What is the immanence of God?

In fact, man's very existence is bound up with God, however little he realizes it. "In Him we live:" He is the source of our life; "and move:" He sustains all of our activities; "and have our being:" our existence is totally dependent upon Him. Paul quotes a Greek poet as saying, "For we are also His offspring."

Such is He then whom this preacher declares to the Athenians: a God who is really God. He proceeds to put man in his place with Him, leveling all distinctions upon which Jew and Greek alike prided themselves, in the assurance of that one blood in which all men participated. Nay, their times and the very bounds of their habitations had been alike fixed by. Him who withdrew not His care from any creature He had made, and who had appointed all these, that in the sense of their limitation and dependence, as well as of the divine ordering of things amid which they moved, men might in their need feel after Him and find Him. Nor is He far from any one: for indeed we are encompassed by Him, — in Him we live and move and are! The last is the full generalization: we are sustained by Him, we are carried by Him, — more completely than the infant in its mother's arms; for His arms never unclose, — in Him at all times we are: words which he caps with a quotation from their own poets, recognizing the true creative link with God of a spiritual being such as man is, "For we are also His offspring." He is not here considering the effect of the fall, nor as yet man's responsibility, but the place given him in God's design, from which he will be better able to estimate his own departure.

There had remained some glimmerings of light as to this amongst them, and Paul was able to quote some of their own poets as having spoken of mankind as being the offspring of God. In this they were right. Only by faith in Christ Jesus do we become children of God, but all men are His offspring as His creatures. This being so we ought not to conceive of God as something less than ourselves or as the work of our own hands; and we should be those who seek after Him. His immanence is recognized in the words that "In Him we live, and move, and have our being;" yet Paul preached Him as the transcendent One, who is Lord of heaven and earth.

As to omnipresence, God has no more to do with space than with time. He has created all things in a way apprehensible thus to us. In this creation nothing escapes Him. He is, morally speaking, omnipresent. He is not of, or in it, but pervades it. He is "through all"! He upholds everything, as He creates everything. He is not morally concerned in any motive (save as working in man in grace), but not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him.

In omnipresence there is the presence of God in every place. If it be heaven, He is there; it is His abode. And earth; "Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord" (Jer. 23-24). "Hell is naked before Him" (Job 26:6; Psalm 139:8). God is everywhere: He fills all places at all times. He fills space, earth, sea, and land. He fills our homes, with Him there can be no in and out, nor above and beneath. "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth." "The whole earth is full of His glory" (Zech. 4:10; Isaiah 6:3). How deeply blessed to be able to contemplate this glorious attribute in our Lord Jesus Christ! In fact, each of these wondrous features may be seen in Him in His ministry. Could there be anything to surpass this amazing mystery of grace: — a Man here, who is in every way suited, as to His body, for the place He had taken, yet, at the same moment of time, in consubstantial union with the Father and Spirit filling all in heaven and earth?

Another thing that is negatived is the very popular idea of PANTHEISM, that God is not to be thought of as outside nature and above it, but as only dwelling in nature, somewhat as the electrical current dwells in insulated cables. God is immanent — that is the word they use — and they do not believe in a transcendent God, a God that stands outside of and distinct from nature. You must merely think of Him as a Supreme Mind, a Sense dwelling in all things; that is the 'New Theology'. This Pantheistic idea is plainly denied. You have God before creation, and God outside of nature. The 1st of Genesis clearly presents Him not as an immanent God, but as a transcendent God, One that stands outside of and distinct from creation.

It also contains a denial of Pantheism — an idea of the ancients and of the heathen world, but more recently revived in Christendom as one of the buttresses of "New Theology." The god of the Pantheist is simply the spirit or essence of Nature. He expresses himself in Nature, but is not to be known or even conceived of as outside of or apart from Nature. The Pantheist professes a god who is immanent in Nature but not transcendent above it. The God of verse 1 is clearly One outside of Nature and infinitely above it, seeing He made it, and therefore existed before it. From Him all that which we call Nature proceeds.

Consider Acts 17:28 — The preacher, being none other than the Apostle Paul, said, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring." This seems to be conclusive enough, when detached from its context! The word "offspring" seems to denote relationship, but does it? The word is akin to "become, to be, generation, kind." As sued by the apostle in quoting their pets he uses the word offspring as denoting their having received being, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being." The thought of creaturehood is implicit in "offspring" and not relationship.

In the course of his prophecy Jeremiah raised this striking question: "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?" (Jer. 23:23). What was the answer to that question? From the moment that God redeemed Israel out of Egypt to be His people, He had made known His desire to dwell in their midst. Yet under the conditions that then existed He had to shroud Himself in fire and cloud and awful majesty, and man had to keep his distance. This was so, whether with Moses, or Aaron and his sons, or with Solomon, when the Temple was finished, and yet the priests could not enter when the glory of the Lord filled the House. It was nearness in one sense, but distance in another.

We open the New Testament, and all is changed, for we are immediately introduced to JESUS, who is EMMANUEL, which being interpreted is, "God with us." Here we have something entirely new. He who once dwelt in the devouring fire on Sinai was now amongst men in perfect manhood and in lowly grace. The One who is light and who dwells in light unapproachable, had now appeared in such fashion as to soften down the piercing rays of His glory so that human eyes might take them in. Those who were His disciples in the days of His flesh could say, "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." God was with them indeed, and they were not afraid. We have not His personal presence today, but we have the inspired record of His presence, and we have what the disciples who followed Him on earth did not have — the presence and indwelling of the Spirit of God — and therefore, "God with us," may be a reality to us today.

Scripture derives the soul of man, as man, from the inbreathing of God, apart from the dealings of His saving mercy in Christ. In this sense, as the apostle applied it (Acts 17:28), all men, even the heathen, are His offspring. In Him all live. He is the God and Father of all, though He be only in all His saints (Eph. 4:6).