God is Eternal

God is Eternal

One of God's great attributes is that He is eternal - He has always been, and He always will be.  Like the ring above, He has no beginning and no end - He is continuous.  Before anything existed and after everything else is gone, He Is.  

Isaiah 44:6  “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel,
And his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
‘I am the First and I am the Last;
Besides Me there is no God.   

Jesus is God.  He didn't "begin" with His human birth.  In John, chapter 8, the Pharisees are arguing with Jesus.  He answers them in verse 58 - Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”  They immediately took up rocks intending to stone Him, for calling Himself "I AM" was declaring that He was God.  This is how God identified Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14.  Jesus' statement was unmistakable to the Jews.

Micah prophesied:  “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.” (Micah 5:2) 

John declares that Jesus is Eternal at the outset of his gospel in chapter 1:1-3, 14:  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

And when John sees and hears the glorified Jesus speaking to him, He again identifies Himself as eternal in Revelation 1:8  “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “Who is and Who was and Who is to come, the Almighty.”  

Let your mind wander over this truth:  Jesus, eternally existent God, willingly inhabits the form of a human infant within the womb of a human mother.  He is fully God, now also fully man.  What must it have been like for Him to do that?  Can you let this miraculous reality boggle your mind for the day?  We accept the baby Jesus so readily, we gloss over the startling truths embodied in these events.  God, Who knows no bounds, no limitations, limiting Himself to the body of an embryonic infant in utero . . . is there any form of life MORE limited?  He has entrusted His life to a teenaged girl . . . and will endure the process of being born . . . in the most primitive of settings.  God Almighty, our Savior, the Messiah.  

What does this tell us about how important it was to God to reach us?  He knew we could never comprehend Him apart from Him revealing Himself to us.  He chose to live among us in order to show us Who He Is in ways that we could understand.  He would be like us, and show us Who He Is by living NOT like us!  He lived a perfect life, in obedience and submission to God the Father.  Then He laid His life down to pay the price for our sins - to make a way for us to be forgiven and reconciled to our Father.  (John 10:17,18)

What does this tell us about the value He places on us?  He gave up the full exercise of His power in order to live as a human.  He willingly limited Himself in order to live among us.  He suffered horribly and died in our place so that we might find salvation in Him.  Our value is defined by His sacrifice - we are of infinite value due to the price paid for us.  Our eternal God knew death, and rose again in three days.  We can never overestimate the enormity of this act, nor the value that He conveys upon us by doing so.

Spend time today thinking about our eternally-existent God’s awesome plan to make a way for us;  ask Him to speak to you about your importance to Him.  On this first day counting down to Christmas, ask Him to cement forever in your mind the infant Jesus and Jesus on the cross, Jesus in the womb and Jesus in the tomb, Eternal God and Resurrected God.  Jesus is all of these, and we cannot accept some aspects of Him apart from the others.

Here is the link for the companion children's post:  http://elizabethtreger1.blogspot.com/2014/11/god-is-eternal-one-great-true-thing.html