Because He Is...I Am

Hebrews opens with lofty and majestic language. It is hard to encapsulate God’s existence and being into such a finite medium as words. At these points imagination and words fail. The writer of Hebrews did the best he could with what he had but it was like trapping God with paper.

Hebrews 1:1-3 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. 

The writer is making an absolute truth statement here and speaking in a matter-of-fact style. No Hebrew writer would for one moment entertain the idea of proving that ‘God is’. It would have been assumed and admitted as a fact on which all his thinking rests or what is called a presupposition. That's what we see in the Bible in general. The writers of all Scripture assume God is.

It is not possible for man to argue on any scientific subject unless he accepts certain facts which cannot be proved, and which it is mutually agreed shall be accepted without proof. Pythagoras or Euclid assumed the acceptance of certain axioms (a priori knowledge) and postulates before they could work out a single mathematical problem. It is knowledge inherent in the Universe and is required before mathematics can even be performed.

Similarly, there is one thing that must be admitted before any theological system can be constructed. It is an absolutely improbable thing...that every proof that can be offered must rest on assumptions, not on knowledge, since man has no power to know in the sphere to which this primary truth is related. A primary truth being is defined as a conception/proposition which is dependent for its truth on no other principle in the same order of thought. An axiomatic truth may be considered self-evident, intuitive insight but it is not or cannot be demonstrated. It’s taken for granted because…it is immutably true. It is the very being of God, truth is. A man can deny the being of God. Then we cannot talk theology with him; nor can we give him any idea of his moral duty. Scripture makes no attempt to prove that there is a God. It helps us to apprehend what He is, but not that He is.

In the beginning of the Bible, God is assumed to be. He is self-existent. It starts with the sublime assertion, “In the beginning God.” It proposes to deal only with men who accept that altogether incomprehensible fact as their starting-point being drawn from the essence of God and His creative power. No human intellect can pry behind that assertion. The absolute being, God, no created being can ever fully understand. The only thing we can do is to begin our thinking with this as our accepted first fact, our foundational truth-God is. One Being three persona, one uncreated, independent Being, sole source and absolute Originator of all things that exist.

Yet there is more in this passage.

God first and foremost. The first verse of the Bible asserts something that God has done. “God created the heavens and the earth.” But there is something that goes before the Divine action. God Himself must exist—the uncaused, eternal Being. “In the beginning God.” This is the place for Him, the only place, the place in which all reverent souls should forever keep Him. The foundational cornerstone of the great temple of thought and revealed truth is a pronouncement which forces us see one infinite Being, having life in Himself. 

He is self-existent and independent of all. When there was no heaven and no earth, in the silent, mysterious eternity, there was God. In the infinite deep of the quantum unknowable a first utterance of Divine Word pierces and resonances evermore in the created order that it spawned. The first divine work in the universe forever echoing down in all subsequent work performed in that universe by man. Word.

The greatest demand of faith for the Christian is to believe this happened as no one was there to see it yet…it is axiomatic and self-evident. It had to have happened for us to be here or for you to be reading this. Yet people deny it. The existence of God needs to be the beginning of human thinking or everything else thought in a man’s mind is based on a false presupposition or false beginning. The first stone in the edifice of thought is therefore flawed.

Even in light of this fundamental truth, God provides more proof for His existence for the feeble unbelieving mind. God has set the proofs of His existence so abundantly in the created order that He did not need to rewrite them in His book (but did). He has even put them in the very ability of our minds to think in an inductive manner and to be able to deduce things. We can never see anything without at once thinking there must have been a cause for it in this universe. 

The universe didn’t need to be ordered such as it is...but it is. There is order, another axiomatic assumption in reality. When one asks why, the answer is quickly arrived at…Someone created it. Our minds refuse to stop at anything short of that. We see a book; we assume a writer, a painting a printer. We see a machine; we know there was an inventor and maker.

We are surrounded with objects which we did not make, air, trees, flowers, streams, mountains, clouds, creatures; all trace their origin to God. Without some of them we could not survive. Systems designed to work interdependently. Within Creation the reality that we are dependent on these other created things, so in effect, we are dependent on nature, food and atmosphere. The length of our lives, the measure of our health, the formation of our diseases, are all things out of our own control. The universal nature of our dependence all tracing back to the Originator and Sustainer.

Here in Hebrews 1 and in Genesis 1 is an assertion of God’s eternality. What we find in the opening of Hebrews is also a statement of the absolute unity of God. The chapter asserts the exclusive relation of this one God to everything man can see or know. God made it; God ordained it; God arranged it. God allows it or doesn’t allow it (grace). This includes all natural forces and laws which act in creation. Every created thing has a power to act on every other created thing. 

Changes are going on in nature continually, changes sometimes  very silent and very gradual. Moses and the writer of Hebrews show us One living God at the beginning of all changes, designing all change, and presiding over all change. He deals with chaos, without form, and void, dwelling upon emptiness and confusion. He called forth light, and set order into motion.

The abrupt beginning of Hebrews startles us to attention. It reminds us of the stark but life-giving beginning of the book of Genesis. Scripture never proves the being of God. It assumes it. It deals with men only who assume it. It assumes: God is. God only is. Man can know Him, in part but cannot know Him perfectly. God gave the ability to understand him enough to be adequate for morality and salvation. Upon these facts all else is built. 

Here in the beginning of Hebrews we see the manifestation of God in humanity through God’s Son. Christ…was God taking on human form, so that He would not just be word or thought in man’s head. Instead he would be flesh. It was the whole plan from the beginning. God, the One God of Judaism and Christianity…because He is, I can be. Because He is the Great ‘I Am’ everything is. Because he was a man, died and rose again, I am forever.