One of the hallmarks of Christianity is the idea of infinity. As believers, we know that we will spend eternity in the new heaven and new earth with the Lord.
But as finite creatures, the idea of infinity can be tough to grasp. We can’t help but see everything as having a beginning and an ending, because that’s all we know.
The idea of spending an infinite amount of time with God, the heroes of my faith, and family and friends who have already gone on to be with Him is exciting. The verse from “Amazing Grace” always makes me excited: “When we've been there ten thousand years / Bright shining as the sun / We've no less days to sing God's praise / Than when we've first begun.”
What has always blown my mind more than God (and His people) lasting for eternity in the future is that He has always existed and never had a beginning. I can hurt my brain trying to grasp that, but it’s true! God has always existed.
“God is eternal in that he does not exist within time but rather exists before and outside of time,” explains the Lexham Survey of Theology. That’s a foreign concept to us, because we’re finite and God isn’t.
The Lexham Survey of Theology continues:
Time-bound creatures experience God’s eternity in relation to time. While there was no time before time was created, we cannot but think of God as existing before time. We also experience God’s eternity in this way: that he is who he is at every moment in time. This means that the God who created the world is the same God to whom we pray. While time has passed, God is the same. To God, time is like a great canvas spread before him, every moment of which he can take in simultaneously. To him, all times are present.
GotQuestions puts it this way:
Since humans measure everything in time, it is very hard for us to conceive of something that had no beginning, but has always been, and will continue forever. However, the Bible does not try to prove God’s existence or His eternality, but simply begins with the statement “In the beginning God…” (Genesis 1:1), indicating that at the beginning of recorded time, God was already in existence. From duration stretching backward without limit to duration stretching forward without limit, from eternal ages to eternal ages, God was and is forever.
The name God gave Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:13-14 expresses this idea:
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
God is “I Am” because He is always existing at every point in time simultaneously. He’s not “I Was” or “I Will Be,” as we are; instead, He’s always in the present.
Related: Sunday Thoughts: Divine Simplicity
Other scriptures remind us of God’s eternal nature. “Behold, God is great, and we know him not; the number of his years is unsearchable,” Elihu tells Job in Job 36:26.
In one of my favorite scriptures, the prophet Isaiah declares, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable” (Isaiah 40:28, ESV).
The Apostle John echoes Genesis in explaining that Jesus is as eternal as His Father and the Holy Spirit: "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 was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3, ESV)
In the temple, Jesus used the familiar name of God to declare to some Jewish leaders about His eternal nature, which led them to accuse Him of blasphemy:
Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
John 8:54-59 (ESV, emphasis added)
Revelation 1:8 tells us: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Because of God’s eternity, those of us who believe in Him and make Jesus the Lord of our lives get to experience eternity, too! That familiar verse, John 3:16, reminds us, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Let’s let the infinity of God — and the eternity that awaits us as believers — lead us to worship Him today and every day.
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