in and of Himself. He has no need of anyone or anything. Whatever God is He is within Himself and needs nothing to maintain Himself and anything H wants to do. He is life itself and all life is within Him and from Him. He is totally sufficient within His eternal being for all eternity for everything. While these are words on a page or words in some form of modern technology, they are pointing to the one and true God who exists in and of Himself and is sufficient for all things that He does and desires to do. This attribute of God, if taught from every pulpit in our land, would be like a huge bomb going off and the waves of destruction that a bomb would bring is only a slight analogy to what this bomb would be. We need to hear from the pulpits in this land that God does not need us and that He is sufficient for all things quite apart from anything we can do. He has no need that we can fill and our attempt to fill a need of His is actually a very wicked thing and even idolatry.

What do we do for God? We know from Acts 17 above that “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 above nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.” In light of the beauty and glory of this great God who exists in and of Himself and lives in complete self-sufficiency, we can know that there is nothing we can do for God. There is absolutely nothing that we can supply Him and there is absolutely nothing that we can do that will benefit Him. The one and true God is self-sufficient and all that we “give” to Him must first be received from Him. The works we do that we think are for Him are really for ourselves, so they are not for Him. Any works that are truly out of love for Him must come from Him and through Him and be by Him in order to please Him. If our works come from Him, through Him, and are by Him, then His is self-sufficient and we have nothing to praise ourselves for we do not serve Him.

What do we give God that He is not sufficient for? When we think of this question when it is put this way, we can immediately see that of course we cannot do something for the true God. Our sufficiency is of Him and from Him and we must not think of any sufficiency we have to “serve” Him as coming from ourselves. Did God create us because He was lonely? Are we sufficient for good company? Surely the Lord Jesus Christ who is perfect in all things was and is far better company than we could ever be.

Do we do things for Him that He is not sufficient to do Himself? Again, do we really think that our puny little beings can do something for God that He is no sufficient to do for Himself? What do we have that does not come from His self-sufficiency? What is it that He is not sufficient to provide so that we have to do it? When we even start to think about the glory of God in His self-sufficiency, our independence and our self-sufficiency should open up and we should see the awfulness of our idolatry and our sin. Man depends on himself and wants to depend on himself even more, but what we fail to see is that this is man wanting to be like God. Man is not self-sufficient, but instead is totally dependent in reality. Oh for the grace to see this more and more.