Man’s Need For God

by Darwin Hunter

 

One of the most fundamental admissions a man must make is his need for God! Man is incomplete, and cannot be whole, without God in his heart life.  We have been made to glorify our Maker (Isaiah 43:7).  The very foundation of our existence is to “Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all” (NKJV, Ecclesiastes 12:13).  Jesus taught that loving God with one’s whole being is the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37-38).  That  commandment embraces drawing near to sincerely from the heart in the doing of every directive God has delivered to man.

God does not need man.  He is the eternal “I AM” (Exodus 3:14).  His existence is not dependent on man, nor can man supply God with anything, since He possesses no insufficiency.  Paul wrote of God, “Neither is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and oil things” (Acts 17:25).  God declared, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all its fullness” (Psalms 50:12).  God’s unlimited power can instantaneously provide His every holy desire, even what God of man (his worship, and material gifts) are not to supply God’s need, but to help develop gratitude and love in man.

Man needs God.  Man owes His very existence to God (Genesis 2:7).  His life is drawn from the power of His Creator, not the other way around.  Only because God willed our existence is any being on earth alive today, and only through His power are we daily sustained: “for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  We are taught to acknowledge; ”if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that” (James 4:15).  Jesus taught His disciples to recognize our daily dependence on God for our “daily bread” and for the rain and the sunshine (Matthew 6:11, 5:45).  Man cannot, apart from God, supply any of

these daily needs.  Thus, we should worship and adore the “Giver of every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17).

Much more than daily material needs, however, man is destitute spiritually speaking.  When he reaches the age of accountability, he willingly transgresses God’s holy law, and becomes a sinner alienated from His God (1 John 3:4; Ezekiel 18:4; Romans 3:23, 6:23).  Man can do nothing, apart from God’s grace and mercy, to save himself.  All he might to supply on his own, by his own devising, would be nothing more than “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). He is totally dependent on His loving God to supply the gift of His Son to redeem Him from sin (John 3:16; 1 John 2:1).  Only when fallen man recognizes His need for God will he respond in faith in Christ, penitence, and baptism to receive God’s pardon (Acts 2:38), and be reconciled through the “blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:20-23).  MAN NEEDS GOD!  May we never forget that salient fact.