Two weeks ago we began discussing how God is different from us. This first attribute was God’s independence. This was defined as: God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glory him and bring him joy.
The second attribute is God’s unchangeableness. We can define the unchangeableness of God as follows: God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.
This week we will discuss God’s attribute of Eternity. God’s eternity may be defined as follows: God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time.
This is also related to God’s unchangeableness. If it is true that God does not change, then we must say that time does not change God: it has no effect on his being, perfections, purposes or promises. But that means that time has no effect on God’s knowledge, for instance. God never learns new things or forgets things, for that would mean a change to his perfect knowledge. This implies also that the passing of time does not add to detract from God’s knowledge: he knows all things past, present, and future, and knows them all equally vividly.
The fact that God has no beginning or end is seen in Psalms 90:2: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
Jesus bold use of a present tense verb that implies continuing present existence when he replied to his Jewish adversaries, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). This statement is itself an explicit claiming of the name of God, “I AM WHO I AM,” from Exodus 3:14, a name that also suggests a continual present existence: God is the eternal “I AM,” the one who eternally exists.
The fact that God never began to exist can also be concluded from the fact that God created all things, and that he himself is an immaterial spirit. Before God made the universe, there was no matter, but he created all things (Genesis 1:1, John 1:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:16 and Hebrews 1:2). The study of physics tells us that matter and time and space must all occur together: if there is no matter, there can be no space or time either. Before God created the universe, there was no “time,” at least not in the sense of a succession of moments one after another. Therefore, when God created the universe, he also created time.
It is somewhat easier for us to understand that God sees all time equally and vividly. We read in Psalm 90:4, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” It is somewhat difficult for us to remember events that occurred several weeks ago, or several months ago, or even several years ago. We remember recent events more vividly, and the clarity of our memory fades with the passing of time. Even if it were possible to live a thousand years, we would remember very few events from hundreds of years earlier, and the clarity of that memory would be very low. But here scripture tells us that God views a thousand years as yesterday. He can remember the detailed events of a thousand years at least as clearly as we can remember events of yesterday. In fact, to him a thousand years is “as a watch in the night,” a three or four hour period during which a guard would stand watch.
In the New Testament, Peter tells us, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). The second half of this statement had already been made in Psalm 90, but the first half introduces as additional consideration, “One day is as a thousand years”: it is as if that day never ends, but is always being experienced.
Putting these two considerations together, we can say the following: in God’s perspective, any extremely long period of time is as if it just happened. And any very short period of time (such as one day) seems to God to last forever: it never ceases to be present in his consciousness. God sees and knows all events past, present, and future with equal vividness. This should never cause us to think God does not see events in time and act in time, but just the opposite: God is the eternal Lord and Sovereign over history, and he sees it more clearly and acts in it more decisively than any other. But, once we have that said, we must affirm that these verses speak of God’s relationship to time in a way that we do not and cannot experience: God’s experience of time is not just a patient endurance through eons of endless duration, but he has a qualitatively different experience of time than we do. This is consistent with the idea that in his own being, God is timeless; he does not experience a succession of moments.
Yet once all this has been said it is necessary to guard against misunderstanding by completing the definition of God’s eternity: “yet God sees events in time and acts in time.” Paul writes, “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law (Galatians 4:4-5). God observed clearly and knew exactly what was happening with the events in his creation as they occurred over time. We might say that God watched the progress of time as various events occurred within his creation. Then at the right time, “when the time had fully come,” God sent forth his Son into the world.
We must affirm both that God has no succession of moments in his own being and sees all history equally vividly, and that in his creation he sees the progress of events over tome and acts differently at different point in time. In short, he is the Lord who created time and rules over it and uses it for his own purposes.
Will we ever share in God eternity? Specifically, in the new heaven and the new earth which is yet to come, will time still exist? We read in Scripture, “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb…and there shall be no night there” (Revelation 21:23, 25).
Nevertheless, it is not true to say that heaven will be timeless, or without the presence of time or the passage of time. Rather, as long as we are finite creatures we will necessarily experience events once after another. Even the passage that talks about no night being in heaven also mentions that fact that the kings of the earth will bring into the heavenly city “the glory and the honor of the nations” (Revelation 21:26). We are told concerning the light of the heavenly city, “By its light shall the nations walk” (Revelation 21:24). These activities of bringing things into the heavenly city and walking by the light of the heavenly city, and then at a later point in time this thing is part of the glory and honor of the nations that are brought into the heavenly city. To cast one’s crown before the throne of God (Revelation 4:10) requires that at one moment the person has a crown and that at a later moment that crown is cast before the throne. To sing a new song of praise before God in heaven requires that one word be sung after another. In fact, the “tree of life” in the heavenly city is said to be “yielding it fruit each month” (Revelation 22:2), which implies a regular passage of time and the occurrence of events in time.
There will still be a succession of moments one after another and things happening one after another in heaven. We will experience eternal life not in an exact duplication of God’s attribute of eternity, but rather in duration of time that will never end: we, as God’s people will experience fullness of joy in God’s presence for all eternity – not in the sense that we will no longer experience time, but in the sense that our lives with him will go one forever: “And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5).