What Does It Mean That God Is Independent?

God is Independent

We humans are needy. We need oxygen, food, water, clothing, shelter, relationships, etc. Since we are needy, we tend to view God this way, too. Thinking that God needs this or that. Many believe that God needs us. But this isn’t what the Bible teaches. God doesn’t need us. In fact, God doesn’t need anything. God is independent.

So, what does it mean that God is independent? God’s independence means that He does not need us or the rest of creation for anything. God has, in Himself, everything He would ever need or want for complete satisfaction. Yet, mankind along with the rest of His creation has the ability to glorify Him and bring Him joy! God is the only independent being in all of existence. Everything else, in all of creation, is dependent upon God. God is dependent on no one and nothing outside of Himself. He is, therefore, independent. This attribute of God is also referred to as aseity or self-existence.

We NEED to understand God’s independence. Let us take a deeper look at this important attribute of God.

In NEED of Nothing….

I hear it all the time in modern evangelistic techniques:

“God is calling for you to be with Him.”
“Jesus needs you.”
“Jesus died because He needed a relationship with you!”

Granted, there is some truth to these statements. But they are very misleading. They make God out to be a needy Person who has to have a relationship with man or else He won’t be fulfilled. As if something would be lacking in God if people don’t do Him a favor by believing in Him.

This is wrong. This type of methodology is a fruit of self-centered theology instead of God-centered theology.

There is no “man-shaped hole” in God that must be fulfilled for God to be satisfied. There is nothing lacking in God or in His character that man can or needs to fulfill.

The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. (Acts 17:24-25)

God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth and all that fills them, is an eternal God. This eternal God is unchanging. He existed independently in eternity past from everything that what was made by Him at the beginning of time. He exists independently from everything that was made now, in the present, too. He will exist independently from everything that was made in the future. He does not change.

For more on God’s eternality and unchangeability, see our articles:

The Triune God

God has everything necessary for satisfaction in Himself: Father, Son, and Spirit. The Scriptures teach that God is a Trinity, three in one. In our article, What Is The Trinity?, we explained:

There is one eternal God. The one true God exists in three distinct Persons who share the same divine nature. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. There is One God. The Father is not the Son and/or the Spirit. The Son is not the Father and/or the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father and/or the Son. There are three divine Persons who are co-existent, co-eternal, and co-equal. To this mystery, there is no analogy or suitable illustration in all of creation. Nothing adequately imitates this truth about the Creator. He is unique. Different. Holy.

God has never been alone. He has always existed as a Triune God. God is eternal and unchanging. The relationships of the Triune God have always been in perfect unity and harmony. There was no sin to defile God or cause separation amongst themselves as a Trinity. Relationally they need for nothing.

There is nothing that sinful man can add to or give to God that would fulfill Him or satisfy Him. He has every satisfaction and fulfillment in Himself as a Triune God.

Why Man?

This can beg the question, “Why does God save sinful beings?” To which the answer is that God is a savior and God is love.

“Declare and set forth your case;
Indeed, let them consult together.
Who has announced this from of old?
Who has long since declared it?
Is it not I, the Lord?
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me.
Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth;
For I am God, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:21-22, bold added)

God’s nature is unchanging. He is a loving Savior. He acts benevolently toward His creation because of who He is.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. (1 John 4:7-17, bold added)

God doesn’t save because He needs us in any way. He offered a way to save sinful creatures because that is who He is and what He does. He saves. How can God love sinful and rebellious humans? Because God is love. This is the very reason why sinful humanity still exists today. Because God is still working to save and redeem. As long as it is called today, God is offering for sinful human beings to be reconciled to Him through the propitiation of Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus died for sins!

God didn’t do any of this because He needed us but because we need Him!

Contingent Vs. Necessary

Everything in creation began to exist at some point. In order to exist, everything in creation requires something outside of itself to exist. This means that everything in creation is dependent upon something else for its existence to at least some degree. Another term for this dependence is contingent. That is, everything in creation is contingent or dependent for its existence upon something outside of itself.

The Creator stands in stark contrast to contingent and dependent creation. The creation finds its ultimate source in the Creator. The Creator Himself needs no such outside source for His existence. Contrary to His contingent and dependent creation, the Creator Himself is independent. His source of existence and life is found within Himself, not outside of Himself. The Creator God is not a contingent being. Instead, God is a necessary Being. He exists. Period. Always has and always will.

Jesus said,

For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; (John 5:26)

This ultimate source of life is within God. Everything in all of creation depends upon this necessary source.

The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ (Acts 17:24-28)

Apart from God, nothing would or even could exist. He is the ultimate and necessary source of all that exists.

Who Made God? The Truth

Sometimes people ask, “Who made God?” This is a genuine question some of the time. Often it is asked by children. In other cases, it is simply a question asked by someone trying to stump Christians so they can win rhetorical points in an argument.

The simple answer is, “No one made God. God has always existed. God is eternal.”

This question naturally leads into a follow-up: How can God be eternal? This question is harder to answer definitively. Since God is holy and different than us, we struggle to define and articulate aspects of His character which are unlike our own nature and existence. The biblical answer to this question is simply that God just is. Such an answer is often not acceptable to the skeptic.

However, there is an aspect of God’s nature that provides a potential philosophical answer that may be more satisfactory. It at least opens the door to the genuine possibility of something that is truly eternal.

Jesus made a well-known statement that has important implications for the discussion at hand.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6)

This statement is most often discussed with the implications for salvation being found in Christ alone. Rightly so. That’s the main point. For the present discussion, I simply want to direct our attention to this little phrase: “I am … the truth.”

Take a moment to perform a thought experiment with me. Imagine nothing. I mean absolutely nothing. Imagine that all that exists is nothingness. That is to say, imagine that nothing exists at all.

You with me?

In this scenario, with absolutely nothing existing, something would still necessarily exist. That something is the truth. If absolutely nothing existed, it would still be true that nothing exists. It is impossible to escape this fact. The truth necessarily exists, even if nothing exists at all. It may be true that no one knows the truth, that no one perceives the truth, that no one understands the truth. Yet, the truth exists necessarily. Even if there is nothing, then it remains true that nothing exists.

Therefore, philosophically and theologically we can see the implications of Jesus’s claim to be the truth. To some degree, this is a statement of Jesus’s necessary existence and independence.