We’ll start with a basic definition of Omnipresence. The previous post was on God’s Omnipotence, so if you haven’t read that one, maybe consider going back to that one first.
The most basic definition would be that God’s presence is everywhere – there is nowhere God is not.
Yet there’s so much more to it than that. It’s an attribute of God with multi-faceted points.
To start with, it’s good to remind ourselves of God’s Transcendence. Transcendence is God being outside of space and time. So, in terms of His omnipresence, that brings it to a whole other level!
Psalm 139 is one of the most obvious places where we find God’s omnipresence described for us.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me.’,
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (vs 8-12, NIV)
If you’re a Christian, this is very comforting. God will never be away from us. In sin, however, we’re like Adam and Eve…wanting to hide. Except we can’t. Thankfully we have a Father who bids us to draw near to Him for forgiveness and reassurance when we repent.
So, what exactly does God’s omnipresence entail?
- We know that God is Spirit – He doesn’t occupy any physical spaces. Instead, as the Reformed Study Bible (RSB) indicates on page 1305, we need to think of God’s omnipresence in terms of another dimension. Yes, that was new for me too.
“The barrier between us and God is not a barrier of space or time. To meet God, there is not a ‘where’ to go or a ‘when’ to occur. To be in the immediate presence of God is to step into another dimension.”
- Omnipresence is God’s presence in every place and every time. God is here with me as I write this, just as surely He is with you wherever you are reading this. He’s really here. Not absent.
- In Matthew Barrett’s book “None Greater”, he starts the chapter by taking us to 1 Kings 8. Solomon had just completed the building of the temple – a magnificent project! A place for God’s presence to dwell. Just as His presence was in the Tabernacle, so it now dwells in the Temple. Verses 10 and 11~ when the “priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” Solomon confesses that the temple was built for God to dwell in it, a fulfillment of the promise the Lord made to King David. Then he stood before the altar of the Lord and prayed a prayer of dedication, with a theologically packed sentence in there:
“Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below – you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way….But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (vs 23, 27)
Solomon confesses that not even heaven itself can contain God! A similar statement is made in 2 Chronicles 2:6 “But who is able to build Him a house, since heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain Him?” God DEFIES the limits of space entirely! Listen to what Stephen Charnock says (as quoted by Matthew Barrett on pp.163):
“God, because infinite, fills all. Yet so as not to be contained in them. He is from the
height of the heavens to the bottom of the deeps, in every point in the world, and in
the whole circle of it, yet not limited by it, but beyond it.”
Barrett also writes about the reality that God doesn’t have a body. The term is “Incorporeal” – which connects to God’s simplicity….He has no parts! Being “non spatial” enables God to be everywhere with His whole being simultaneously.
Once again, Barrett quotes Charnock:
“God fills all places by giving existence to everything by occupying them.”
Wow.
Now, there is yet another part of God’s omnipresence to be understood, and that is His Immensity. Not referring to “largeness”, but rather to how much of Him is in any given place at any given time! He’s present everywhere ~ fully and wholly present in all places.
Herman Bavinck in “Reformed Dogmatics” expands on the immensity of God by saying that God’s omnipresence includes God’s BEING as well as His POWER – His omnipotence. “God is not somewhere, yet He fills heaven and earth; He is uniquely a place of His own to Himself.”
Given our finiteness as limited human beings with human brains, we always tend to think of God in human terms – naturally. When the Bible talks about infinite space with respect to God, we confess that “God fills to repletion every point of space and sustains it by His immensity.”
Isaiah 66:1 “This is what the Lord says: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my
footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has
not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the Lord.”
Bavinck brings this into understanding with the analogy of a soul and the body, as learned from Augustine. The soul in its entirety is present in the entirety of the body – and in every part of it. So also, God is in all things and all things are in God. There’s also differentiation between God’s physical and ethical immanence (His nearness). He uses this analogy: 2 people may be sitting right beside each other but miles apart in spirit and outlook. We get that, don’t we? To bring it all together Bavinck states, “The soul is present through out the body and in all its parts, yet in each of them in a unique way, one way in the head and another way in the heart, in the hands differently from the feet.” And to make it even clearer …. God is present in BOTH Hell and Heaven. Mark Jones in his book “God Is” clarifies it further. God’s presence in Heaven is a comfort, a joy, and a delight. But His presence in Hell is horrifying, condemning, terrifying. God manifests His presence in different ways. Quoting Augustine, “God is present everywhere equally, even if He is present somewhere uniquely. He can be in both places equally though differently due to the immensity of His essence.”
I really like how Jones describes Immensity. “Immensity refers to spatiality, omnipresence refers to his relation toward filled, or concrete, space. Immensity denies to God any spatial limitations; omnipresence explains God’s disposition toward space.” We are finite people, limited by space and time and barriers, but God in His Infinitude isn’t bound by anything! “God is perfectly and powerfully present in every place; He fills all space as God. There is nowhere where God is not present.”
Barrett describes God’s omnipresence in yet another facet. As the Creator, it’s not even possible for God to be limited to space. Why? Because of His other attributes. His Infiniteness, His Aseity, His Simplicity. God has an infinite essence, so He must also have an infinite presence. And because God is Infinite, it is impossible for God to be contained. (mind blown yet?)
Let’s go in another direction with Barrett. He writes about what God’s omnipresence IS NOT. As mentioned before, we can try to make this make sense in our human minds.
- He doesn’t “stretch” Himself out…. if He could, that would imply finitude. An end.
- He doesn’t “diffuse” Himself…. “No one place has a part of God.” This would imply parts, but God is Simple.
Both diffusion and stretching would make God fill a place like we would.
- He isn’t “divided” … if He could, then He could also be multiplied and destroy His Simplicity.
God remains One, Undivided and Simple, present everywhere and always with His whole being.
Let’s bring it down to Jesus Christ. Divine omnipresence finds its focal point in the person of Jesus ~ our Immanuel – God With Us!
Jones says, “As the God-man, Christ is in one sense limited because of his finite human nature, but in another sense not limited by his human nature because of his divine nature. The latter transcends the former In Christ as a person. That is, the eternal Son of God became flesh; his divine nature was united to but not contained within the human nature.”
Today? Christ is always with us through the person and work of the Holy Spirit, sent by Christ, to live in us – to dwell in us – temples for the Holy Spirit. He is our Helper and Comforter “who carries on the ministry of the ascended Christ in the lives of believers.” He is always near us – in every situation, in every place. He sees our tears, He hears our cries, He knows our pain because He is here.
God created time, He created the world, He created all people, all creation from all times and ages. Since God created all of this, He isn’t controlled by any of it. So, we can also think of God’s omnipresence in terms of past, present and future. He is equally present in the past and the future as He is with us today. He inhabits all 3 as well. This is why we can trust Him with our lives entirely. He has already “been” in the future. He doesn’t just know the future – He’s omnipresent there as well. If we limit God to being present only in the here and now, well, we’ve limited God. And God has no limits. It’s hard to wrap our minds around this! It’s a mystery – but remember that God is incomprehensible. We believe.
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Theology Musings 