“Whatever God is, and all that God is, He is in Himself.”1
Self-Sufficiency is another one of the kinds of attributes only God can possess. In short God is the only thing we could think of which does not have needs or dependencies. He is fully complete in Himself. God’s self-sufficiency is a core part of whom God is. To suggest God has needs or is incomplete in Himself is to suggest He is not God. To think of Him otherwise is to imagine something of Him which is untrue. He does not need us in any sense of the word. Who wants to serve a God whose needs change or can be influenced? A. W. Tozer puts it this way in The Knowledge of The Holy:
An elementary but correct way to think of God is as the One who contains all, who gives all that is given, but who Himself can receive nothing that He has not first given.
To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made, but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can bring to Him who is complete in Himself.2
To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made, but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can bring to Him who is complete in Himself.2
Here again we see God in a category He alone occupies. He interacts with all that is, not out of need, but out of His good pleasure. It is His desire, not His need. His interaction is driven by His pleasure not a need to interact or a dependency upon interaction. Created things have dependencies; the self-existent God does not. The Westminster Confession puts it like this:
God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He hath made, not deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them: He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever Himself pleaseth.3
God does not need our help. He does not need our knowledge or perspective. He sees all things from any and every angle. He has not necessitated our worship and service to Him. However, Tozer points out, “…the blessed news is that the God who needs no one has in sovereign condescension set Himself to work by and in and through His obedient children… He needs no one, but when faith is present He works through anyone. Two statements are in this sentence and a healthy spiritual life requires that we accept both.”4 So, on the one hand we must hold God as not needing our help, and on the other hand Him accepting our offer of help and using us to help Him. Notice here how God is using us, but it is still Him doing the work.
To think of it a different way, there is no power He lacks, no knowledge He does not contain, no task too difficult for Him, no glory not due Him, no unmet emotional needs He is waiting to have met. Had He any of these, He would at that point cease to be self-sufficient and therefore, cease to be God. There is no input required and no output necessary for Him to function. He is truly, wholly independent in the most complete sense of the word. Acts 17:24-25 says, “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 hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” God can be the sustainer of all that is because He is self-sufficient. Romans 11:34-36 putts it this way, “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his adviser? Who has given him something only to have him pay it back? For all things are from him, by him, and for him. Glory belongs to him forever! Amen.” All things are from Him, by Him and for Him (or of Him, through Him and to Him) because He is the self-sufficient One! Tozer rightly says, “Whatever God is, and all that God is, He is in Himself.”1
Footnotes
1 Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 32. Print.
2 Tozer. 32.
3 "Westminster Confession of Faith: Chapter II." Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/>
4 Tozer. 36.
References
All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.
Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.
