“Before the hills in order stood or Earth received her frame,
From everlasting you are God, to endless years the same.”[1]
God’s eternality, says Dr. David Jeremiah, “is one of the most beautiful attributes of the God I worship.” He continues, “all our treasured biblical doctrines and truths would collapse without the reality of an everlasting God.”[2] As support of that statement, he offers the following verses:
- Romans 1:20, which speaks of God’s “eternal power and divine nature”
- Romans 9:5, which declares Him to be “God over all, forever praised!
- Ephesians 3:11, which speaks of “his eternal purpose”
- 1 Timothy 1:17, where He is described as “the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God”
And, of course, many more could be added to that. But first, a definition of God’s eternality from Theopedia.com, where we read, “The Eternity of God refers to his timeless nature. God had no beginning, and will have no end.”[3] The article goes on to say that “If God is not eternal, then eternal life is not His to give to anyone.”[4]
While researching this particular attribute, it became abundantly clear that some commentators had difficulty expressing the meaning and the implications of God’s eternity. Here are a few samples:
- A.W. Tozer: “The Old Testament Hebrew has exhausted itself—wrung its language as you wring a towel, to get the last drop of meaning out of it—to say that God is forever and ever endlessly, unto perpetuity, world without end.”[5]
- David Jeremiah: “Genesis 1:1 says, ‘In the beginning God.’ Perhaps you’re asking, ‘In the beginning of what?’ Truly, ask yourself this question—the beginning of what? I would answer: In the beginning of everything—of time, of space, of heaven, of earth, of the entire created order. In the beginning as far back as we can reason it, wherever we can point our pencil on the paper and calculate the beginning of time.”[6]
- John Frame: “God does not have a beginning or end. He exists before the beginning of the created world (Gen 1:1, John 1:1)…. God’s own existence is not only without beginning or end; it is beyond time itself.”[7]
- Biblehub: “God’s existence precedes all creation and extends endlessly into the future. God’s eternity is not merely a description of endless length of days but a distinct mode of being. He transcends the succession of moments that characterize created life. In this sense, God’s eternal nature represents the foundation for everything that exists.”[8]
- Augustine: “But Thou, O Lord, who ever livest, and in whom nothing dies (since before the world was, and indeed before all that can be called ‘before,’ Thou existest, and art the God and Lord of all Thy creatures; and with Thee fixedly abide the causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all things changeable, and the eternal reasons of all things unreasoning and temporal).…”[9]
- A. W. Tozer: “The old theologians used to say that eternity is a circle. Round and round the circle we go, but back before there was any circle, God was!”[10]
- Stephen Charnock: “If we would look back, we can reach no further than the beginning of the creation, and account the years from the first foundation of the world; but after that we must lose ourselves in the abyss of eternity; we have no cue to guide our thoughts; we can see no bounds in thy eternity.”[11]
But we must go back to that statement in the article from theopedia.com: “If God is not eternal, then eternal life is not His to give to anyone.”[12] Here are some of the verses from the Old Testament that speak of God’s eternality:
- Deuteronomy 33:27 – The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
- Psalm 41:13 – Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen.
- Psalm 90:2 – Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
- Isaiah 40:28 – Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
- Habakkuk 1:12 – Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, you will never die.
In the New Testament we have this powerful statement in the first chapter of John’s Gospel:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5)
He is the Word; He is God; He is light; the darkness had not overcome that light, nor will it. Because of who He is (1 Timothy 1:17), because of His promise of eternal life given even “before the beginning of time” (Titus 1:2), we can know with utter confidence that the eternal God will keep the promise He gave and guaranteed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: that those who believe in Him will (not might) have eternal life: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Endnotes
- Isaac Watts, “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” public domain.↑
- David Jeremiah, “How Big is God?,” https://www.davidjeremiah.org/knowgod/god-is-eternal?srsltid=AfmBOopi9MetE9zfaKHznjTSip_NR4sBRM00kDSi2nIiyITKWCimh7T4↑
- Theopedia.com, “Eternality of God,” https://www.theopedia.com/eternality-of-god↑
- Ibid↑
- A.W. Tozer, The Attributes of God Volume 2: Deeper into the Father’s Heart (Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition), p.40.↑
- Jeremiah, “How Big is God?”↑
- John M. Frame, “The Eternality and Aseity of God,” The Gospel Coalition, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/eternality-aseity-god/↑
- Biblehub, “What is God’s eternal nature?” https://biblehub.com/q/what_is_god’s_eternal_nature.htm. No specific author is mentioned.↑
- Augustine, Confessions, Book 1, Chapter 6, Section 9, quoted in Tozer, Attribute Vol. 2, p. 41.↑
- Tozer, Attributes, Vol. 2, p. 41.↑
- Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Vol. 1&2): Complete Edition (e-artnow. Kindle Edition), p. 456.↑
- Theopedia.com, “Eternality of God.”↑