Psalm 90:2 (ESV)

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

We have seen that God does not change, so we can completely trust Him.

God is also eternal, which means that He has no beginning or ending. In that way, we are not like Him at all. Personally, I think I could go crazy if I thought too much about eternity. I can kind of understand someone not having an ending, but my mind cannot wrap itself around the idea that God has no beginning.

Time and Beyond Time

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, does a much better job at explaining the truth that God is eternal:

Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty – and every other moment from the beginning of the world – is always Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames. That is difficult, I know. Let me try to give something, not the same, but a bit like it. Suppose I am writing a novel. I write ‘Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!’ For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my store there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary’s maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent doing so would not appear in Mary’s time (the time inside the story) at all. This is not a perfect illustration, of course. But it may give just a glimpse of what I believe to be the truth. God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world. (Lewis, 167-168)

Does it Matter?

On the one hand, it matters a lot that God is eternal, because that is what the Bible teaches. We want to know God as best we can. On the other hand, you can still be a great Christian without thinking too much about the truth that God is eternal. It’s just a really cool attribute about God.

Think Harder

• Carefully read and think about Psalm 90.

REFERENCE LIST

Lewis, C.S. 2001. Mere christianity. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFransisco.