None Greater by Matthew Barrett

Author:Matthew Barrett [Barrett, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: God (Christianity)—­Attributes, Theology, REL067000, REL012000, REL067110
ISBN: 9781493417575
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

From Everlasting to Everlasting

Scripture constantly refers to God’s eternal nature. He has no beginning; he has no end. He always is. Here is a concept our finite minds are barely able to handle: someone who exists but never came into existence.

Consider the ways—the many ways—Scripture testifies to God’s eternity.7 Moses prays in Psalm 90:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (90:1–2)

Moses then contrasts God’s everlasting existence with the fate of the people.

You return man to dust

and say, “Return, O children of man!”

For a thousand years in your sight

are but as yesterday when it is past,

or as a watch in the night.

You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,

like grass that is renewed in the morning:

in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;

in the evening it fades and withers. (90:3–6)

A dream? Like grass? Moses is making the point that our life span is but a moment. In an instant the floodwaters gush, and we become dust once more. Like grass, we sprout up in the morning, only to wither by sunset. Not God; he is everlasting. As the prophet Isaiah says, “The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (40:28). Not only is his name “Holy,” but as the Holy “One who is high and lifted up,” he also “inhabits eternity” (57:15).8

Many of the prologues and benedictions in the New Testament highlight the eternal nature of this holy God as well. Paul calls him the “immortal God” (Rom. 1:23), the “eternal God” (Rom. 16:26), and the “only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality” (1 Tim. 6:15–16). John addresses the seven churches in Asia and says, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev. 1:4). He then concludes his greeting with the words of God himself, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, . . . who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (1:8).

Since God is everlasting, his perception of time is not like ours. For us, we see one moment followed by the next because that is how we experience time. To transcend time is impossible for us. We are in it, bound to it, and formed by it. But with God, time is perceived differently. As one who is not bound by time or limited by its count, he sees all time at once. While it may seem as if the Lord will never return, Peter reminds his readers not to count slowness as some do. With “the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8).

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