We are needy people.
Think of all the things that we need for survival: food, water, oxygen, sleep, and, depending on who you’re talking to, coffee. But God is not so. This is what is known as God’s “aseity”—the fact that God derives all that He needs from Himself. There are many passages in the Bible that speak to this, but I want to highlight two:
- Acts 17:24-25 where the Apostle Paul is speaking to the men of Athens and says, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
- Psalm 50:10-12, “For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.”
R.C. Sproul expounds on God’s aseity when he writes, “If we go a few days without water or a few minutes without oxygen, we die. Likewise, human life is susceptible to all kinds of diseases that can destroy it. But God cannot die. God is not dependent on anything for His being. He has the very power of being in and of Himself… This is the supreme difference between God and us; God has no such dependence upon anything outside of Himself.”
Why does this matter, you ask? Because it is easy to forget we need God and easy to believeGod needs us. A.W. Tozer wrote about this in his book, Knowledge of the Holy, where he writes, “Almighty God, just because He is almighty, needs no support. The picture of a nervous, (needy) God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one; yet if we look at the popular conception of God, that is precisely what we see. Twentieth Century Christianity has put God on (a leash). So, lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, (even) enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God.”
We don’t worship God because He’s needy, but because He’s worthy.
But the truth is this: God does not need us.
God is not a divine egomaniac in need of his ego being stroked by finite man. No, He is an infinitely glorious God who is in need of nothing we have to offer. We do not come to church to worship because he needs it. We don’t worship God because He’s needy, but because He’s worthy! And He is worthy because “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36) therefore, we lay down our lives and lift up our voices again and again and again because He is worthy of it all. Whereas we are finite and frail creatures in constant need, God needs nothing because He has all that He needs in and of Himself. And that, my friends, is a reason to worship.