Independent

This is the second episode of the IMAGO Project! In this episode I talk about God's independence, and break into why it's such a blessing that He is independent and that we are dependent on Him.

All scripture citations are pulled from the English Standard Version published by Crossway in 2001. The intro and outro music is an excerpt from the instrumental version of Ben Potter's, "Omnipotent yet Intimate," and is officially licensed.

Transcript

Ep. 2 - Independent

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. - Acts 17:24-25

HELLO. I am Matthew Vaughan, and this is The IMAGO Project, a podcast where we look deeply into the character of God and investigate what it means for us to be made in his image. Today we will be talking about God’s complete independence, and what that means for us.

Part 1) Introduction

WHEN I was first writing this script I was sitting in a coffee shop sipping a Pourover, a washed Ethiopian for those who are as pretentious as I am, and there was a family seated across from me. They had a baby, probably one or two years old. I don’t know, I’m not very good at judging the ages of children. His parents were watching him walk around and making sure he didn’t go too far or trip and fall into anything. Being a baby who had barely started walking, he didn’t really have a reference for what would hurt him on his own, so his parents had to function as a safety net for him. They had to set the boundaries for what would keep him safe and keep their eyes on him to make sure he wasn’t going too far away. When they would pick him up he would smile and lean into them. If he had gotten hurt he would have cried to get their attention. What I’m saying is, babies love to receive attention from their parents, and rely on that attention for healthy development. 

UNFORTUNATELY, we all reach an age where we no longer want to rely on anyone else. We want to be on our own, capable of supporting ourselves and deciding what is good for us and not good for us. There comes a point where we all start searching for our purpose, searching for financial freedom, and searching for fulfillment, all so we can reach the end of our lives and say, in the practically immortal words of Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.” When we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the peak of our pyramid of needs is self actualization. Self-fulfillment. No other animal has a need for fulfillment. A dog doesn’t have a plan for its life, so it can’t get depressed because its life didn’t go the way it thought it would. That’s not the case for us. No matter how hard we try, we have a deep, intrinsic desire for our lives to mean something that we determine within ourselves and to become the person we were always meant to be. 

HERE’S the problem with that. Unless we were created with a purpose in mind, there is no reason for us to believe that life is about anything at all. Let me explain. When we make something like a couch, the purpose of that couch is to be sat on. The couch is dependent on its creator to have that purpose. If it just existed on its own, the fact that it could be sat on would be purely coincidental. So, if people were not created, then they don’t have an intrinsic purpose. Thus, nothing that a person could ever do would ever mean anything real, because there is no true benchmark for success or failure. All things would be utterly meaningless if they are not intentionally created with meaning. Why then does even the most cynical person have an unshakeable desire for greater things? Wouldn’t it make sense for that to not be the case? Speaking pragmatically, it makes no sense to want anything more than to be comfortable until we die. Why then, do we have aspirations? Why do we build skyscrapers? Why do we want to go to space? Why do we want to be remembered? Most of all, why can we not seem to find true, lasting fulfillment in ourselves?

BEFORE we answer all those questions, let’s start by talking about God’s independence, and we’ll have fun getting existential later on.

Part 2) The Independent God

THERE is a word used in more theological circles to describe the independence of God. It is the aseity of God. Basically, this word means that He exists by and of himself, and is fully self-sufficient, independent, and autonomous. Of course we didn’t pull this idea from nowhere. Let’s look at Acts 17:24-28. 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. And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In Him we live and move and have our being;’ as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed His offspring.’

IN that passage, Paul is preaching the Gospel to a crowd of Athenian citizens. These Athenian people had statues to their various gods, and one statue with the inscription ‘to the unknown god.’ This statue dedicated worship to whatever god they did not know about yet, just in case they had missed any. Naturally, Paul saw through this worship to the heart behind it: They believed their gods needed worship and would lash out if they did not receive the offerings they required. I mean, if we look at ancient Greco-Roman mythology, their gods were extremely human. They slept, had sex, ate, drank, made mistakes, and had very bad tempers. In fact, their gods had parents of their own. Taking things down to brass tacks, their gods were created in their own image from wood, marble, gold, and other precious metals. 

GOD, however, is not created in the image of anyone, nor is He even created. This is an important aspect of His identity. He exists because He is. He is the “I Am.” He is the one who is, was, and is to come. He is, without anything, already perfect in all his ways. He needs nothing, so everything He does is free from sinful motivation. We see that clearly in James 1:13, where James writes, “For God cannot be tempted with evil, and He himself tempts no one.” 

BECAUSE God cannot be tempted, we can safely infer that God’s pure heart and pure intention, free from temptation or evil, spoke creation into existence. You see, the words we humans say flow from whatever is in our hearts. If our hearts are full of nasty thoughts, our words will reflect that. If our hearts are full of love, our words will reflect that. Considering that we were created in the image of God, it stands to reason that his words are much the same. However, he is pure. So rather than being from a selfish desire for recognition or a thoughtless demonstration of infinite power, God’s act of speaking creation into being was the original act of love toward his creation. I love the way Makoto Fujimura put it in his book, “Art and Faith.” Less than speaking, he imagines creation as God singing everything into existence. A melody flowing from a heart full of joy at the creation of things that He could demonstrate His infinite and perfect love to. That sort of love can only be expressed by one who has no need for reciprocation. 

IN the acknowledgment of God’s perfection and self-sufficiency we capture yet another important fact. He gets nothing from us. Robert Shaw put it this way. “His glory necessarily results from, or rather consists in, the absolute perfection of his own nature, and his blessedness is all summed up in the possession and enjoyment of his own infinite excellencies.” God is complete entirely on his own. We often say that we live to glorify God. I would rephrase that statement to make it ring with more truth. We live to acknowledge the glory of God. We do not add glory to him by the way we live as if his glory were not already complete. We turn the eyes and hearts of others to acknowledge the complete glory of God by the way we live. 

THERE are infinity plus one ways to say that God is fully independent, but at the root of His independence is His perfection. He can do all things, He knows all things, He is in all things. He misses nothing, wants nothing, and can do anything except sin. All His ways are pure and perfect. If He were not perfect, then He would not be deserving of worship. His perfection is the core of who He is. Because He is perfectly independent, He is capable of perfect love, perfect justice, perfect holiness, perfect mercy, and infinitely more. That is the reason we are starting with His independence. 

WITH that in mind, I am going to move on to talking about us in light of who He is, because the only right lens to look at ourselves with is through the lens of the image we are created in.

Part 3) The Dependent Man

LOOKING back at Genesis 2:7, we see the creation of man. God formed man from dust and breathed life into him. From the beginning that separates us from Him and creates an understanding of our reliance on Him. We have an origin, and our origin is Him. If we move on from Genesis 2:7 to Genesis 2:8-10, we see God continues from providing man with breath and life to providing him with a dwelling place in the garden of Eden. “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.” In the garden there was food, water, and in verse 15 we see there was also work to be done. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

TO me, this is the most interesting part of the creation narrative, because it is somewhat counter to what we think of when we think of perfection. In God’s perfect creation intent for man, man still ate, drank, worked, and needed company. In all likelihood man kept the sabbath as well. The point is, God created man with needs, and then He supplied what was necessary for those needs to be met. Man needs food? There’s trees that are good for food everywhere. Man needs water? There’s a river. Man needs purpose? He will keep the garden. Man needs company? I will make a suitable helper for him. For however long Adam and Eve were in the garden, we can assume there was never a moment where they were really even conscious of their needs, because God had provided everything already. They were supposed to be satisfied.

BUT the story didn’t end at creation. Sin entered the picture. The original temptation, the original lie came in and ruined everything. It was simple and enticing. “God knows that if you eat of this tree, you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” You will be like God. Adam and Eve knew God personally. They had walked with Him in the garden. They had witnessed His glory firsthand, so when presented with an opportunity to be like Him, they seized on it. You see, that’s the root of our sin even today. We want to be the god of our own lives. Capable of deciding right and wrong. Needing no one else. Independent. However, the promise of godhood is a lie. Adam and Eve did not become like God. They became even less like Him, and death, pain, and need became inescapable. 

WE see the consequences of the fall in the second half of Genesis 3:17 and on to the end of 19. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Work became difficult. Food became a product of hard work. Death became a part of life. We became rebellious and disobedient. Those things which were intended to turn our eyes to God in gratitude became bitter and difficult. Humanity did not become less dependent on God, but their dependence deepened from a need for food and water to a need for salvation from their brokenness.

EVEN after giving these consequences, He still provided for us. In Exodus 20, we see the 10 commandments. These set forward a framework for us to follow that leads us to live a life that pleases God and honors Him. It is safe to assume that in the garden Adam and Eve were doing these things without really having to think about it. They were natural because God had created us to do them. After the fall, however, they became difficult as well. They became counter to our nature. In fact, they became so counter to our nature that God had to give even more laws to his people to keep them in line. If you’ve ever read Leviticus I’m sure you were thinking to yourself, who on earth could keep all these laws? The answer is none of us.

THE Father knew that his people could never keep all the laws He gave to them, and that something else needed to be done if He wanted His creation to be reunited with Him, because nothing imperfect can enter His presence. He already had a plan in order, however. He sent His own son, Jesus, who is God, to become a man and live on earth among us. Jesus was born of a virgin, and he lived a perfect life on earth, fulfilling all the laws in Spirit that we could never fulfill in our sinful flesh. He performed miracles, healing people and casting out demons everywhere He went. Eventually His own people, the Israelites, turned against him and demanded He be crucified. He was forced to carry His own cross, whipped, spat on, beaten, tortured, mocked, betrayed, abandoned, and humiliated. He suffered all the worst we as humanity have to offer. The God of the universe was condemned to die for crimes He did not commit. As He hung on the cross, He became our sin and died, putting our sin to death with Himself as a perfect sacrifice to pay the price of our sin, which is death. After three days He rose from death in complete victory so that anyone who believes in Him in their heart and confesses that He is Lord could be reconciled to the Father and spiritually covered in His blood so they can eventually enter into the presence of God and be with their creator.

THAT is the heart of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We certainly couldn’t save ourselves, and He didn’t need to save us from our sin, but He did so because he loves us. Romans 5:8 says “but God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We will always have needs, but in the present our greatest and deepest need is salvation. So, as the perfect provider with no needs of His own, Christ provides for us salvation and life in His own death and resurrection. What glorious truth that is! Remember how I was talking about how we have these desires for remembrance and greater things? God is those greater things! He is the eternity and life we so desperately desire. He is the fulfillment of everything we were created to be, and we can only be truly and completely fulfilled when we have Him in our hearts and minds. That’s the reason the greatest command given by Jesus was love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. From that love will flow obedience and reverence before God, which will take us to those around us to share the love and glory of God until all the world has heard the greatness of His name.

WHENEVER I think about, talk about, or write about these things, I can’t help but be amazed at what goodness our God possesses. I hope this has been encouraging to you, and I hope that you have more love for and understanding of the character of God after listening to this. Let’s pray.

Psalm 50

The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth

from the rising of the sun to its setting. 

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. 

Our God comes; he does not keep silence; 

before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. 

He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people:

“Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”

The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge.

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. 

I am God, your God.

Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;

Your burnt offerings are continually before me.

I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds.

For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High,

And call upon me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

But to the wicked God says:

“What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips?

For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.

If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers.”

“You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.

These things you have done, and I have been silent; 

You thought that I was one like yourself.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.”

Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!

The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;

To one who orders his way rightly

I will show the salvation of God!”