|
The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
The one quotation from the Bible is from the NIV, UK print edition of 1984.
Self-sufficiency seems a laudable attainment.
To stand by oneself, alone and apart from others, having no need of support from anyone else, is an heroic ideal.
However, in the literal, biblical meaning of the term it is impossible to achieve. Only Jehovah God is self-sufficient.
The Creator, the Uncaused One is, by definition, utterly independent of all external elements, and therefore unlimited (Omnipotent) and invincible (Eternal).
Self-sufficiency is a quality and state of being which, by definition, cannot be bestowed nor inherited.
God is incomprehensible (Unfathomable) by other beings, all of whom originated at a single point in time and space, at the express action of the Creator.
In other articles we have explained that Jesus had a pre-human existence he was in the form of God, as stated in John 1:1 (many and various translations, too many to cite). But Jesus was not, is not, and never will be the Almighty. However, we read in John 5:25, 26 that Jesus had been promised by the Father that he would be awarded ‘life in himself’:
For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.
That it would be ‘granted’ to Jesus demonstrates that he was the recipient and that he did not have it at this point in time. Had Jesus been God himself (as the second member of a Trinity) he would have had no need to be awarded anything.
‘Life in himself’ is an entirely different attribute to Self-Sufficiency. It refers to a death-proof, immortal existence the Divine Nature and implies that Jesus in his glorified nature now most closely resembles God as it is possible to be, without himself being God.
________________
Dec 2016. ukbiblestudents.co.uk