Why Did God Create Us?

00:00:00.000 | Why did God create us?

00:00:06.240 | It's a grand and glorious question, and it touches on the biggest issues of our lives

00:00:10.960 | that we can really ever ask about.

00:00:14.080 | It's also today's question from an APJ listener named Natalie.

00:00:17.220 | She writes in, "Pastor John, thank you so much for this podcast.

00:00:20.320 | I listen to every episode.

00:00:22.220 | I am a thinker, an over-thinker, probably, and of late my mind has been dwelling on the

00:00:28.640 | sufficiency of God himself, that he needs no one or nothing that he creates.

00:00:35.600 | I affirm Acts 17.25 and Psalm 50 verses 7 to 15.

00:00:41.240 | But the question I cannot answer is this, Pastor John, why did God create us?"

00:00:48.920 | This question is very important, both because of very high-level theological and philosophical

00:00:58.120 | reasons and because when the alarm goes off this morning at 5 or 6 or 7, how you answer

00:01:07.120 | this question makes all the difference for why you get out of bed.

00:01:12.520 | So at the theological and philosophical level, the question is important because the way

00:01:19.200 | you answer it has a huge impact on the way you understand the nature of God himself,

00:01:27.160 | that is, what does it mean to be God?

00:01:31.060 | The technical name here that people debate is God's aseity, A-S-E-I-T-Y, the word

00:01:40.120 | aseity built on the Latin words "a" or "a," which means "from," and "se,"

00:01:47.560 | which means "self."

00:01:48.760 | So from himself, God's aseity is his existence from himself.

00:01:55.760 | That is, he exists without influence or input or resources or forces or anything from outside

00:02:07.160 | himself.

00:02:09.560 | Or the shorthand way to say aseity in common English would be God's self-sufficiency.

00:02:18.120 | This is important because the biblical picture of God is that he is complete and sufficient

00:02:26.440 | and flawless and without any defect or deficiency in and of himself.

00:02:34.500 | That means before there was any creation and apart from any creation and independent of

00:02:43.680 | any creation, God was completely and flawlessly God.

00:02:50.200 | Think for example of the Bible passage Exodus 3.14, where Moses asks God what he should

00:03:00.200 | say to the people of Israel when they ask him, "Who sent you?"

00:03:08.080 | And God says to Moses, "I am who I am."

00:03:13.440 | And he said, "Say to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

00:03:20.880 | In other words, my very name, Yahweh, which is built on the verb "I AM"—cursed 600

00:03:29.600 | times plus in the Bible—that very name, every time you read the name, usually translated

00:03:35.440 | capital L-O-R-D in the English versions, that very name bears witness to the absolute existence

00:03:44.060 | of God in and of himself.

00:03:46.920 | I AM.

00:03:47.920 | That's my name.

00:03:48.920 | I AM.

00:03:50.280 | I depend on nothing, nobody to be who I am.

00:03:53.920 | I am absolute reality.

00:03:55.760 | I had no beginning.

00:03:57.160 | I will have no ending.

00:03:58.800 | And in relation to creation, I am not becoming what I am.

00:04:03.560 | Lots of people called process theologians think that God is becoming God.

00:04:07.840 | He's getting better all the time.

00:04:09.080 | He's growing into what it means to be God by creating the world and interacting with

00:04:13.160 | the world.

00:04:14.160 | He gets better.

00:04:15.160 | That's not the way the Bible speaks.

00:04:17.520 | It's not the way I think.

00:04:18.800 | I don't think that's the way we should think about God.

00:04:21.840 | We cannot improve upon God.

00:04:24.040 | He cannot improve.

00:04:25.820 | He says, "I AM.

00:04:27.440 | I always have been fully, perfectly, flawlessly God before and apart from all creation."

00:04:35.160 | That's what the doctrine of aseity, or God's self-sufficiency, affirms and protects.

00:04:43.040 | And I think that's a biblical reality, that we should believe it and stress it.

00:04:48.120 | And I think the biblical reality and teaching of the Trinity—God as Father, Son, and Holy

00:04:55.680 | Spirit—is essential to that doctrine of God's self-sufficiency, because what the

00:05:02.400 | Trinity implies in the relationships between the Father and the Son and the Spirit is that

00:05:09.800 | God is love and has always been love.

00:05:13.480 | The Bible says God is love.

00:05:15.600 | He's always been love.

00:05:18.080 | Before there was a world to love, God was love.

00:05:23.240 | The divine Son is and always has been, in the fellowship of the Trinity, God's image

00:05:31.960 | and God's delight.

00:05:33.440 | He's called both of those in the Bible.

00:05:35.880 | Jesus, before he was the incarnate Jesus Christ, was the Son of God.

00:05:41.360 | And in the fellowship of the everlasting, eternal Trinity, he was the perfect image

00:05:47.640 | of God and he was the delight of God.

00:05:51.100 | God did not have to create the world in order to have full, satisfying joy in the fellowship

00:05:59.720 | of the Trinity.

00:06:01.880 | So the doctrine of aseity, or God's self-sufficiency, not only protects the self-sufficiency and

00:06:11.100 | absoluteness of God's godness from any suggestion that creation is essential to his

00:06:17.640 | being—that's the danger, thinking that creation is part of his being and his being

00:06:24.480 | perfect—but aseity also protects God's nature as a Trinity of fully satisfied persons

00:06:32.160 | delighting in each other eternally apart from creation.

00:06:37.240 | All of that implies a negative.

00:06:41.240 | God did not create the world out of any deficiency or defect.

00:06:48.800 | Creation did not make God more God or improve upon his perfection.

00:06:56.480 | So we ask, is there any way to answer the question, why did he create the universe?

00:07:03.580 | Have we described God's essential being and his Trinitarian fullness and his happiness

00:07:10.400 | in such a way as to virtually rule out any motive for creating the world, any motive

00:07:17.120 | that would not compromise his self-sufficiency?

00:07:21.240 | I think it would be a great dishonor to God if we said that the creation of the universe

00:07:30.120 | were merely random or whimsical with no purpose, no motive, no wise and purposeful design or

00:07:41.160 | motive at all, lest that purpose or motive be somehow construed as God's "finally,

00:07:48.920 | finally, he can be happy.

00:07:51.000 | He's got a creation to love" or something like that.

00:07:53.720 | Namely, through creation he completes himself.

00:07:56.360 | That would be a great dishonor to God to say that he couldn't create with a motive and

00:08:02.960 | with wisdom and design without jeopardizing his Godness.

00:08:08.320 | So that answer to the why he created the world, I think, would be called a heresy.

00:08:15.040 | Like it was just whimsical, it had no meaning, had no design in it, no motive behind it,

00:08:20.680 | no wisdom.

00:08:21.680 | That's why the doctrine of God's acety is important, to protect us against that

00:08:26.120 | heresy.

00:08:27.680 | So how then do we answer the question why God created?

00:08:31.680 | And I go to a passage like—and there are more, many more—Isaiah 43, 6, and 7, remembering,

00:08:41.200 | by the way, that every promise of the Old Testament is yes in Christ for us Christians

00:08:48.000 | and all who believe in Christ, those Old Testament promises are true.

00:08:52.280 | And it says, "Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone

00:08:59.280 | who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made, created

00:09:08.320 | for my glory."

00:09:10.240 | Now on the basis of that text, and many like it, I see that pervading the entire Bible

00:09:19.200 | is the teaching that God does everything to communicate and display to his creatures his

00:09:29.640 | own glory, his greatness, his beauty, his worth, the whole panorama of his perfections.

00:09:38.760 | He communicates that, displays that to his creatures as the overflow of his love.

00:09:47.080 | And I add very quickly this, the reason that the communication and display of God's glory

00:09:55.200 | is the overflow of his love is because that glory both rejoices the human heart supremely

00:10:05.920 | and reflects the greatness of God supremely.

00:10:12.000 | Or to say it with my favorite words, which you know, Tony, and we love together, God

00:10:17.440 | is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

00:10:24.640 | God's eternal love in the fellowship of the Trinity was a perfectly God-satisfying, God-glorifying

00:10:35.520 | joy before there was any creation.

00:10:39.280 | God's fullness was on display for God among the persons of the Trinity, and God's fullness

00:10:48.000 | was the undiminished delight of the persons of the Trinity.

00:10:53.760 | And this is what he communicated in creation to us, to his people.

00:11:01.200 | He gave to all who would have it, all who would receive it as their treasure, he gave

00:11:07.800 | us a share in the God-displaying, God-glorifying delight that God has in God.

00:11:17.360 | And if you press even harder on me and say, "But why?

00:11:22.360 | Why did he do this if he was so full and happy without creation?"

00:11:28.800 | I would say it's the nature of the fullness of the divine love to share itself.

00:11:38.200 | That's just what love is like in God.

00:11:42.560 | And this sharing is not the completion of God or the improvement of God.

00:11:49.880 | Jonathan Edwards, I think, said it most memorably when he said, "It is no sign of a fountain's

00:11:59.480 | deficiency that it is prone to overflow."

00:12:04.520 | When the alarm goes off now at five or six or seven tomorrow morning, you can know—this

00:12:12.280 | is glorious—individually, personally, existentially so relevant.

00:12:18.320 | You can know the purpose for which God made you and why you should get out of bed.

00:12:25.800 | We exist to see and savor and show the beauty and worth and greatness of God in every sphere

00:12:36.840 | of our lives.

00:12:38.600 | Paul said, "Whether you eat or drink," in other words, the most nitty-gritty things,

00:12:44.160 | "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God," 1 Corinthians

00:12:50.240 | 10:31.

00:12:51.560 | We exist to bring our lives into alignment with the purpose of God in creation, namely

00:13:00.980 | his purpose to communicate his glory in the overflow of his God-exalting, soul-satisfying

00:13:12.240 | love.

00:13:14.280 | And what that alignment looks like is this—our magnifying God's glory by finding him to

00:13:24.240 | be the most satisfying reality in the universe.

00:13:28.480 | Amen.

00:13:29.480 | This episode really seems to lead right into your new book, Providence, where you talk

00:13:33.080 | about the design of God for his creation and for us.

00:13:35.880 | Absolutely.

00:13:36.880 | Yeah, wonderful.

00:13:37.880 | Great question, Natalie.

00:13:38.880 | Thank you for sending it in to us.

00:13:40.040 | And speaking of the meaning of life, there's still quite a lot to say about this, especially

00:13:44.040 | as it relates to God's providence directly, his design for us.

00:13:49.240 | And we're going to actually return on Wednesday to look at how God's governance over all things

00:13:54.280 | means that everything in life, everything, is made meaningful by God's design.

00:14:01.700 | It is such a huge topic, very fitting as a follow-up to what we talked about today.

00:14:06.240 | That's coming up next time on Wednesday when we return.

00:14:08.920 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:14:10.400 | We will see you then.

00:14:11.400 | Thanks for listening.

00:14:11.560 | Thanks for listening.

00:14:12.600 | [END]

00:14:14.600 | 1. What is God's design for us?

00:14:16.600 | 2. What is God's design for us?

00:14:18.600 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Why Did God Create Us?

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