God’s Necessary Cause

So, I have briefly attempted to show that God’s wills can be divided into at least three categories: decretive, preceptive, and dispositional. When grappling with the vast concept of God and His will for mankind, it is crucial to slow down and examine the categories that God reveals through Scripture and creation. These help us think rightly about Him and ourselves. The first cause I want to address is God’s necessary cause.

Necessary Cause Defined

A necessary cause is something that will happen continually because the Lord has woven it into the fabric of creation, and we can understand it as He has revealed it. The Lord Himself is essential for this to occur. Examples include the rotation of the planets, gravitational pull, Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere that sustains life, and the cycles of summer, winter, fall, spring, day, and night.

Here is a Scripture that encapsulates God’s necessary causes worked out in creation:

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)

1. God Must Be the Origin of the Necessary Cause Because of the Immense Power Required

For example, the Sun produces enough energy every minute to equal the output of billions of nuclear power plants running at full capacity. In a very real sense, this is incomprehensible, but the example helps our minds begin to grasp the vast power of God on display just within our solar system.

A Creator this powerful should inspire awe in everyone, yet many doubt His existence due to a lack of revelation to their souls. They are left to devise their own conclusions and solutions about why things exist, why there is structure and intelligence, rather than merely brute force churning out meaningless power that no one can comprehend.

This is—once again—another testimony not only to the power of our great God but also to the fact that He has communicated with us and placed us in a position to comprehend both creation and the Creator who brought it into being.

2. God Must Be the Origin of the Necessary Causes Because of the Complexity and Intelligence Required

When scientists are honest, they admit that human beings are merely observers. Through observation, we begin to realize that the complexity of life—its ability to function even at a microscopic level—requires not just power but a vast amount of intelligence.

Moreover, it takes intelligence to communicate that understanding to other beings like us (made in God’s image) so we can grasp it enough to recognize its source and begin processing the information.

Yet, much of mankind pats itself on the back rather than giving credit where it is due—to God and His intelligence in revealing and communicating it to His creation.

In recent decades, God has gifted humanity with tools like microscopes and artificial intelligence, offering us greater opportunities to understand the complexity and power of our amazing God.

It is my hope that mankind will recognize there had to be a necessary cause—and that cause is God. He has revealed Himself generally through creation and specifically through the Bible.

This special revelation is where scientific inquiry began. Most early scientists were Christians who already had answers for the power and intelligence they observed. This should make us all curious and expectant about new technologies and inventions.

3. God’s Perpetual Sustaining Ability Displays His Power, Wisdom, and Communication Every Day

Every day we wake up, we have the privilege of witnessing this necessary, powerful, and intelligent God at work—whether you’re someone advancing AI at Boston Dynamics or Neuralink, or a farmer raising livestock on a farm in Kansas.

There is One who makes it all possible: the one true living God. He has shown He is necessary through His power. He has shown He is necessary through His intelligence. He has shown He is necessary by communicating with us in small, understandable portions, allowing us to comprehend some of what He is doing and how He does it in creation.

He has further shown His necessity by communicating specifically through His written Word. He displays both His general and special revelation daily, revealing Himself and our great need for Him.

Principals to apply until next month:

1.      Will the necessity of God humble you to the point that you realize your dependence upon Him?

2.      What other power could create like the one true living God?

3.      What person would not only have the power but the wisdom to use the power at hand to create such a complex creation?

4.      God did not keep His power and wisdom to Himself; He created in such a way that all creation knows that we depend upon Him and should humbly worship Him. Will you not suppress this and actively worship God as revealed?   im?>

Until next month, will you go out and share the Gospel in diverse ways until a life is transformed?