What does it mean that God is eternal?

God is called the Father of eternity, and the eternal God. He is also said to inhabit eternity. The word must be taken in its full unlimited bearing, as showing the infinity of Deity in regard to what we call time. We are lost when we try to think of eternity. Time, to us, is what comes in between events our minds can take account of, as space is what we conceive as the distance between bodies. There is no time with Him who is the First and the Last, who is, was, and is to come, nor are there measurements of space with Him who fills heaven and earth.

I do not connect omnipresence and eternity as attributes with God, not because they may not, in an ordinary sense, be said to be so... but because in our minds they are connected with time and space, which do not apply to God. There is no time when God is not; no place where His eye and hand, to use human language, are not. "I AM" is the proper expression of His existence. While time rolls on, "I am" remains unchanged, and when time has rolled away, "I am" subsists the same.

Creative power involves eternal power, for all begins by creation, and all creation begins. But what creatures must be, that is, exist absolutely without a beginning. "I am," therefore, or absolute existence, is the one just revelation of God as such.

In one of the psalms we are reminded that the earth and all its works will one day perish. We read, "They will perish," but immediately we read the truly comforting words, "but you are the same" (Ps. 102:27). Things change with us. He changes not — I AM HE, what stability! It is said that the whole universe is in constant motion, sun, moon and stars, but there is absolutely eternal rest and quiet at the centre of everything, even God Himself, and only there.

Generation after generation would come and go; but there is One who has been Israel's dwelling place and their refuge in all generations... From all eternity He is the everlasting God. All men are in His hands. Their mortality becomes plain as they die under His hand. But the race does not become extinct, for the word goes out from the Everlasting One, "Return, O children of man"... Time to Him is nothing. A thousand years are in His eyes only as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Such is God — everlasting. Such are men, fleeting mortal creatures.

Divine affections, divine counsels, divine doings, make us their object. It is a blessing to say it. God's eternity that is past took knowledge of us, since we were then chosen, predestinated, and written in the Book of Life. Time, in God's hand, in all its stages, has concerned itself with us. God's eternity that is to come will owe much of its joy and glory to our history, to what has been done, in abounding grace, for the redemption of us sinners.

This mighty God, He who is "from everlasting to everlasting," has been revealed in Christ in perfect love, and His movements in grace towards us are characterized by what He is in Himself. What Moses said of God's earthly people can surely be known and enjoyed by us in our day — "The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deuteronomy 33:27)... In Him there is everlasting strength; His promises are established by an everlasting covenant; He leads in the way everlasting, and finally He says, even to a wayward people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3).