God is Eternal (And Four Reasons Why That Matters)
“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.” Thus wrote Moses in Psalm 90:1-2. The main point is obvious: there is an ontological distinction (distinction in being) between God and the world He created. Whereas “the mountains were brought forth” and the earth “was formed,” God simply is.
God is God from all eternity, whether we look to “eternity past” or look forward to “eternity future.” For God, there is no “past” or “future.” God has no yesterdays or tomorrows. God never says, “Way back when I was about nine billion years old….” God just is. This is not only the teaching of Psalm 90:1-2, Psalm 102:25-27; Micah 5:2; Hebrews 1:12, and many other Scriptures, it is also the obvious implication of the very first verse of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1-11 provides the foundations of some highly significant doctrines, events, and redemptive-historical themes which are further developed and resolved throughout the rest of the Bible. For instance, in Genesis 1-11 we learn of the foundations for cosmic history, earth history, human history, human institutions (e.g., marriage and government), and redemptive history culminating in the revelation of Jesus the Messiah. Regarding redemptive history, the early chapters of Genesis reveal the conflict introduced into the world, and specifically the divine/human relationship, through Adam and Eve’s sin. But in addition to the revelation of the original human sin and the first judgment pronounced upon the human race (Genesis 3:1-19), we also see the first ever gospel presentation as God promised, in prototypical form, a coming messiah who would crush the head of the adversarial serpent (Gen. 3:15). This sin-judgment-redemption theme is played out throughout the Scripture, and the conflict which sin introduced in the third chapter of the Bible is brought to complete resolution by the second the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 21.
But as much as Genesis 1-11 forms the foundation (or origin) for numerous important biblical and theological issues, the ultimate foundation explicated in these chapters is God Himself. The ultimate foundation of our faith is not the doctrines which flow from the opening chapters of God’s written revelation. The ultimate foundation of our faith is the God who revealed those chapters. Our faith rests upon God alone; His existence, His Word, His character, His power, His decree. And so it is important for us to remember a couple things that Genesis 1:1 teaches us about God. And above all, Genesis 1:1 reveals that while the entire material universe had a beginning and will have an end, God has neither. God never began. God was never brought into being. God never “started.”
The great 17th century English Puritan preacher Stephen Charnock put it this way, “Thou hast always been God, and no time can be assigned as the beginning of Thy Being.” God had no beginning; nor will God end. He has no “expiration date.” He, unlike the material universe – and everything in it – is not “wearing out like a garment.” His “years remain,” is how the psalmist put it. God, in fact, is His own eternity. Eternity is not a thing which God acquired. God is an eternal being. Eternity cannot be understood without reference to God, the eternal One.
The eternality of God has enormous implications theologically. Because God is eternal, His knowledge is eternal as well. In other words, God never learns something, never changes His mind, never forgets something, does not think “discursively.” Rather He knows all things – whether they are past, present, or future from our frame of reference – in one eternal thought. His existence is always “in the present.” He dwells in an eternal present – an eternal “now.” That means that He is also immutable – He cannot change. A changing being has befores and afters. God has no befores or afters. He is, was, will be what He always is, was, and will be. There is no change in an eternal being. Change and time go together.
God is e-ternal. Since we cannot comprehend eternity in a positive sense, we can only describe what it is not. Just as “a” is the negation of “theism” in the word “atheism,” “e” is the negation of “ternal,” with regards to time. God is “not time” or “not in time.”
There are many other theological implications which follow from this classical attribute of God. But there are also personal implications for us. Let me quickly mention four.
(1) Because God is eternal, our negative judgments against Him must be seen for the extreme arrogance and foolishness that they are. We understand why a one month old infant fails to grasp why her thirty year old mother makes certain decisions or engages in certain actions. The cognitive gap between the two – largely a result of time – is obviously enormous. The infant cannot possibly understand the mother. How much more the “cognitive gap” between us and God! We are bound by time. We came into the world 20, 30, 50, 70 years ago, had to learn everything we now know from the start, and are largely ignorant of what and who came before us, and definitely ignorant of what and who will come after us. In the sharpest of contrasts, God is eternal, a dwelling place for all generations. The gap between us and God can only be illustrated, not fully grasped,by the gap between the infant and her mother. The gap between us and God is infinitely greater because God Himself is infinite. We should, therefore, exercise greater care and appropriate humility in our judgments against God, His commandments, His permissions, etc.
(2) Because God is eternal, our sin and pride are irrational follies. Charnock wrote, “There is in the nature of every sin a tendency to reduce God to a not being.” When we sin, we are acting as if God doesn’t exist. But because God is eternal, God has never not existed. Thus, sin is incomparably irrational. Moreover, it is folly for us to love a temporal, perishing thing (i.e., the things of this world) with the same or greater affection than which we love the eternal God. This is the clear and sobering admonition of 1 John 2:15-17. Like a mayfly, our life here is a fleeting vapor. The mayfly is an aquatic insect with a lifespan lasting from 30 minutes to 24 hours. Our lifespan, even if 90 years, is to God what a mayfly’s is to us. Job 14:2 says, “Man comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.” Sin and pride are irrational and foolish when we see the fleeting nature of our lives against the backdrop of the enduring permanence of the living, eternal God.
(3) Because God is eternal, those who hate God and refuse His salvation have much to dread. Charnock said this regarding the doctrine of damnation: “His eternity makes the punishment more dreadful than his power; his power makes it sharp, but his eternity renders it perpetual.” This is unspeakably dreadful. For the most part the memories of our past sins fade. We have forgotten the vast majority of our misdeeds from the past. But for the eternal God, those sins are yet present. God is not moving with us in time such that our past sins are in “God’s past” as well. God has no past. He is eternally present. Our sins, therefore, whether past, present, or future to us, are always present to God. This means that His anger toward our unrepentant sins – even ones committed decades ago – is as fresh today as when we committed them. Given this dreadful reality, it is easy to understand the psalmist’s question: “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” Thank God for His indescribable gift of forgiveness in Jesus Christ His Son (2 Cor. 9:15)! We would be utterly hopeless, with only an eternity of consequences for our offenses against an infinite, eternal, holy God – if not for the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ our Lord, who died in our place, that we might be made righteous in the sight of God (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18). Because of Christ, and by virtue of faith in Christ, God no longer beholds our sin and smolders with anger against us because of it. Rather, by faith in Christ, we are adopted, beloved, redeemed, washed, and righteous in the eyes of the eternal God. Sola Dei Gloria!
(4) Finally, the one who loves God, the one who is securely and eternally redeemed by grace through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5-7), has much to comfort him specifically because God is eternal. What hope and consolation would we have if God were perishable – if He had an expiration date? No, He is a dwelling place in all generations (Ps 90:1). That means we have comfort against all our present distresses. They can (and must!) be seen against the backdrop of eternity (Rom. 8:18; 2 Cor. 4:16-18). How wonderful it is to know that whatever the distresses are for the moment, they are indeed “momentary” when considered in contrast to eternity. But not only does the eternality of God provide the only real comfort in the midst our present trials, the eternality of God means that even after 10,000 x 10,000 of ages in heaven we will never be bored with God. The pleasures of God will be as fresh and spontaneous after countless ages of eternity as at the first. His eternal riches are, literally, unfathomable.
Genesis 1:1 is not just the first verse or just the foundation for theology; it is the foundation for our personal being and life. Let us therefore put our confidence in the eternal God, not in man, nor this transient world. And let us set our affections on the eternal God, and not the things of this transient world. From everlasting to everlasting, He is God!
Work Cited
Charnock, Stephen. The Existence and Attributes of God. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.