God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God
The eternity of God is another one of the absolute attributes only God can possess. First we must understand what eternity is and is not. Eternity is NOT the sum of now and every past moment as well as every future moment. Eternity is NOT the sum of all time.
You see time is a human construct. We can live in our mortal bodies only in the now. We can remember the past and assume that tomorrow will be like today, but NOW is the only moment we can actually live in and change what happens there. Surely we can do things now which may affect the future but we can not actual dwell in the now and the future and perform change in them at the same time. Nor can we change the past; it is irrevocably set in the record. All we can do is affect the now. Which makes our now decisions of utmost importance.
Time for us revolves around the known. We make one trip around the sun and that is a year. We divide the year into months and weeks. By the way why is the week seven days? Because God created the world in seven days. We divide the time into days by one revolution of the earth in which we see the sun and then the darkness. Hence is the problem with time it is created just as the sun is created. There will come a time when the sun and all creation will cease to exist and time will be irrelevant at that point. A. W. Tozer aptly observes, “Time marks the beginning of created existence, and because God never began to exist it can have no application to Him.”
The eternity of God is defined and implied by numbers of scriptures in the Bible. Here are but a few. 1 Timothy 1:17 reads “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen” God revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14 as, “I AM that I AM.” This reveals Him as above time. In Psalm 90:2b Moses declares “..even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” He made Himself known to the Apostle John stating “‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending’, says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” in Revelation 1:8. This makes sense how could God be the giver of eternal life unless He is Himself eternal? Tozer writes in Knowledge of the Holy:
The truth is that if the Bible did not teach that God possessed endless being in the ultimate meaning of that term, we would be compelled to infer it from His other attributes, and if the Holy Scriptures had no word for absolute everlastingness, it would be necessary for us to coin one to express the concept, for it is assumed, implied, and generally taken for granted everywhere throughout the inspired Scriptures.1
God’s self-sufficiency, self-existence, infinity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience demand His eternalness. How could He know everything and be everywhere and be all powerful and self-sufficient and self existent and still not be eternal? He can’t.
Eternity contains time but is not limited by it. C. S. Lewis suggests that we think of a sheet of paper infinitely extended. This would represent eternity. Then on that paper draw a short line to represent time. As the line begins and ends on that infinite expanse, so time began in God and will end in Him.
God is present at all points of time at the same time, that is, simultaneously. He is with me now as I am writing, and with me now while I am being born (while this is in the past for me) and with me now while I am dying (while this is in the future for me), and with me now in eternity after I am dead (when I will live in eternity with God). Tozer observes, “For Him everything that will happen has already happened.”2 This thought goes against all we know and experience. Tozer reasons “He sees the end and the beginning in one view.”3 Yet God alone can say as in Isaiah 46:9c-10a, “…I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me. I make known the end form the beginning,…”
Oh great King eternal, we accept your offer of eternal life in Jesus Christ. We join with David and declare “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting, Amen.” Ps 41:13
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. 38-39. Print.
2 Tozer. 40.
3 Tozer. 40.
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.
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Audio.
Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.
