What is God like? Independent

“God is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:25)

Last time we thought about God’s transcendence. This week we see a related truth: God is independent of His creation. That is, He is separate from it, not dependent on it for anything. In other words, He doesn’t need anything from us or anyone else. Let’s find that in the Bible, and then think about why it matters to us.


Where do we see the truth of God's independence in the Bible?

We could actually look in the same places as we looked at for God’s transcendence last week: Genesis 1:1 that shows us God was there in the beginning before anything else; Exodus 3:14 that shows us that God is not defined by anything or anyone outside Him, He simply is. But to cap it all off, we see Paul unpacking this truth clearly when he is preaching the gospel to the crowds in Athens in Acts 17:
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:24-25)
In these verses we see that the truth of God’s independence works both ways: not only is He not dependent on anything or anyone else, but also everything and everyone else is dependent on Him!

Why does this matter?

Firstly, and most mind-blowingly, it shows us what kind of God He is. A God who doesn’t need anything or anyone didn’t need to create the cosmos, still less little old you and me. And so the doctrine of God’s independence brings us up against the incredible realisation that God created the world we enjoy simply because He wanted to. Because He wanted to share the overflow of His goodness and love with us. Drink that in for a moment! That is totally different from any other belief system. All the other religions have their adherents flogging themselves to death trying to please their god, to get into their god’s “good books” in order to earn favour. Even atheists actually work like that too – it’s just that they don’t realise that sex and money and power and success have become their gods. And what needy gods they are. Not so our God! Our God is infinitely generous, not least because He doesn’t need anything. Rather, He has infinite resources to share with us. What a glorious God we have!

But we also need to hear a second outworking of this truth of God’s independence: He’s not just not dependent on our service; He’s also not dependent on our good opinion of Him. He isn’t answerable to us; He doesn’t have to explain Himself to us; we have no right to call Him to account. We don’t get to go to Him with the attitude that Bruce Nolan (in the film Bruce Almighty) has towards God: the thought that he could do a better job of running his life and the world than God could. Bruce learns his lesson the hard way in the film. We could just learn our lesson by taking this truth of who God is seriously! Fortunately, as we discover when we see other aspects of God’s character, ultimately we can trust that He is doing the best thing, that He doesn’t need to be called to account for any kind of failure or folly. He is perfectly wise and perfectly good as well as totally independent of us. Praise God for that too!