God's Attributes: The Solitariness of God

Scripture as we know it begins in Genesis 1:1 with, "In the beginning, God". This is our "sense" of the beginning of time, but the reality is, there was a time before that, called eternity past, in which only God (in three Divine Persons) dwelt all alone. There was no heaven, where we now know His glory is manifested. There was no earth or universe to display His magnificence. There were no angels to praise and worship Him. There was nothing, no one, but God. This wasn't for just a short time before creation. It wasn't just for a day, a year, or an age, but from an everlasting past eternity. We can't even assign or comprehend a timeline for God. 

During this past eternity God was alone, fully self-contained, fully self-sufficient, fully self-satisfied and in need of nothing or no one. God was alone...but He wasn't lonely. 

Everything that God created since the beginning was not necessary for Him and it didn't add anything to Him. In other words, He could have done without all of creation and we humans were and still are non-essential beings. God does not profit from anything we can do or bring to Him. This may sound harsh, but really puts us in our right standing and position next to the Almighty God. 

God was under no obligation or necessity to create. The fact that He chose to create was purely for His good pleasure and His sovereign will. We find this in Ephesians 1:5. 

It is true that God has been glorified by creation and by redemption, but God could have continued alone for all eternity and would have been perfectly blessed in Himself.

The idea of God's solitariness points to both His incomparable preeminence and our lowly insignificance. In our best attempts to comprehend the greatness of God, we bring Him down to a point where we lose sight of His solitary excellence and do Him great injustice.

God, in His complete self-contained and fully satisfied state, still chose to create, knowing full well that His created beings would reject Him and have no desire to pursue Him. In light of this view and knowledge, we should read Ephesians 1:3-14 with a greater appreciation and in complete awe of God's sovereign plan and His incomprehensible love for us. 

"Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One. 

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time to bring everything together  in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him. 

In him we have also received an inheritance, because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory.

In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed. The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory.

My prayer and aim is that I walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. Colossians 1:10

Pastor Bryan