Day 5: The Self-sufficiency of God

I need… How often does this phrase regularly cross our lips? Truly the list of our needs is various and great. Tangible needs such as air, food, water, clothing, shelter. Intangible needs such as relational connection, purpose of life, a soul at peace. The human condition is one of need. We enter this world fully dependent on another and often our final days are the same. And the majority of our energy in the prevailing space between is spent in pursuit of fulfilling some need, for ourselves and for others. So with an acknowledgment of our needs, we ask the question “What does God need?” The answer is quite simple. Absolutely nothing.

“[God] is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.”

For God to have any needs outside of Himself, He would logically cease to be God. Any need in God would represent a deficiency if left unfulfilled, resulting in an imperfect being not worthy of our worship and devotion. Core to our understanding of God is the fact that He has eternally existed in perfection as Father, Son, and Spirit — in perfect unity. This doctrine should give us great comfort, as there is never a circumstance in which God has an unmet need. He eternally exists completely fulfilled. And equally significant to our understanding of God is the reality that He does not need us!

And if we can check our bruised ego at the door for a moment, we realize the beauty of this. Because the fact that God does not need us, and yet would still enter humanity bodily in Christ, fulfill the righteous requirement of the law for us, willingly take our penalty for sin upon Himself on a cross in death, and rise again to new and everlasting life, all to redeem us into relationship with Himself, means that He did this not because He needs a relationship with us, but because He wants a relationship with us. And the fact that we can add nothing to this and must only receive it as the indescribable gift that it is, only magnifies God and invokes our worship. And in this blessed truth, what remains is a freedom to cease striving, and to simply glorify God with our lives and truly enjoy Him forever.

Prayer:

Teach us, O God, that nothing is necessary to Thee. Were anything necessary to Thee that thing would be the measure of Thine imperfection: and how could we worship one who is imperfect? If nothing is necessary to Thee, then no one is necessary, and if no one, then not we. Thou dost seek us though Thou does not need us. We seek Thee because we need Thee, for in Thee we live and move and have our being. Amen.   – A.W. Tozer

Response:

Reflect on your relationship with God and your service unto Him and consider if there is any sense of striving on His behalf or to earn our way into His favor. If so, allow this truth to reorder your thinking.

Meditate upon the reality that God is fully fulfilled in Himself and needs nothing from us and yet has fulfilled everything necessary in Christ to redeem us to Himself. Worship Him in light of this blessed truth.