There has to be a cause for everything that began to exist. He gives life to everything (Acts 17:25). No one gave life to God. He exists by his own power (this is called aseity). He is the God who eternally is (Ex. 3:14). God does not need us or anything else in creation. Every created thing depends entirely on God’s existence and continued will for those things to exist (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). This is why we describe God as the necessary Being. God is life and makes his creatures to live.

That deserves your full attention and adoration.

Our thinking about God and our relationship with God is often weakened by the false notion that God needs us. God does not need us. God exists eternally in the Triune divine community of Father, Son, and Spirit. If we think that God needed us for him to be perfect, then we are saying that God was incomplete or imperfect without us. That is not the God we serve. That is not the God revealed in the Bible.

So why are we here? That is a question we all struggle with at times. What does the Bible say? “Worthy are you, our Lord God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will, they existed and were created” (Rev. 4:11). Why are we here? We were created “by his will.” What does that mean for us? We are his creation. We are here for Him. What does it look like when the creature is in proper relation to his Creator? We praise Him. That is why we read, “Worthy are you, our Lord God, to receive glory and honor and power.”  

The fact that God exists perfectly without us and yet chose to make us anyway is an incredible demonstration of his love. The fact that he chose to save us even in our rebellion against him reemphasized his love for us. In God’s self-existence and our creation and salvation, we see again “ the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight” (Eph. 1:7-8).

D. L. D.