I mentioned several posts back that a friend of mine and I are getting together to discuss our reading of Grudem’s Systematic Theology. At our last meeting, we were discussing God’s incommunicable attributes. One attribute in particular has been on my mind since that meeting, that is God is eternal.

Here is how Grudem defines God’s eternity: God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time. The phrase that I’m hung up on is “God has no…succession of moments…” No succession of moments.

I suppose it is difficult for me to wrap my brain around that phrase because all of my life is a series of moments. Today, we did this. Then, we did this. Then this happened. And last week, this happened. You get the picture? I have a past, a present, and, Lord willing, I have a future. But I have no reference point for existence completely outside of or unbound by time.

God, on the other hand, existed before time. He exists outside of time. Somehow “His existence is always ‘present.’” Yet, He still sees and acts in time…in events…in successions of moments…in my life. Peter writes that, “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” makes more sense to me now. That verse does not mean 1,000 years = 1 day = 1,000 years. It means that somehow, to God, everything is present. Not that it’s all happening right now to Him, but that He sees constantly all time/events with perfect clarity. There is never a moment in time that He cannot see vividly right now. Does that make sense? So, whatever we might consider ancient history is part of His eternal now.

As we finished up our discussion of God’s incommunicable attributes, Heather brought to my attention one of the personal application questions that I hadn’t noticed (because my family and I had been moving back and forth due to the mold in the house and I had not read the chapter). Here’s the question:

If you sin against God today, when would it start bringing sorrow to God’s heart? When would it stop bringing sorrow to God’s heart? Does this reflection help you understand why God’s character requires that he punish sin? Why did God have to send his Son to bear the punishment for sin instead of simply forgetting about sin and welcoming sinners into heaven without having given the punishment for sin to anyone? Does God now think of your sin as forgiven or as unforgiven sins?

I have noticed something terrible about myself and my sin. The more time passes, I am guilty of feeling less and less wretched about it. Time goes by and I begin to not feel as sick over it as I did when I was first convicted of it. But that phrase we throw around, “Time heals all wounds,” doesn’t apply to God. My sin started bringing God sorrow before I ever committed it. He saw my days before one of them ever came into being. There will not be time that my sin does not bring Him sorrow.

However, He sent Jesus to bear my punishment. The question is, “When?” There was a specific moment in history/time that Jesus died on the cross taking my punishment, was buried, and resurrected. Those events did happen on this earth at a specific time. Yet, God, in His eternity, saw those events and my place in them “from before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).

Though my sin is always before Him, Christ’s work on the cross is also always before Him. He sees my sin, but He sees it covered in the blood of His Son. Forgiven.

There are so many personal applications I can draw from an understanding of God’s eternity; I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface! Many of my thoughts center on how God is completely “other than” everything else I know. He stands separate from…well, everything. The most comforting thoughts center on how his eternity impacts perfect security in Christ. His love for me in Christ is constant, unyielding, eternal.

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for hose who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

What shall we say to these things? (see verses18-25 for “these things”) If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died–more than that, who was raised–who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:26-30