The omnipotence of God correlates with all of His attributes consistently. We can identify that the power of God is derived from within His own deity and no outside sources or contingencies. All of His decrees are perfect and accomplished by His own power without error or obstruction. All of His knowledge and understanding have no limits and He transcends His knowledge to wherever and to whom He desires by His own will. God’s eternal foreknowledge is not dependant on the actions of man, but instead the actions of men are dependent on the full omnipotence of God’s foreknowledge. God and Christ reign supreme over every aspect of physical existence without limit. The omnipotence of God reveals His supremacy without limitations; nothing happens without the power of God’s permission. God is sovereign with His power and bestows it to whomever He wills. Kings and governments only do the biddings of God with limitations according to the power that God allows them to have. Nothing can ever change the power of God because God is immutable. His omnipotence can never increase or decrease but has eternally been almighty. Perhaps the greatest factor of God’s omnipotence is that God is omnipotently Holy. There are absolutely no limitations to any of God’s attributes; God’s decrees, His knowledge, His foreknowledge, His supremacy, His sovereignty, His immutability, His holiness, His faithfulness, His love, His goodness, His grace, His mercy, and yes even His wrath are omnipotent!
In defining the omnipotence of God, I went to Luis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology. Luis Berkhof was an American-Dutch theologian who was professor for about 40 years at Calvin Theological Seminary. Regarding the Omnipotence of God he wrote; “Power in God may be called the effective energy of His nature, or that perfection of His Being by which He is the absolute and highest causality,” (Berkhof).
The power within God’s very nature is energy with an effective outcome to whatever His power or energy is being applied to. It is interesting that Berkhof refers to the perfection of God as the highest causality. Causality implies cause and effect, which is a concept taught in the philosophical branches of metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysics is the study of the reality around us such as; time, space, objects, causality, and existence. Epistemology is the study of the theory of knowledge. Specifically attempting to solve exactly what knowledge is, how to attain it, and be absolutely certain that what one believes is indubitable, meaning something which is certain and cannot be doubted.
Causality; which is cause and effect means that every consequence necessitates an agent being the cause of the effect. For example; if we set up a row of dominoes in a particular pattern and decide to push one domino to cause it to fall on another, we as the agent became the cause of a chain reaction of dominoes falling on top of another until the last one had fallen. We as the agent could only control a small aspect of cause and effect. There are several contingencies we as an agent are not able to control because we are impotent instead of omnipotent. In difference to man; if God were to push the domino, He would know every aspect of the domino, science, and atmosphere around it; that God would have maximal control over every cause and effect such as, the angle and degree to how the domino would fall before it made contact with the next domino, the amount of impact every domino would succeed from the one to another, the amount of noise decibel every piece would cause to reverb through the space in the room; not because God pushed the domino and manipulated the contingencies as they unfolded before Him, but instead because before God pushed the domino He planned and decreed that every piece will fall according to His will, and so when God pushes that first domino every piece falls according to His plan because God is the absolute highest causality as a result of His omnipotence.
God does not fail in His plans, and whatever He sets out to do He accomplishes it with maximal efficiency. When God sent His son to achieve the Fathers will He did not do it with the hopes that Christ would pass Satan’s temptations in the wilderness. God did not hope that the Jews would deny the Messiah and if they did not then God would come up with some other plan; that is not the God of the bible, and that is not omnipotence. God omnipotent; plans, decrees, and He executes as a cause of an absolute effect.
Genesis 18:4 is anything too hard for Jehovah? At the time appointed I will return again, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. God decreed in this verse that Sarah would have a son. So did God merely hope that Sarah would have a son, and if she did not then God would have to implement plan b? No! God planned, God decreed, and it was so because that is how God pre-ordained it.
Jeremiah 32:27 Behold, I am Jehovah, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?
Matthew 3:8,9 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance; and do not think to say within yourselves, We have Abraham as our father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
John the Baptist knew how boastful the Jews were about being descendants of Abraham and thinking their salvation was merited by obedience to the law and lineage; as a result they believed they did not need to repent and be baptized. John said to them do not even think of using the excuse of lineage to Abraham as your father because God does not necessitate your submission as children; God’s omnipotent power can raise children out of these stones; which was reflective of Jewish language. In Genesis 38:8 And Judah said to Onan, Go in to your brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to your brother. The raising up of new seed or children to Abraham meant that the time was at hand when the Gospel of the Kingdom who is Christ would soon go out to the gentiles, who would accept the Gospel of Christ instead of the Jews, and the gentiles would be the true seed of Abraham as its written in Galatians 3:29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. Students of God; you and I are the stones spoken of by John the Baptist in Matthew 3:9, who God raised as Abrahams descendants because the Jews rejected Him! Not only now are you and I descendents of Abraham, but also descendents of grace.
The omnipotence of Chris is revealed in:
Matthew 26:53 Do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels?
Even Jesus Christ in the flesh had the ability of reaching into His divine omnipotence. When they came for Him Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of one of the high priest’s servants. Jesus said put away your sword or you may die by the sword. It was by God’s grace that Peter was not killed after He struck that man. God does not need man and His primitive carnal weapons to fight His battles. God is omnipotent and takes vengeance into His own hands, and His vengeance was revealed as He destroyed the temple of the Jews, and as the Jews chose to live by the sword; many Jewish subjects died by the Roman sword. Christ said if I just ask it of my Father He would send 12 legions of Angels to destroy my enemies. John Gill claims that a legion in the Roman Army ranked up to at least 6,000 Soldiers; giving us the illustration of 12 legions of Angels being an innumerable number. Remember the awesome power God can distribute with just one Angel? 2Kings 19:35 And it happened that night, the Angel of Jehovah went out and struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. And they arose early in the morning, and behold, they were all dead bodies. That is God’s omnipotence.
Let us consider how omnipotent God is in our salvation:
Isaiah 43:11-13 reads; I, I am Jehovah; and there is none to save besides Me (the King James Version reads “besides me there is no Savior.) 12 I have declared, and have saved, and I have shown, when there was no strange god among you; therefore you are My witnesses, says Jehovah, that I am God. 13 Yea, before the day was, I am He; and no one delivers out of My hand; I will work, and who will reverse it?
God Jehovah in this passage is equivalent to John 14:4 where Christ said that He is the only way to the Father. In this passage Jehovah said there is no salvation apart from God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In verse 12 Jehovah said “I have declared, and have saved,” a declaration from God is a sovereign decree unto the salvation that we were brought to. God had shown His people the omnipotent power of God in salvation through the law and the prophets of the Old Testament, and deliverance from Egypt with God’s almighty arm. Today God continues to prove to us His omnipotence with His mighty arm of salvation, which is none other than Jesus Christ our Lord. Just as God delivered His people from Egypt, so does God deliver us from the wages of sin, which is death. That there was no strange God among you means that they were saved by God alone without the aid of false idols. And for us the New Testament believers; it means that salvation was a monergistic work accomplished by God’s grace, faith, and Christ alone without the aid mans effort.
The Omnipotence of God is revealed in His names:
Some titles of biblical doctrines are not found in the bible such as; the trinity, and omniscience. Nevertheless, it does not negate that the implications of those doctrines are revealed throughout the bible. From old to New Testament those two doctrines are unmistakably apparent. With some similarity the study of God’s omnipotence reveals that the noun omnipotence is not in the bible, but the adjective omnipotent is written in:
Revelation 19:6 “And I heard as the sound of a great multitude, and as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of strong thunders, saying, Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigns!”
In this verse we see God being referenced as omnipotent, which means to have unlimited power. Without going far from the principle subject of this article; there is another indication that needs to be shown, that is the word “Lord” which is the Greek word Kurios, which means; master, sir, and supreme in authority; which can be applied to the Father or the Son. However; the translators wrote the word Lord with one capital “L” as an indicator to us, that the deity in context is Jesus Christ and not the Father. In other verses in the New Testament such as Matthew 1:22 the word Lord has all capital letters, which indicates that the deity in that context is God the Father. In the Old Testament we have the Hebrew words Adonay and Y’hovee, which are names and titles of God. Y’hovee is the Hebrew national name for God, while Adonay meaning master or ruler of subjects is a title given to God; but in addition; Easton’s Bible Dictionary proposes that the title was traditional in Jewish homes as wives would refer to their husbands as their lord. However; in the Old Testament whenever the word Lord and God are written in all capital letters, it is an indication from the translators to let us know it is in reference to God the Father alone. The point is that in Revelations 19:6 the lower case L in the word Lord is in reference to Christ alone, and is referenced as omnipotent God; revealing to us that Jesus Christ is God. Our God Jesus Christ, who is a member of the Holy Triune Deity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; is omnipotent with no limit to power.
Another name found throughout the entire Old Testament that conveys to us the omnipotence of God is the word Almighty, which is translated from El Shaddai. It is written 48 times in the Old Testament, and 9 times in the New Testament. In the Old Testament; Almighty is predominantly in reference to Jehovah God, while in the New Testament it is in reference to Jesus Christ, such as in:
Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Again the Father and Son are sharing names which convey attributes applicable only to God, infers to us that Christ and God are the same being as God.
Dr. Geerhardus Vos; an American Princeton Theologian and also known as the father of Reformed Biblical Theology writes that, El Shaddai “designates the divine power as standing in the service of His covenant-relation . . . transcending Nature and overpowering it in the interests of redemption.”
Genesis 28:3 And may God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, so that you may be a multitude of peoples.
Genesis 35:11 And God said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall be from you, and kings shall come out of your loins.
The very introduction of God Himself as God Almighty ought to raise a higher praise than when people lift their voices in vain for their favorite ball players in the vanity of a sports game. When one comes to the spiritual acknowledgment of the awesome power of God whom they serve; all these carnal games become irrelevant in comparison to fulfilling the will of God in one’s life. May God give us His power to avoid vain distraction for the purpose of study and fulfilling His commission.
These verses in Genesis if fallen into the hands of the prosperity preachers may tell people that these verses indicate that God wants them to be prosperous, full of health and wealthy; but that is not the context of these passages. God Almighty, El Shaddi is establishing His covenant with Jacob as He did with Abraham and Isaac. God changes Jacobs name to Israel; being fruitful and multiplying is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, that through his loins a nation would be developed, and from this nation would be raised tribes like the size of nations, and would be fruitful in the sense of giving birth to Kings such as David, Solomon, and finally Jesus Christ the King of Kings and savior of the world. God alone by His awesome ultimate unlimited power fulfills prophecy of the enmity between the world and the spirit, Satan and Christ, which began in the Garden of Eden; when He told the serpent “He will bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel.” God’s omnipotence is manifested through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; King David and King Solomon, to the incarnation of the Son, His resurrection, and ascension for those whom Christ came to redeem, and the effectual calling of those whom God draws to Christ. God alone did all this by His mighty power for the sake of His glory and redemption of His people; who are today the Israel of God. We today are the fruits of God’s mighty promise to Abraham millenniums ago. It was commanded in:
Exodus 19:6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the sons of Israel.
This commandment still abides with us today, as believers of Christ are supposed to be a kingdom of priests and holy. In the New Testament or the New Covenant; Israel is now known as Israel of the flesh, and Israel of God. Those who are of the nation of Israel and do not follow Christ are Israel of the flesh. We who believe in Christ as God are the Israel of God.
Romans 9:6 Not however that the Word of God has failed, for not all those of Israel are Israel
1Corinthians 10:18 Behold Israel after the flesh. Are not those who eat of the sacrifices also partakers of the altar?
Galatians 6:16 reads; And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.
God’s stretched out arm and almighty hand has delivered us from death and eternal torment. Do not live your life lukewarm and in idle condition in service to God Almighty. Recognize the omnipotence of God in your life and worry not about the issues and struggles of life. Please remember the words of Christ Almighty and omnipotent:
Luk 12:6,7 Are not five sparrows sold for two assaria? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not fear, you are of more value than many sparrows.
Luke 12:25 And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?
Circumstances will come and go; stand firm on the foundation of Christ the Rock. Believe that God is Almighty and able to provide everything necessary to achieve His will through you just as He did for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; to bring forth the nation which gave birth to the savior of the world, Christ Almighty.
Descendants of Grace Monergistic Agora 