The
following article comes from the unpublished work “How
Well do I Know God.”
b.
God is also dependent
How can or is the Almighty, all-sustaining God of the universe dependent? Or is He? We normally do not think in terms of God being dependent, do we? In fact, this
may even sound heretical at first. After all , He is the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, everywhere present God. Everything that was, is, or will be, comes from Him. How can
God be dependent on anything when everything is dependent on him?
Well, in fact, He isn't dependent on
just anything. God is definitely not dependent on anything in
creation. Logic alone tells us this. Because He created
and sustains everything, the creation depends on Him and not the
other way around.
What
about God being dependent on Himself ? Is this even possible? It’s
not too far-fetched when you consider even we as mere finite humans seek to depend on ourselves and no one else. But for God, what exactly
does this mean or look like? As suggested in an earlier article, the grounds for
God’s independence is His interdependence. This is a mystery but
in a very real sense, God is just as dependent on Himself as we are dependent on Him. So yes, God is dependent but only
within His own being, not on anything outside Himself.
However,
is this real dependence as you and I understand it? If so, how?
God is a being of three distinct persons within one God. The Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit relate to
each other astruly distinct
persons with separate and distinct roles while at the same time
making up only one God. Therefore, dependence - or in God's case, interdependence - is fundamental to His being and is central to His makeup. Just because it is dependence
within Himself, does not make it any less dependence or a
felt reality. We may not be able to make sense of this logically, but
we certainly see the evidence of it in how God relates to Himself first, then to us, and how we relate to Him. As we progress, we hope to make this clearer.
each other as
What
is the practical significance of His being dependent? There are
several things. Because God is interdependent, He is also an
inter-relational and an inter-communicating being. He is a self-contained community if you will. Therefore, He truly understands what it means to
need and can identify with the feeling of need. How is this possible? In, through and by the incarnation of Christ, several unique things occurred.
Did
not the Son (God) experience the pain of the crucifixion and
subsequent separation from His Father? And did not Christ also
experience the consequences of sin during His crucifixion with the
emotional, spiritual and physical impact of this as well throughout
his ministry? While on earth he entered fully - likely more than anyone - into the brokenness of this world and humanity. He experienced hunger; he got tired; he was
treated throughout his earthly ministry as if he were infinitely less significant than he truly was. At the end of it all, he
suffered the consequences of judgment, condemnation, punishment, and
shame. Even though these were not due to His own sin (he had none), the painful
consequences he experienced were as if they were - and more so since He bore the judgment of many and we only bear our own (if we are outside of Christ).
We are told we have a high
priest who is to uched with the feeling of our infirmities, do we
not? Why? He’s been there, done that, as they say. Remember His
agony in the Garden of Gethsemane as He faced the prospect of bearing the full consequences of your sin and mine, with the full weight of judgment and separation from His Father bearing down on Him? Experts say in order to sweat blood the emotional stress must be almost unimaginable to rupture the tiniest of blood vessels at the surface of our skin.
Did
not God the Father also experience the loss and pain of separation
from His only begotten Son, the Son of His eternal love? On account
of the inter-relationship of the Father with His Son, it was not just
the Son who experienced the suffering of the cross, but the Father also,
due to His infinite love for the Son. Not unlike any loving
father would feel pain when He sees His child suffer loss or injustice. On account of this, God and His Son
fully entered into all aspects of pain and suffering caused by
separation, as well as experiencing the sins committed against Christ
as a man on earth.
When you have been estranged from someone you loved; one of your kids, a parent or a spouse because of some offense causing a rift between you, how did (or does) it feel? Whatever it is you ¹felt, God the Father
and the Son also felt this. Granted the separation the Son
experienced was due to our sins and not His own, it was still
separation nonetheless, with all the existential ramifications.
God
understands truly not only what relationship is but also what losing
it feels like, possibly in a way even greater than we do. If
the level of relationship, unity, and dependence between the Father
and Son is perfect and on an infinitely higher level than our own,
wouldn’t the pain of its loss also be infinitely greater?
God not only understands the joy of loving and being loved, of
honoring and being honored but also the pain of losing that love and honor and
feeling its loss in and through Christ.
To suffer for your own wrongdoing, though hard,
is justified, but to be accused and suffer for the wrong of someone
else is the worst kind of suffering. It is the most unjust and feels the most unfair. Much of our suffering is due to our own
sin. His was due only as a result of someone else's (ours).
1.
A felt as well as real dependence
Christ
emptying himself of His Divinity and becoming a man was a test of his
trust of the Father in ways He never experienced before. He no longer
had the advantage of full omniscience for understanding. While on
earth He couldn’t see the complete outcome of everything as before because He willfully set it aside.
Mat
24:36 “ But concerning that day and hour no
one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son,
but the Father only.
John
8:28 So Jesus said to them, " When you have lifted up the
Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on
my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught
me.
John
5:19 So Jesus said to them, " Truly, truly, I say to you,
the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees
the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does
likewise.
John
5:30 “ I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge,
and my judgment is just, because I seek not my ²own will but the will
of him who sent me.
Instead
of being able to rely on His omniscient deity to know things, He now
had to depend solely on His Father’s direction and what the Father revealed
to Him and told Him to do. Whatever manifestations of supernatural
power Christ displayed was solely from His dependence on and enabling of His Father through the Spirit (remember Christ performed no
miracles or entered ministry until after the Spirit had come upon
him). This itself was a kind of suffering for it was a loss of
benefits He formally possessed i.e. omnipotence, omnipresence,
omniscience. He loved and trusted His Father from eternity past; losing these characteristics required Him to trust the Father in a
way He never had experienced before. This helps us understand the
statement in Hebrews that Christ learned obedience i.e. He
learned how to set aside his own will and as a man faithfully follow His Father’s will and
direction, through the struggles and suffering He endured. His
lacking what was formally and fully His -- omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence -- required him to depend on His Father in a new and
different way. He no longer knew things through His own first-hand
experience but knew them by faith, i.e. He had to trust what the
Father revealed to Him as true and right because He could no longer
confirm them through first-hand knowledge (though he likely recalled his experiencing this before he became a man).
Even
though the Father and Son had a relationship of interdependence prior to
the incarnation, there was now a felt dependence between the
Father and Son during the incarnation in a new way that did not exist prior to
that event. He learned obedience-faith through the things he suffered i.e. He went from untested to tested obedience.
If so, what does this mean for us? As far as this
discussion goes, God and His Son truly and really ¹feel our pain and
weakness as well as our joys and pleasures, for they experienced them
as well .
Heb
4:15 For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched
with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all
points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
“Tempted” is not the idea of being enticed to wrong but
to endure the experience of a difficult event or its consequent
struggle, i.e. to be tested or disciplined by it. In our struggle we are often enticed to self-comfort without necessarily partaking in it.
Tempted:
Πειράζω , peirazō , pi-rad'-zo; to test (objectively), that is,
endeavor, scrutinize, entice, discipline: - assay, examine, go about,
prove, tempt (-er), try.
God
truly and really enjoys our love and appreciates our
gratitude and honor, in the same way He does the honor and glory
exchanged between the members of the Trinity. This is in part due to
His being in relationship throughout eternity and our being able to
enter into relationship with Him as His image-bearers, i.e. we are
relational like God. Since God is a relational being and we are like
Him we can really and truly bring joy to His heart, not unlike the joy
His only begotten Son also brings to His heart. We can bring sadness
to His heart when we are alienated from Him just as when His Son was
alienated from Him at the cross for the same reason, i.e. for our
sin, not His.
It is also worth mentioning that Christ is our elder brother and we too
are considered sons and daughters – children - of God. Though we
are not the eternal only begotten Son, we are adopted sons and
daughters in Christ nevertheless, who will live with God our Father
throughout eternity just as our elder brother Christ. As a result, God
really and truly feels the give-and-take of relationship with us in a
manner similar to what He feels with his Son and similar to how you
and I feel it with our kids and each other.
If
we stop to consider it, where does our ability to relate to others come from? Where do we get the capacity to feel the various
aspects, both good and bad, of being in a relationship? Does it come
out of a vacuum or simply because we are fallen due to our rebellion?
We were relational before the fall, were we not? Would it make sense
that we, as His creatures, could feel and experience something more or
completely different regarding relationship than God Himself? No, these qualities are in us because they were
in God first and are all a part of God’s being and therefore ours
as His image-bearers.
In summary
In summary
The
interaction of God as a triune being is key to what makes God a
relational being instead of some stoic, unmoved, impersonal force. He
not only designed relationship and understands it, He is
relationship. This is just another way of saying God is love.
Relationship is at the very core of His Being and has been from
eternity past. It is in fact why God is love. He is not just another relational being but one of perfect
giving and receiving of love, honor, and glory throughout eternity
past. All other relationships are a reflection of the primary
relationship of God as an inter-relational Being. Nothing He does is
outside of relationship, whether that be within Himself or with you
and I. Relationship, and therefore love is rooted in the very
essence of His being. God doesn’t simply have love, He is
love. He alone is the I AM. He has always been from all eternity past. God could not be a God of love if He were not a God of
relationship first.
This
also explains how we can truly enter into a real relationship with
God and Him with us. Relationship is not something new, strange or
awkward to God but has been a part of His make up from eternity past, before you and I ever entered the picture. Dependence within a
relationship is a deeply rooted quality within God’s very makeup. Just because it is dependence within Himself does not make God any
less dependent, or less a reality or less a relationship. So dependence is not
just a reality of our existence, but is also God’s. For us, it is dependence on something or someone outside of our
being. For God, it is dependence within His, but dependence
just the same.
Therefore,
our independence from God is in direct conflict with the
reality of God’s dependence in a far more significant way than we
may have previously considered. Our attempt at independence is contrary not just
to who we are as dependent beings, but also to who God is
as an interdependent being. God designed us for a
relationship of dependence on Him so that we could participate in and
experience this interdependence He has within Him. For us to attempt
to be independent of God violates not just our nature but
the very nature of God.
It must be clear that there is no one or nothing outside of
God that He needs to be God. In theological terms, this is known as the aseity of God or His self-existence. This is the essence of God being the one and only "I AM." God is dependent on nothing
and therefore requires nothing outside of Him to be God. He is self-sufficient,
self-sustained and independent. I am suggesting this independence is rooted in his interdependence.
For a further discussion on the incarnation of Christ click here.
For a further discussion on God's interdependence click here.
For a further discussion on God's interdependence click here.
For a further discussion on the love, life, Spirit and essence of God click here
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¹some might argue this is contrary to the impassibility of God. This says God is not subject to suffering, pain, or the ebb and flow of involuntary passions. However, the independence of God prevents Him from being passionate out of a need for others, while passionate in His need for Himself. For a closer look at the impassibility of God, click here.
²It is worth noting that Christ says he and the Father have a seperate will. Granted Christ’s will always submitted to the Fathers, so in that sense his was one and the same with the Fathers, but in order for Christ's obedience to be meaningful it had to be His choice.
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Grace to you
Jim Deal