The Power of God to Usward
"God hath spoken once: twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God" ( Psalms 62:11).
It is HARD for us sons of the Machine Age to remember that there is no power apart from God. Whether physical, intellectual, moral or spiritual, power is contained in God, flows out from Him and returns to Him again. The power that works throughout His creation remains in Him even while it operates in an atom or a galaxy.
The notion that power is something God separates from Himself and tosses out to work apart from Him is erroneous. The power of nature is the Presence of God in His universe. This idea is woven into the Book of Job, the Wisdom books, the Psalms and the Prophets. The writings of John and Paul in the New Testament harmonize with this Old Testament doctrine, and in the Book of Hebrews it is said that Christ upholds all things by the word of His power.
We must not think of the power of God as a wild, irrational energy coursing haphazardly through the world like a lightning stroke or a tornado. This is the impression sometimes created by Bible teachers who keep reminding us that dunamis, the Greek word for power, is the root from which comes our word "dynamite." Little wonder that sensitive Christians shrink from contact with such a destructive and unpredictable force.
God is a Trinity in Unity. The undivided unity of the Godhead is a truth revealed to Israel and held unchanged by the Christian Church. The doctrine of the divine unity means not only that there is but one God; it means that the Triune God is one with Himself, of a single substance, without parts. This truth is celebrated by Faber in these lines,
Unfathomable Sea!
All life is out of Thee,
And Thy life is Thy blissful Unity.
All things that from Thee run,
All works that Thou hast done,
Thou didst in honor of Thy being One.
And by Thy being One,
Ever by that alone,
Couldst Thou do, and doest, what Thou hast done.
The power of God, then, is not something God has; it is something God IS. Power is something that is true of God as wisdom and love are true of Him. It is, if we might so state it, a facet of His being, one with and indivisible from everything else that He is.
To imagine that the power of God operates blindly or accidentally is to fall victim to materialistic concepts. It is to think of God's power as separable from the attributes of personality such as wisdom, love and goodness. It is to imagine an infinite, undirected energy, something that does not and cannot exist.
The power of God is one with God's will, and works only as He wills that it should. It is one with His love and goodness and (as seen from our low standpoint) is the infinite enabling of all His attributes of perfection. It is His holy Being in action.
God is spirit and His universe is basically spiritual. Even science, which limps along far behind revelation, now bows that matter is not the solid, imporous substance it was once thought to be. Scientists change their beliefs radically from time to time and I do not want to quote them in confirmation of Christian truth; but there does appear to be a startling parallel between the atomic theory of matter and the Biblical concept of the Eternal Word as the source and support of all created things. Could it be that, as certain mystics have insisted, all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, are in reality but the goings forth of the power of God?
Whatever God is... He is infinitely. In Him, lies all the power there is; any power at work anywhere is His. Even the power to do evil must first have come from Him since there is no other source from which it could come. Lucifer, son of the morning, when he lifted up himself against the Most High, had only the abilities he had received from God. These he misused to become the devil he is.
I am well aware that this kind of teaching raises certain very difficult questions, but we should never retreat before truth simply because we cannot explain it. To shrink from this truth is to raise still more and harder questions and, worst of all, it is to think feebly of God, the supreme indignity.
The fact of sin introduces a confusing element into our thinking about God and the universe, and requires that we suspend judgment on many things. Paul spoke of "the mystery of iniquity," and it becomes us to accept his inspired words as the only possible present answer to the question of sin. The wise man will note that the things we cannot understand have nothing to do with our salvation. We are saved by the truth we know.
If we are true Christians this we can know, that the boundless power of our infinite God is all around us, enfolding us, preserving us in being and keeping us unto salvation ready to be revealed. Let us look trust-fully to God and expect "the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:19, 20).
A. W. Tozer
Born After Midnight - Chapter 5
Chicago, IL
1959
