What is the aseity of God?

And when the Lord called Moses to send him to Pharaoh to lead His people forth, he answered, What am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt ? Forty years before in self-confidence he had undertaken the work and had run before he was sent, and now he had learned humility and his weakness. God answered his confessed distrust with the all-sufficient assurance, "I will be with thee." When He sends forth He goes along to accomplish His own purposes. What encouragement for all who wait on the Lord and conscious of their own weakness, go forth in service. In response to another question, God reveals His name. "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM, and He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel , I AM hath sent me unto you." God had made Himself known to Abraham as Jehovah (Genesis 15:7). But here He gives the explanation of His name Jehovah. The patriarchs knew the name Jehovah, but the blessed significance of that name was not known to them. He reveals Himself as the Self-Existing One, THE I AM THAT I AM. He is the One, which is, which was, which is to come (Rev. 1:4). And this wonderful Name of the Unchanging, Living One, the Eternal, the Name unsearchable in its depths is the Name of our Lord who has redeemed us. When about to act in the deliverance of His enslaved people to lead them out and to bring them in, He makes Himself known as the I AM. "Before Abraham was I AM" (John 8:58). Our ever-blessed Lord is the I AM, who spoke to Moses. And what is Jehovah, the I am for His people? Well has it been said, "Jehovah, in taking this title, calling Himself 'I AM,' was furnishing His people with a blank check, to be filled up to any amount. He calls Himself I AM, and faith has but to write over against that ineffably precious name whatever we want."

This led to a fresh disclosure on God's part. He made Himself known as the great "I AM" — the One self-existent, ever-existent, unchanging; and therefore ever true to what He is in Himself. Israel were to prove themselves to be an unstable yet stiff-necked people, so had it not been "I AM" with whom they had to do, they would soon have disappeared in judgment. God bore long with them and will ultimately achieve all His purpose concerning them, because He is ever true to Himself. We do well to remind ourselves that though we now know God in a far more intimate way, as He has been revealed in Christ, yet we do not lose the value of these earlier revelations. The One whom we know as Father is still the "I AM" to us, as much as He was to Moses and the children of Israel.

God had already revealed Himself to Moses as the God of his fathers — and this might have been enough, but nothing can ever satisfy doubts and fears. And what an incidental glimpse is thus given of the condition of Israel, so as to render the supposition possible that they might not know the name of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob! God bears in grace with his feeble, hesitant servant, and replies, "I AM THAT I AM: and He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (v. 14.) This is the expression of the essential being of God — His name as the self-existent One; and thereby affirms His eternal being. It was this name the Lord Jesus claimed when He said to the unbelieving Jews, "Before Abraham was, I AM." (John 8:58.) But this is not all. Having revealed Himself as to His essential existence, He adds, "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is My name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations." (v. 15.) This is pure grace on the part of God. "I AM, is His own essential name; but as regards His government of, and relationship with, the earth, His name — that by which He is to be remembered to all generations — is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. This gave Israel, now visited and taken up of God under His name, a very peculiar place." It points indeed to their election by the sovereign grace of God, and to their being beloved for their fathers' sake; and at the same time reveals the fact that Israel shall be for ever the centre of God's ways, and the key to His purposes upon the earth. Hence, as long as Israel is under judgment, scattered throughout the world, the period Of earthly blessing is still postponed.

If God be thus one, alone, He is sufficient unto Himself. He needed not even the glorious creation which in His goodness and power He has called into being. It was not necessary for His happiness to call the universe out of nothing. This thought of self-sufficiency, in its highest, divinest sense, is linked with the very being of God. "He giveth not, to any, account of His matters." There is no thought of His responsibility, in the human sense. There is no possibility of His being judged: "That Thou mightest … overcome when Thou art judged" must, from the very fact of the case, be true.

Such thoughts as these show us, from the very necessity of the case, that the creature can never intrude into the domain of the Creator. True faith recognizes this with joy. That which the enemy of our souls intruded into the heart of man — a poison to which he had himself succumbed, "Ye shall be as God" — is, to one who knows God, torture unutterable. Who could stand where God stands — who is self-existent, independent absolutely of all persons and things, sufficient unto Himself in all the bliss of a perfectness which is divine? Words fail us here, but the thought is a simple one, and meets with a response from every heart of faith. Who, too, could bear the load of the divine consciousness; could have the weight, if we may use feeble human similes to express that which infinitely transcends our highest thoughts, of the divine purposes and counsels as to His intelligent universe; the plans which He has formed, the power which is for Him no effort, which has not only created all things, but upholds them? The very thought of such things well-nigh crushes the spirit, and we ask, in the language of Scripture, "Canst thou by searching find out God?" "Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?" And so, with this consciousness right in our very being, we bow at His feet and own Him: "Thou art God alone."

The question then comes, what is eh'yeh (I am, or I shall be)? It is not ha-yah (he is), which has much more the sense of ginomai (has become), used for existence, but primarily of what did not exist (werden) before; eh'yeh is much more existence proceeding not from a beginning, a cause, but in, or from, self. It is not ho on (He who is) exactly, which is simple existence at present; whereas eh'yeh seems to me to imply self-derived existence - a term, I admit, inconsistent as all mere human terms must be (unless eh'yeh itself, given of God) but which will be understood. I, and being, are both in eh'yeh, not in ho on. It may be enquired if asher (that which) be "that which," and not an adverb "inasmuch as," so that "I am so that I am," or "I am because I am"; but of this, query.

He exists in the powers of His own existence - not caused - and in the will of His existence, not by it so as to make it a cause of His own existence, which is simply absurd, but in it, as we say self-existent, which happily hides the infirmity of human thought.

206 The Hebrew future [i.e., eh'yeh, I will be] is not simply future, but future to the thought in the mind, only "being" cannot here be separated from "I" as a consequence. "I" and "being" are coincident, yet morally "I" goes first; "am" is affirmed about "I," but also an immutable existence, but, as I said, this must be enquired into.

God, and God only, has self-being. He is the "I am," and so speaks of Himself. He is the Most High, the Almighty, and the Eternal, and thus made His name known in due time; and He alone can rightly say "I will." So said the Son when incarnate here below; which could not be, if He were not one with the Father, as truly God, and therefore as competent by the sacrifice of Himself to save righteously as to create.

But what a lesson it is! Is this the man once so ready to smite Rahab and deliver Israel? The very same. Full of courage when God's time was not come, he feels the obstacles when it is. It is often so! Moses thus replies, "Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they shall say to me, What is his name?" Is it not humbling? What a state! God's people do not even know His name! "What shall I say to them?" says Moses. "And God said to Moses, I AM THAT I AM. And he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you." There is great force in these words. It was not merely what God was going to perform. Man probably would have preferred "I shall do;" but God takes His stand upon these weighty words, "I AM THAT I AM," the self-subsisting, ever-being One. In truth, on Him hangs everything. All others are merely beings that exist; God is the only one who can say "I AM." What exists was called into being, and may pass out of it, if God so please. I say not that they do, but that they may. Surely God is evermore and evermore God. This is what describes Him in His being at least. I am not now speaking of His grace, but of His own essential being — "I AM."

I have already said, the nature of the proof demonstrates that I cannot form an idea of the thing proved in itself. But there is clearly seen eternal power and godhead. And here note that 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.

But this may be in two ways; in the two quotations just made, the difference is external: there is no other Lord, there shall be no other. It is an assertion of independency, as admitting no other; and implies, of course, a sufficiency which needs no other. To be in this way independent, sufficient to Himself, belongs to God alone. And thus, under this number 1, we begin with God. His title is, "The Beginning;" and Scripture, in fact, begins with Him. What can be right where we do not so begin?

God alone is sufficient for Himself. He requires nothing external to Himself to make His happiness supreme. The creation, which is the work of His hands, has added nothing to His happiness. He brought it into existence for His own pleasure. But that fact does not prove that He could not have done without it. He created it to please Himself, and when created, He had pleasure in it, for His thought was expressed in it; and that thought could not be otherwise than pleasing to Him. But it could not increase His happiness, for all that He saw in it was, so far as it went, the reflex of Himself, and by it nothing was added to the infinite wealth of felicity which lay in Himself.