Aseity
To understand the aseity or independence of God we must first come to realize the distinction between God and man or the Creator and the creation. As God’s immanent theopomorphic creation we recognize that he is a transcendent being who has revealed himself to us in an anthropomorphic revelation. These both make him greater than we can imagine and also brings him intimately closer to us than we could ever hope for. God has shown us that he is set apart and completely independent from us through his acts of creation and redemption. He has also shown us that he is completely sufficient in and of himself without need of us.
Through creation it was God who set apart the darkness from the light (Gen 1:4), it was God who makes each day possible and calls them into being by his very word (Gen 1:5). God revealed his complete independence by creating a world that was completely dependant upon him, sustained by him alone and for his own good pleasure. Furthermore, when God finally speaks to Job and his friends he reminds them that man was not present when the foundations of the world were laid (Job 38:4), nor was it man who formed the world as clay (Job 38:14), but it was the independent, all sufficient God of the universe. Now in the New Testament, John reveals to us that the very same God who created us, who was the very Word of God (John 1:2-3), is the same God who by his independent desire to bring salvation would be the redeemer, Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ who would bring our salvation through grace and truth (John 1:17). Finally, the men of Athens learn from the Apostle Paul that the “unknown God” is the God of creation, the God of life, the wholly sufficient God who breathes life into every living being (Acts 17:22-25).
Immutability
We serve a changeless and reliable God that has been with us our entire lives and knew us before we were even born. God’s immutability or changelessness means that he is not like the deceitful shadows that shift (James 1:17) and cause us to not trust our Lord. He brings us heavenly light to display the splendor and majesty of his veracity. He is the rock of our salvation and the firm ground from which we build our house, not like the foolish man who builds his house on the shifting sands (Matthew 7: 26).
Goodness
The unfailing love (Psalm 90:14) of our God is his revealed goodness to his creation. That he would send his son to die on our behalf because of his love for the world and desire to give the free, but expensive gift, of grace to those that would believe in Jesus Christ (John 3:16) is an amazing testimony to the goodness of our Lord. It is unimaginable that our God would love us so much and desire to pour out his goodness upon his creatures that he would send his son to take on the very nature of a servant, that the King of Kings would humble himself to the point of death upon the cross displays the unfathomable and immense goodness and love of our God (Philippians 2: 7-8).
Holiness
From the beginning of God’s relationship with his covenant people he has called them out of their unrighteousness, out of their unbelief and into the courts of his holiness. From the establishment of the sacrificial system in Leviticus, God has shown his covenant people the need to find a perfect and blemish free offering (Leviticus 1:3) to make atonement for them (Leviticus 1:4) because they were not like God in all his perfections. Once again God revealed his perfection to the covenant people through his encounter with the prophet Isaiah by filling the temple, proclaiming his holiness and bringing the prophet to his knees in humble recognition that he was a man of unclean lips (Isaiah 6:1-5). Finally, Paul writing to the Colossians proclaims God’s holiness by showing us that it is by Christ’s sacrifice that we are reconciled and made blemish free (Colossians 1:22), thus brought back into right relationship with God, able to stand before him with confidence in our salvation.
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