14. God All-Sufficient for Us

God All-Sufficient for Us

What is it to be a God to any? In a word, to be a God is to be all-sufficient to any; to be sole sufficient, and to be self-sufficient. To be a God is to be all-sufficient for every creature; to be all-sufficient when nothing else can be sufficient. And to be self-sufficient, to be sufficient of himself, and therefore to reduce all back again to himself. Now, God is a God of himself, for himself, and by himself. God is all-sufficient, self-sufficient, sole-sufficient; and whatsoever the creature hath, it hath it from him. There is, in a word, in God a sufficiency for all good and happiness, and an efficiency to apply that sufficiency for the good of the creature. And in particular to be a God to any, is to do for a creature that no creature in the world can do but God. To make it of nothing, to free it from misery that it is beset withal, when no other can free it, to recover it again. God is Jehovah, that hath a being of himself, giveth being to the creatures, that can make the creature of nothing, and being something, can make it nothing.

Now, if God be a God to any, he is not only to give being to us, in a certain rank of creatures, as we are advanced above other creatures, as to have a being, or a life of growing, or a life of sense, or to advance us to a life of creatures endowed with reason, whereby we are common in that fashion with angels, and understand God himself. Alas! this were a poor privilege if it went no further than to set us in that rank of creatures, though a great favour. But considering us in a lapsed estate, it is a poor favour to leave us here. And therefore God is said to be our God now in a state of grace, when he advanceth us to an higher being and life than all this, a life of grace here and of glory hereafter; when out of his sovereignty and power he reduceth all to help forward his main end, the salvation of his in particular. So God is a God in peculiar of some that he taketh out of base mankind. There is a world taken out of the world, as Austin useth to speak (i). And thus he is a God not to bestow a life of grace and supernatural being here, but a glorious condition hereafter in heaven; and to make all things serviceable to that, that we may say, ’All is ours, because we are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s,’ 1Co 3:22-23. So that whatsoever befalleth a Christian, is serviceable and conducible to the main and last end. And that is for God to be God indeed, to make us his in Christ Jesus, to give us a now creation and a new state, better than the first.

Now, what is the foundation of this, that God is our God in the covenant of grace? We say it is founded on Christ. God is Christ’s God, and then our God; and that is the reason why Christ is called ’Immanuel,’ which is as much as to say, as it is expounded, ’God with us.’ Not only because when he took our nature on him, there was God and man in one person; but the meaning of the word is, Christ is Immanuel, ’God with us;’ by being God in our nature, and satisfying divine justice in our nature, hath brought God the Father and us into a sweet covenant. So that God may be our God and our Father, notwithstanding his justice; because all is satisfied by Christ, who took our nature to die for us. Christ is Immanuel, because he hath made God and us one. So that God is our God, and not only so, but our Father in him. Thus you see how it cometh to pass that God is our Father by Christ, who came to bring us again to God, as his whole office was to bring a few that had been singled out of mankind to God again, from whom they fell; for we all had communion with God in Adam, but we lost it; and now must be brought again to God, which must be done by Christ, God and man.

Thus much for the foundation of the point, that God is Christ’s God, and God in Christ is our God, to do all things for us, to bring us to an happy condition here and an everlasting happy condition in heaven.