With the first words of the Bible, a clear demarcation is made. God created the world (Ge 1:1). The world is not God, nor is the world an extension of God. Rather, the world was created by God. By necessity, the world does not exist on its own; it is dependent on something outside itself for its existence. This distinction between the Creator and creation is one of the most fundamental distinctions in Christian theology. Systems of pantheism and panentheism are immediately barred from a biblical worldview with Scripture’s opening line.

 

The Equal Perfections of the Trinity

When discussing God’s attributes, we are speaking of His nature or perfections, rather than His person. We must therefore be careful not to isolate any member of the triune Godhead from the others. Any attribute of God is a perfection that is equally true of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures testify that the Father has life in Himself (Jn 5:26), as does the Son (Jn 1:4), along with the Holy Spirit who is explicitly referred to as the “Spirit of life” (Ro 8:2, 10-11). As will be discussed later, God’s self-existence demands that He is eternal, without beginning or ending. Scripture is clear that this pertains to the Father who bestowed blessings on His elect “before the foundations of the world” (Eph 1:3–4), of the Son who is explicitly called the “eternal life” (1Jn 1:2), and of the Holy Spirit, through whom as “eternal Spirit,” Christ “offered Himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14). Thus, God’s self-existence pertains to each member of the Trinity or not at all. Only someone with “life in Himself” can declare something so stunning which Scripture attributes to both the Father and the Son, (Jn 5:26), as well as the Holy Spirit (Job 33:4). Indeed, it is the triune God who is the very “fountain of life” (Ps 36:9).

Truly Independent and Self-Sufficient God’s self-existence is classically referred to as His “aseity.” The Latin compound a se literally means, “from self,” suggesting that God is both independent and self-sufficient in the most absolute sense. While some have differentiated God’s independence and His self-sufficiency, relating aseity only to the latter, both attributes represent two sides of the same coin (on distinguishing the two, see the discussion in Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004], 2:148–152). God’s aseity carries both negative and positive senses—negatively, God is entirely free and independent of anything outside of Himself to exist; positively, He is fully self-sufficient within Himself to exist. Scripture testifies to both (see Ps 50:12; 1Ti 6:13). Truly, God is unique in the most absolute sense. “For I am God,” records the prophet, “and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me” (Isa 46:9).

To say God exists a se or from Himself is to acknowledge Him as the only truly independent being in reality. Unlike people, God does not have a biological or genetic identity. Human bodies are composed of cells, each cell having a nucleus of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. One chromosome is from the genetic father and one chromosome is from the genetic mother, with each chromosome containing genes composed of DNA. Every human being’s biological identity is, therefore, stamped by their parents before them. Not so with God. His self-existence precludes genetic makeup or identity. God is infinitely sourced in Himself, entirely independent of anyone or anything outside of Himself. Paul states it is God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Ro 4:17). God does not need life—He is the very source of life (Ge 2:7; Jn 5:21; 6:63; Ac 17:25). “For as the Father has life in himself,” testified Jesus, “so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (Jn 5:26).

 

Uncaused Self-Existence

Though the Bible reports the origin of man, it does no such thing with God. Scripture does not explain or defend God’s existence—it simply declares Him. Both Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 predate the cosmos with God’s existence. John goes on to state that without God, nothing would exist: “Without Him was not anything made that was made” (1:3). Thus, to ask who created or “caused” God is nonsensical according to His self-existence. God is the great presupposition of all of creation. The world merely “declares,” or reveals, His handiwork (Ps 19:1–6). All things have their beginning with God who has no beginning.

The medieval scholastic Thomas Aquinas made famous the idea of God being the “un-caused Cause.” God is not self-caused. He is uncaused. “He exists by necessity of His nature,” explains Rolland McCune, “His existence is not grounded in volition.”[1] If God willed His existence, He could will Himself not to be. Yet, because God’s existence is demanded by His own Godhood, it is impossible for God not to exist. When Abraham called on God in Genesis 21:33, the Hebrew text uses the phrase ‎יְהוָ֖ה אֵ֥ל עוֹלָֽם  (YHWH ´ël `ôläm) or “LORD, God-everlasting” as the biblical God is the self-existent God of eternity.

The founder of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary James P. Boyce expressed, “God has no succession, no increase of life, is possessed of the whole of his existence at once, and eternally possessed, has had no beginning, can have no end, and lives in the present only, having no past or future.”[2] Clearly, God’s mode of existence is entirely distinct from any other living being.

 

The Self-Existent I AM

Interestingly, Scripture seems to portray God as always in the present. Such is the case for a self-existent being whose very name denotes continual presence. God declared to Moses “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex 3:14). Derived from the same Hebrew verb translated “to be,” God disclosed His covenantal name יהוה (YHWH), suggesting a continual, present existence (Ex 6:3). Joseph Flatt observes, “The idea is that, no matter what the circumstances, God will be God. He does what He wants. He is completely independent of anything.”[3] God identified Himself similarly to Isaiah, “I AM the Lord, that is My Name” (Isa 42:8), and in relation to His chosen nation, God does not say, I was or will be with you, but rather—“I Am with you” (Isa 43:5).

God’s self-existence can also be inferred from His relation to the Patriarchs of Israel. He was not at-one-time-in-the-past their God. Rather, even thousands of years after their deaths, Scripture uses the present tense in declaring God’s relation to them: “I Am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Mt 22:32; cf. Ac 3:13; 7:32). The reference points were not the lives of Abraham and his posterity; the reference point is God’s life, which is continually present. Because God is self-existent, He is the ever-free, independent, and always-present God of Israel. Richard Bauckham observed, “God is the one who freely determines who he will be. He is not the God of Israel because he, as it were, finds himself that. Rather, he freely chooses Israel to be Israel’s God and commits himself to Israel.”[4] God’s self-existence means He is free in the truest sense to act according to His will, dependent on nothing but His own self-sustaining nature. He is not accountable to anyone. He is never somewhere incidentally. He freely does what He does, is where He is, and exists as He exists.

Jesus, the self-existing Son of God, made a similar declaration when commissioning the Church to make disciples around with world: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). Indeed, Jesus used a predicateless verb in declaration of His continual and limitless existence, and by doing so, equated His divine nature with God: “Before Abraham was, I Am [ἐγὼ εἰμί, egō eimi]” (Jn 8:58). The Contemporary English Version captures well Jesus’s self-existing declaration: “Jesus answered, ‘I tell you for certain that even before Abraham was, I was, and I am” (Ibid.). Perhaps the most exquisite testimony of Christ’s self-existence is found in Revelation, where He again uses “I Am” but compliments it with “the first and the last” and a present participle translated simply, “the living [one]” (Rev 1:18). The phrases used of God and Christ are striking throughout Revelation, terms befitting of the self-existent Godhead who has life in Himself. He is described as a being “who was and is and is to come” (1:4; 4:8), one who is “alive forevermore” (1:8). The self-existent God is truly “the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (22:13).

 

God’s Self-Existence as the “Fountain” of His Greatness

All of God’s greatness is intrinsically linked to His self-existence. In fact, His other incommunicable attributes logically depend on His self-existence. As such, God’s self-existence naturally impacts other attributes. As Rolland McCune states, “God is not only self-sufficient in His existence, He also possesses an infinite fullness of being in every possible dimension.”[5] Because He is self-existent, therefore, God is absolutely unique in all reality. He is perfectly and eternally self-sufficient, self-sustaining, self-dependent—and radically distinct from anything in the created realm. If the expression is allowed, we may say the self-existence of God serves as the fountain by which His other attributes flow.

 

Eternality

Because God is unsourced and uncaused, His existence never “began.” God being self-existent means He always was. In other words, God is eternal. When the ark of the covenant was placed inside the Tabernacle, David appointed the nation to worship: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting” (1Ch 16:36). Likewise, Moses declared, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps 90:2). The Hebrew word used for “everlasting,”‎ע֜וֹלָ֗ם  (ʿôlām) denotes a duration of time that was perpetually long from the speaker’s point of view. When used to describe God, both the Greek Septuagint and Greek New Testament replaced ע֜וֹלָ֗ם with αἰών (aiōn), specifying its meaning as that having no beginning or ending; in other words, “eternal” (Ne 9:5; Ro 16:26). God’s self-existence is, therefore, inseparably linked to His eternality.

 

Infinitude

Everything outside of God is finite. There are boundaries to all of creation. Even mathematics is “open-ended finitude” as numbers add to numbers (see Gerald Bray, The Doctrine of God, Contours of Christian Theology [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1993], 85–86). Yet, God is self-existent and thus infinitely closed, demanding that He is as boundless as He is endless. When dedicating the Temple, Solomon prayed that “Heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain [God]” (1Ki 8:27), and on Mars Hill, Paul preached that God cannot be contained by temples nor assisted by humans: “as though he needed anything, since He himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Ac 17:25). Contrary to process theology, God is not “becoming,” He is infinite and self-existent. Therefore, God’s self-existence links to His eternality which clearly affects His infinitude, as neither time nor space can limit a uniquely self-existent, eternal being.[6]

 

Omnipresence and Transcendence

As God’s infinitude is related to His self-existence, so are His attributes of omnipresence and transcendence. God breaks barriers of space and time while remaining imminently related to both. God is always everywhere simultaneously, both transcendently and imminently. Rhetorically, David asked, “Where shall I flee from your presence?” before immediately acknowledging there is nowhere that escapes God’s presence and closeness (Ps 139:7–12). Ultimately, God’s self-existence precludes any possibility to measure His being by sequential moments of time or geographic location. “His existence,” Charles Ryrie explained, “extends backward and forward (from our viewpoint) without any interruption or limitation caused by a succession of events.”[7] Being everywhere fully at once, God’s only measurement is His own self-existence.

 

Authority and Omnipotence

Finally, because God is not dependent on anything or anyone else for His existence as He is the “un-caused Cause” and “immovable Mover,” God is, in and of Himself, the supreme authority with supreme power. His self-existent essence demands authority over everything else, which then leads to Him being omnipotent since power and authority are linked. From prison the prophet cried out, “Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (Jer 32:17).

Extending to other members of the Trinity, the Gospels portray Jesus’s divine nature as having power and authority over both the natural realm (Lk 5:17; 7:22–25; 8:40–56; Jn 2:1–12; 5:1–17; 9:1–7; 11:38–44) and spiritual realm (Mt 7:29; 9:6; Mk 1:27; 5:6–13; Jn 10:18), as He is the self-existent Son of God. Jesus Himself testified to having “authority” in both realms, “over all flesh [natural], to give eternal life to all [spiritual]” (Jn 17:2), and Paul said that Christ is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1:21). Moreover, the Bible depicts the Holy Spirit as transcending all human power (Zec 4:6), able to exceed natural law (Lk 1:35), and as the powerful agent by which the gospel goes forth (Ac 1:8; Ro 15:19). Truly, God’s self-existence demands absolute authority and power.

 

Concluding Thoughts: Why God’s Self-Existence Matters

The aseity or self-existence of God is more than just an interesting doctrine. It has implications that directly affect Christians. Being self-existent with life in Himself means God has total authority over all created life and death. Paul said, “So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Ro 14:8). Accordingly, as the eternal self-existing Lord, He is worthy of our trust in salvation since “the Lord knows those who are His” (2Ti 2:19; cf. Ps 100:3). Additionally, from His eternal aseity flows His eternally sustained grace. The New Testament ensures us that it is through God’s grace that we have “eternal comfort and good hope” (2Th 2:16), and by His justifying grace, we become heirs “according to the hope of eternal life” (Tit 3:7). Finally, because God’s existence is not relative to anything outside of Himself, He is immutable or unchanging. This means God is the same God we read about in Scripture, always dependable, and never arbitrary. The Psalmist declared, “The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy” (Ps 111:7). As such, we can approach Him with confidence knowing He is not subject to sudden outbursts or erratic mood swings. The self-existent God is forever faithful and committed to His promises.  

 

---

ENDNOTES

[1] Rolland McCune, A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity (Allen Park: Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, 2009), 1:210.

[2] James P. Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology (Orig. Pub. 1887.) (Cape Coral: Founders Press, 2006), 70.

[3] Joseph B. Flatt, “The God Who Is! Exodus 3:14–15,” Reformation and Revival 7, (Spring, 2:1998), 111.

[4] Richard Bauckham, Who is God? Key Moments of Biblical Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 65–66.

[5] McCune, 1:20.

[6] Henry Clarence Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 122, views infinity as the reference point in relation to God’s eternity and immensity. God’s infinity in relation to time is His eternality, and in relation to space is His immensity.

[7] Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth (Chicago: Moods, 1999), 41.