The Attributes of God
God’s Eternality
I. How do we know that God is eternal?
First we have the evidence of scripture which speaks clearly about God’s eternal existence.
Psalm 90:1-4
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,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
You turn man to destruction,
And say, “Return, O children of men.”
For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it is past,
And like a watch in the night.
Psalm 102:25-27
Of old You laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
They will perish, but You will endure;
Yes, they will all grow old like a garment;
Like a cloak You will change them,
And they will be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will have no end.
Jude 25
to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Titus 1:2-3
in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages beganand at the proper time manifested in his word
Isaiah 57:15
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy
And we can see that it is reasonable to infer an attribute of eternality to God from the definition of God as a maximally great being. A maximally great being must exist as long as anything exists in order to be maximally great. If time exists then God exists and there is no moment in which God does not exist therefore God is eternal.
Also, from eternity the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit express the divine glory. Creation is part of that expression. The message of divine glory, to be a message, has a destination. Any message takes time to be communicated. The divine glory is infinite in its perfection therefore the time required for its expression is infinite.
II. What does it mean that God is eternal?
Atemporal – There are two ways to possibly approach the idea of God’s eternity. First, it could be that God exists outside of time, that is, timelessly. It may be that God’s interaction with the temporal world is like an author writing a novel. He exists outside and above the events in the story but is intimately connected to all events. As in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Omnitemporal – Second, we could see God as existing in time. We see God interacting with temporal creation. In support of this view consider God’s omniscience. By God’s omniscience He must know all facts. Some facts are tensed facts. That is, they pertain to different points of time. Omniscience would require knowledge of all tensed facts. God knows what time it is.
III. How can we understand eternity?
Scientifically, time can be defined as distance divided by velocity. The time it takes for anything to move from one point to another point in space would be one unit of time. This definition requires an object, and space, in which the object moves, and an observer who makes the comparisons that make units of distance/velocity meaningful. Eternity is the space in which every movement of every object occurs.
There is a dynamic view of time that asserts that only the present is real. The past is gone and the future is not yet. If space and time are real things then only the present moment is real. Perhaps God exists now. Jesus’ assertion in Luke 20:38, “Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” would seem to support this view.
Otherwise, maybe time is static. It may be that every moment in time exists permanently and it is the passage of time that is illusory. In this case, maybe God, existing timelessly outside of space and time sees every moment of everywhere all the time.
Isaiah 46:9-10
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
IV. What does this mean to my life?
God is never pressed for time.
2 Peter 3:8
But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
His will is accomplished although we cannot understand how.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
We are not eternal.
James 4:13-16
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
We are called to use the time we are given.
Romans 13:11-12
Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Suffering is short and glory is eternal.
1 Peter 5:10
And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
brotherpayne 