Is God Dependent On You To Do What He Does?
Yup...Gideon is still a scaredy cat
Last time we looked at Gideon, he was a scaredy cat in need of a big God and big promises. Well, he’s still a scaredy cat. How would God respond? Is He caught off guard? Does Gideon’s struggle with unbelief affect God?
Whenever we read Scripture we must remember who God is. The Doctrine of God is crucial to a proper interpretation of any text.
Who Is Our God?
First, we need to mention a term that is not so familiar. It is divine aseity. This means that God is self-sufficient. He needs no one and no thing to be who He is and to do what He does. Not only is He in need of no one and no thing but, as Steven Duby says, “He has life in and of Himself.”1
We see this in Romans 11:36 where Paul says, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” In Exodus 3:14 where God pronounces His name from the Burning Bush we hear Him say, “I am who I am.” Duby says, “He is making it clear that Moses and the people of Israel do not determine who He is or what He will do, though they can count on His covenant faithfulness (Exod. 3:13-15). The name is characterized by God in terms of His freedom to be gracious to whom He will be gracious and to have mercy on whom He will have mercy (33:19).”2
God is not dependent on Gideon in any way at any time for any thing. If God uses Gideon it is by sovereign free grace.
Second, God is immutable. Malachi 3:6 says, “I, the LORD, do not change.” James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” God does not and cannot improve for the better or decrease for the worse. He does not and cannot even will it within Himself. If God were to increase for the better then at one point He was not God. If He decreased for the worse then He would be less than God. This is unfeasible.
Duby says about immutability that “God is constant in His perfections and in the eternal relations of the Father, Son, and Spirit. He is also constant in His good plan for the world.”3
God does not change because of Gideon’s sin, fear, unbelief, or opposition. This is not only in His nature but in His will. If God has determined to deliver Israel even through 300 then God will do it. It is as good as done.
Third, God is impassible. This means that God is without passions. Duby says “impassibility signifies that God is not susceptible to being harmed or deprived of any good that is constitutive of His well-being. He is never acted upon so as to become disposed in a manner contrary to His well-being and sufficiency. Thus, He is not subjected to emotional distress like creatures. Instead, God remains constant in His goodness and sufficiency.”4
An accurate translation of Acts 14:15 says, “We also are human beings of like passions with you”. In other words, Paul is trying to convince the people of Lystra that he is not Zeus or any god or the God. This is evidenced in the fact that Paul has passions. God does not have passions. Therefore, Paul is not God.
God is not frustrated, sad, disappointed, intimidated, or hindered by Gideon’s sin or inability. He is not harmed by the Midianites or any opposition.
Fourth, God is eternal. God is not bound by time in any way. Duby once again says, “God is without beginning or end and without the temporal succession that creatures undergo. He already has fullness of life in Himself and does not acquire or lose that fullness over time.”5 This is why Ps. 90:4 says, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.”
James Dolezal addresses our predicament as those who are bound by time trying to understand One who is not. “All our knowledge of Him arises from our standpoint within the temporal flow of the created order. We come to know Him and speak of Him as He reveals Himself through His mighty deeds and words, one after another in succession. For this reason, we find it impossible to speak of a timeless God without employing time-bound terminology.”6 Dolezal goes on to explain divine eternality saying, “The basic claim of the classical doctrine of eternity is that God does not experience successive states of being and thus has no future and no past. Positively, eternity is derived from the belief that God is so perfect and infinite in being that no new state of being can come upon Him, and neither can any state of being slip away from Him. He is purely and infinitely actual in all that He is.”7
God is outside of time which means that He is already in Gideon’s future just as much as He was in the past with Israel going through the Red Sea. It is all one “moment” for God while yet never being ignorant of what moment it is for us. Therefore, if God tells Gideon “for I have given [Midian] into your hand” (Judg. 7:9) even before Midian has been attacked then because of God’s eternality it is not a possibility but a surety.
Fifth, God is simple. This is not a criticism of God. It is a profound truth. Divine simplicity is the heart of the Christian faith—which is unfortunate for many Christians today because the Church has not taught it readily enough. Simplicity means that God is not made up of parts. He is one, undivided whole. As Exodus 3:14 says, God is who He is. The Persons of the Trinity are not “parts” of God.8 The attributes of God are not parts of Him. They just describe Him. God is spirit (John 4:24) and this means that He not physical nor is He made up of parts.
Deuteronomy 6:4 makes it very clear that God is one. In other words, it is not just that He is the only God but that He as God is one. He is the One-ness of one. He is one undivided whole.
The Trinity is One God in Three Persons. These three Persons are distinct only in their relations while they share the one simple undivided divine essence. Each is the One God and yet it is not one God wearing three different masks, nor 1/3 of God making up a whole, nor is any Person confused with the Other. The Father is the Father and the Father is God. The Son is the Son and the Son is God. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is God. Yet, these three are One and yet distinct only in their relations. Equal in power and glory, having one will, acting as one in all things even as they act as distinct Persons, co-eternal and co-equal. Welcome to the mystery of the glorious Trinity!9
For Gideon, this means that God is in need of nothing to help Him do what He has said He will do. The Triune God is His God (although the fuller revelation of this wasn’t as apparent to him). It means that this simple God is power and not that He has power as coming from some other source. God is self-sufficient power, all-sufficient power, and is not threatened by any opposition. No one can break Him, divide Him, or hinder Him.
Can We Move On To What’s “Practical”?
Young Wilson would often think this. But, this is a tragic mistake. There is nothing more practical than knowing who God is (John 17:3). If we go wrong here we will go wrong everywhere else. This is key in this story.
In Judges 7:2 Yahweh comes to Gideon and his army of 32,000 people and says, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’”
This is the crucial sentence in the whole narrative. Nothing will make sense if you forget this. God whittles down the army from 32,000 to 300 for the purpose of no one boasting in their own strength, tactic, or ability. God is showing Gideon that the God who once acted before (6:8-18) is the same God then. He does not need 32,000 or 320,000. It does not matter if Midian’s armies are “like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number, as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance” (7:12). One man with God, despite the size of the opposition, is always in the majority.
And God whittles down the army to 300 (and not even the most skilled 300—the narrative describes it being inexperienced soldiers who don’t even attack Midian’s camp) in order to show that this was clearly and only God Almighty.10
God loves to do things like this.
God is not thrown off by Gideon’s fear. He is not in need of Gideon’s strength or leadership. He does not need Gideon plus Hollywood’s version of the 300. He doesn’t need anyone but He sovereignly and freely chooses to use Gideon and the 300 by grace alone. And remember, the strategy of attack isn’t even drawing out their own swords (see 7:19-23). Matter of fact, they looked ridiculous in their tactic. They smashed pots and held up torches while yelling. But, God’s “weakness” is stronger than man’s strength (1 Cor. 1:25).
What Does This Mean For You Today?
Repent of measuring your hope based on your strength, personality, gifts, godliness, opportunities, abilities, help from others, or anything besides God and His promises. Whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, nothing but God determines your life. He can reverse every curse and dash down any dream. He can remove the strongest opposition with merely a word and can establish a kingdom through simple means.
We should repent of putting our trust in ourselves and our strategies and put trust in His ordained means (Ps. 146).
What closed door can God not open or open door He cannot close? What circumstances make Him sweat? What trials of yours tire Him out? What sin or depravity of yours makes Him sink in defeat? What could possibly make Him decrease even a millimeter in energy, zeal, competency, or power?
These are rhetorical questions.
For I Am Not Ashamed Of The Gospel
This is also something hugely important for us to think about. Are we ashamed of His grace? Are we ashamed of His gospel?
Do we think the gospel of Jesus Christ is no match for our sins? Do we think our sinful hearts are too wicked for Jesus to overcome? Are our past deeds too much to be forgiven? Are our current struggles in the fight against sin too daunting for God? Have we finally exasperated Him by falling back into that same sin again? Is there some sin that can possibly be so ingrained in us that we ought to identify by it? Was this last sin finally the last straw? Is the possibility of future sin too much for God to handle?
These are not pious thoughts; they are prideful thoughts. Who do you think you are, whether too good or too bad, to think that you don’t need God’s grace or can receive God’s grace?
Cheap grace is not too much grace. Cheap grace is when we don’t call sin for what it is and God’s Law for what it is. Many say today, “We can’t preach justification so much. We have to also preach sanctification. The problem is that people are antinomian when they preach mainly on justification.” Without totally discrediting this statement, I think it actually should be interacted with—but not for the reasons you might think.
I think antinomianism arises because we fail to preach God’s Law to call sin for what it is and crush the arrogant sinner. The problem is not justification—this can be a fatal error to say so. The problem is that we don’t reveal God’s Law to be what it really is and say what it really says and as a result people don’t see their desperate need for a Savior.
The problem is not remembering our justification too much. The problem is not remembering why we need justification and how justification is given.
The problem is not that we preach justification too much. The problem is that we don’t preach justification well enough. We err in several ways:
We separate the gifts from the Giver—the classic Roman Catholic error.
We don’t preach the weight of the Law in such as way where one realizes afresh that they can do absolutely nothing and contribute in no way by their own efforts to God’s salvation (Rom. 3:10-20). By the way, Christians still need the First Use of the Law in order to grow in their thankfulness of Christ.
We react to bad preaching on justification by failing to preach sanctification from union with Christ.11 We fail to emphasize the transformation power and motivation for all sanctification is by looking to Christ in the gospel (2 Cor. 3:18) and love for God (Deut. 6:4-5).
We don’t preach well enough that the sinner after coming to Christ is still finally and fully justified despite their current or future sin. Some people say we give too much license by doing that but I definitively think it does not. Romans 5-8 sure does paint a different picture about how the surety of God’s future grace empowers us to actively pursue holiness (Rom. 12:1-2). We will promote antinomianism when we talk about justification as apart from Christ. But, when we preach that Christ Himself is always enough for us then it grows our love for Him and in turn produces obedience.
All true preaching of justification also talks about sanctification—because they both come from union with Christ (Eph. 1:3). And all true preaching of sanctification must talk about justification. Erring here is detrimental.
Let us not forget the crucial doctrines of glorification and the Beatific Vision. We have been justified not merely for our sanctification but for seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 3-5; 1 John 3:2). We are not pursuing holiness as something in itself apart from God. I’m afraid that some preachers talk about holiness in such a way that they might be happy with a heaven where there is no more sin and only morality and ethical behavior but where Jesus is optional. We pursue holiness because holiness is first and foremost being devoted to God. It is God-centered, Christ-saturated, Spirit-empowered, means of grace-driven. And the whole goal of our lives, and the main point of the Bible, is that we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospel of grace. To my “sanctification heavy” brothers, you need to make sure you point people not merely to the commands about this life but to the reality of the next. Sometimes you too put too much focus on the self. You put far more emphasis on someone observing themselves rather than observing Christ. To my “justification heavy” brothers, you also need to realize that justification is for the purpose of beholding Christ and not to live according to your fleshly desires without fear. In reality, you need to preach justification better.
The story of Gideon is God-centered, God-saturated, God-driven, God-glorifying, God-first. We are the scaredy cats like Gideon. We don’t deserve grace—because it is no longer grace the moment we deserve it. But, the God who is self-sufficient, immutable, impassible, eternal, and simple is the God of Gideon and the God of us today. He freely, fully, and sovereignly redeems us by grace alone. Our job should be to place our faith in Him and not in us or others. We ought to repent of self-trust and despairing doubt. Rather, look to Him whether it’s good, bad, or ugly. He is always God and He is always our God.
This is the God who can save you from any opposition at any time and in any way He wants that is consistent with His Being and Covenant.
This is grace we ought never to be ashamed of. This is a God we ought never to doubt.
Steven Duby, Jesus and the God of Classical Theism (Grand Rapids, MI, Baker Academic, 2022), p. 23.
Ibid. Read this amazing statement from p. 25 of Duby’s book: “Divine aseity signifies that God is independent and entirely self-sufficient, not constituted as God by another. In its full material content, it entails that God is always fully Himself and needs no further actualization of His being. He is not contained within a system of things where He would have to be distinct from others by lacking something that they possess (as it is in distinction of one creature from another). Positively, the triune God is complete in Himself in trinitarian fellowship and enjoys a fullness of life from which He can freely communicate life and love to creatures. He is distinct from creatures not negatively by lacking something that they have but positively by being the only one who has in an eminent manner all the perfections that can be found in creatures.”
Ibid, p. 26.
Ibid, p. 28. For more helpful work on Impassibility, see Ronald Baines’ work Confessing the Impassible God along with Matthew Barrett’s None Greater.
Ibid, p. 30.
James Dolezal, All That Is In God (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), p. 79.
Ibid, p. 82.
See Matthew Barrett’s wonderful book Simply Trinity.
Arguably the most beautiful writing on this is the Nicene Creed.
Dale Ralph Davis drops the mic on this argument in his commentary on Judges. Don’t preach or teach this text without reading “The Dale”.
See these books: 1) The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, 2) The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher (with notes from Thomas Boston), and 3) The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall.