What does it mean that God is omnipotent?

Omnipotence is unlimited power. Like God's eternity it is both mysterious and incomprehensible to our minds. "The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." — And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?" (Rev. 19:6; Dan. 4:35). We cannot have an act without an actor, an effect without a cause, and in the same way a creation without a creator. But how the Creation came into existence, no creature can tell. An article may be made if the material to make it is supplied, but how the universe sprang into being out of nothingness, we cannot know. The wonders of creation may be examined by the microscope, as well as by the telescope, but greatness and littleness, or immensity and intensity, are both alike to omnipotence. The power that creates is the same that upholds, for He upholds all things by the word of His power. However great the thoughts and language of men of science, scripture alone can describe the omnipotence of God. Here again we turn to Isaiah, where Jehovah, when dealing with the responsible creature, speaks of His creatorial power and glory. "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance" (Isaiah 40:12). Nor is only creating — for the same power is seen at work upholding all. "The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars of it. Selah" (Psalm 75:3). A most comprehensive lesson on this is put before us in Job, chapters 38-42, where God meets His servant, and solves every question in the moral problems of that book, by pointing him to His power and wisdom as seen in the creation.

He is omnipotent, all-powerful. He is the Creator and Upholder of the whole universe. He has all power in heaven and upon earth.

God has absolute power, absolute authority, absolute sovereignty. He does as He will and none can challenge or change lt. Added to this is the fact that He has an "eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:11). That purpose cannot be changed: it will be absolutely and perfectly carried out. The believer fully acknowledges this and finds greatest delight in such magnificent truth.

9 Goodness or love, omniscience and omnipotence, involve in them perfect wisdom; only all this supposes a God, with a free will to exist, before any attribute can be assigned to Him. If not free to act, omniscience and omnipotence are simply null.

I would muse and rest a little upon this. As to God, His irresistible power knows no check whatsoever. But as sure as this His power is irresistible, so sure likewise is it that He has a character of His own, which in no case will He violate. Morally, He could not violate His own character. He knows, as God, how the well-being of dependent creatures throughout the universe hangs upon, in their various measures of capacity, their knowledge of Him, and so being cheerfully subject to Him.

The confounding moral infinitude (that is, absoluteness of perfection) with extension, which I have noticed is a very great blunder. But then I freely own that in strictness we cannot speak of attributes in God (moral ones). It is only a human way which (speaking reverently) divides God into parts. God cannot be or do evil: to say this is a limitation of power is only a delusion. If I say that He cannot do what He pleases, for He cannot do evil, the "cannot" applies to "what He pleases," not to the power of God. As to acts of power, He can do everything. It is morally impossible that there should be in Him the contrary of what He is, that is of good and right. But this is not limiting power or anything; it is denying a limit to goodness, and saying it is absolute. Infinite goodness means merely goodness always perfect as goodness. That this is after an imperfect thought as to God I admit, because it takes one characteristic by itself (that is through our finite nature), for nothing in God is characteristic (that is, special and in part). It has been noticed elsewhere how thus Christ had no character, but was always what He ought to be wherever He was. Perfect goodness He was, but not goodness by itself as we conceive it. He was firm and severe where He ought, and good in that; He was tender and affectionate where He ought, and good in that; He was seemingly hard and deaf to seed, and unchanged in goodness in that - in all love to His Father, and obedience. The divine nature in man which produced one produced all, perfect in each place in relation because perfect in itself.

It is well for suffering saints to know that God holds the reins. "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed" (Job 38:11). In the working out of His ways, He may change the times and the seasons and remove kings and set up kings (Dan. 2:21). He may even go back upon what we speak of as the laws of nature, but never for one moment has He changed His word. "Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name" (Psalm 138:2). In the material realm iron has been made to swim, the Jordan while in spate was made to divide and go backwards, the sea to divide and made a path for the redeemed of the Lord, and the sun to go back in his course — but never once has He gone back upon His word. From this He never has, never will, nor ever can depart. While it is clear there can be no limit to His power, we know He is governed by His love, and, in the region of moral verities, there are certain things He cannot do. "He cannot deny Himself" (2 Tim. 2:13). "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13). "God is not unrighteous" (Heb. 6:10). "For Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with Thee" (Psalm 5:4). From these, and other passages, we learn that God is so governed by His nature, that He cannot do anything that is opposed to justice. It is not that He obligates Himself to use His almighty power in accord with the principle of Justice, but that justice so inheres in His moral nature that He cannot act otherwise. Think for a moment of the grace of the Almighty stooping down to tell us this, that we may be able to stay ourselves upon Himself.

How absolutely necessary, in the entire economy of faith, it is for us also to believe that “with God nothing shall be impossible”—nothing! His power is infinite, and no physical law is beyond that power. Nature is clearly subservient to the will of its Maker.

God in His infinite wisdom has anticipated the attempts of infidelity and unbelief to reduce those solemnly impressive events to the level of ordinary occurrences, occasioned by the laws of nature. This latter term is distinctly misleading and erroneous, since there are no "laws of nature" but "laws in nature" established by God, the Creator, for the orderly and systematic control and regulation of those forces which are the agents of His sovereign power, the laws of which can be suspended as He wills in His providential dealings with men.

But is God as powerless as man? The latter has shown that he is very inventive, and that he can do very wonderful things; but to deliver himself from the dominion of sin, death, and the devil, is beyond his powers. What can God do? He says: “Behold, at My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness.” Here the creature is left far behind, nor is able to touch the utmost fringe of everlasting might. Nor is His power limited to earthly manifestations. He says again: “I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.” The heavens are under His control as well as the earth. He created both at the beginning. He made the heavens by His Word, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. And as to the earth: “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Ps 33). At these manifestations of His power we read that: “The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job. 38:7). Creation was brought into existence by His Word, and by His Word it is upheld (Heb. 11:3; 1:3). He has no need to ask Himself the question, Can I do this? Or, Can I not? He has but to speak, and the thing is done.