God's Power

For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. (Romans 1:20 NET)

Although there are statements about God's power throughout scripture, we don't need the revelation of scripture to know of it, for creation itself is a clear witness of to the power of God. Every person who views creation knows that its origin was at the hand of an unfathomably powerful God, and anyone who denies this is doing so by suppressing knowledge that they already have. Every single person knows, deep down somewhere, that there is a God who possesses eternal power, and they are choosing, on some level, to fool themselves into believing otherwise.

And not only did God create the world by His power, we know from scripture that the created order is maintained "by the word of his power (Hebrews 1)." The universe keeps on existing and keeps on functioning due to the constant exertion of the power of God. God spoke the universe into existence and he speaks its continued existence.

That God is omnipotent means that he has the power to execute his will. The statement from Psalm 115 that tells us that God does whatever he pleases is a statement about God's omnipotence. So is the statement in Ephesians 1 that tells us that God works all things after the counsel of His will. What God decides to do comes about with certainty because he has the power to accomplish whatever he wills.

If God desired, he could do more than he actually does. His power would permit him to raise up children of Abraham from stones, but God chooses not to work that way (Matthew 3). He had the power to free Jesus from the multitude that took him, for Jesus tells us that he could have called upon the Father, and he would have sent more than twelve legions of angels to rescue him (Matthew 26:53), but God's will was to accomplish something else—something that had already been declared in scripture (Matthew 26:54).

That God is omnipotent doesn't mean that he can do absolutely anything at all. We are told that God cannot lie, he cannot sin, and he cannot deny himself. What keeps him from doing those things, however, is not lack of power, but steadfastness of character. It is God's constant righteousness, not a shortage of power, that determines that certain actions will never be taken by him.

Absolutely everyone knows God's power through the witness of creation, but those of us who belong to him have another witness of his power. We know "what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe" (Ephesians 1:19ff). The unsurpassable power that called Lazarus from the tomb and raised Jesus from the dead has also "called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

This means that we have no excuses. We cannot claim weakness, for while it is true that we are weak, the same power that raised Jesus dwells within us. The power of the resurrection is ours for our sanctification. It is by the work of the One who accomplishes all that He wills that we are becoming righteous, and it is through the power of the One who accomplishes all that he pleases that we are overwhelming conquerors in all these things. We have no excuse to not do the works of our salvation, for it is this omnipotent God who is working in us, "both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).

God's "power toward us who believe" means that we have security despite our weaknesses. The God who spoke the universe into existence, who sustains it by his word, who raised Christ from the dead, and who is always, ever working all things according to the counsel of his will, keeps us by his power. The God of all ability is on our side. Who can stand against us?

...neither death nor life,
nor angels nor principalities nor powers,
nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth,
nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:38,39)

The limitlessness of God's power is one more reason for us to trust in him.

God's Eternality

What does it mean that God is eternal? It means, for one thing, that God has no beginning or end. He has always been and always will be. His duration is constant. Scriptures that express this idea say that God is from "everlasting to everlasting," or that God lives forever. He had no beginning point, and he will have no end point.

However, when God expresses to us that he is eternal, it would seems he means something more than just that he is forever enduring, with no beginning or end. We might say that as well as being forever enduring, God also has no succession of moments, so he is always in the eternal now, or the eternal present. God communicates this idea to us with the name "I AM", and statements like the one given to us by Jesus in John 8: "..before Abraham came into being, I AM." God also tells us that he does not change, and if there were a succession of moments with him, He would change as successions of experiences were added. A God who experiences the succession of time would be a maturing God. That time does not unfold for God is probably also part of what is meant by the statements that tell us that a day is the same thing as a thousand years to God. God does not experience time as a succession of cycles of days and nights, but exists somehow beyond the moments of time, or beyond time as periodical.

Time is also something that God controls. He has power over it and is therefore not bound by it. "He declares the end from the beginning," and events in time that he has yet to bring about were already declared by him from ancient times (Isaiah 46:9-10). When I read these statements, I understand them to mean that God calls time itself into being, for if he declares successive events, would he not declare time itself? Then, too, if God is the dwelling place of all successive generations (generations being partly an expression of time), then it seems that time itself must "dwell" within God, and time must in some way be held or encapsulated by God. (As I write this, I'm reminded of the limitations of our language to express these things. Everything I write makes it sound as if God is spatial, and, of course, he's not.) If God calls time into being and time exists within him, then God exists outside the bounds of time. Another way to express this thought is to say that God transcends time.

God transcends time, yet sees the events of time, acts within time, and relates to us within time. There are events in time that he will bring about in the future and things he has already done in the past. God does what he does "at the right time." He sent Christ into the world "when the fullness of time came." It is yet another mystery to add to our list of the mysteries of the being our incomprehensible God: God transcends time and yet relates to time by knowing every moment of it and acting within every moment of it.

Like the other of God's attributes, God's eternality is impossible for us to grasp in any complete way, although we can nibble around the edges of it, and know something about it. I tend to see things mathematically, so I'd like to be able to put God's relation to time into some sort of Venn diagram, and I find it frustrating that I can't. There is no Venn diagram for this, just as there is no language to express it, or even thoughts to think it.

Examining God's eternality shows us in one more way how "other" God is. We are vapor or "breath"—constantly changing, here one moment and gone the next—but God is from everlasting to everlasting. We cannot even speak of present moments, because before the words are spoken, the moment has moved to the past. Yet God is the eternal "I AM".

What does this mean for us? It means God is always there. We can always come to him and be assured that he is there to receive us. Time is our enemy, bringing death, and decay, and loss; but beyond time, there is one constant, and that is our God, who stands beyond the grasp of time. The God who loves us does not change. The God who works all things for our good is not subject to time, but controls and uses it to bring about his perfect will. That God is eternal is yet another reason to trust him.

Let's remember, too, that what God promises comes about certainly, but in his own time. The terms "one day" and "a thousand years" don't have the same meaning to him as an eternal being that they have to us. He is never slack concerning his promises, even though we don't see them fulfilled in our own lifetimes, or even in the lifetimes of countless generations. What he says will happen, but in the "fullness of time" of an eternal God.

What say ye? Have you anything to add in regards to God's eternality? Anything to quibble over?