God is omnipotent, all-powerful (Psa. 62:11). This is God's ability to do what He pleases.
One of the Hebrew names of God, El Shaddai, reveals His sovereign power. "El" means God;
"Shaddai" means almighty. God Almighty is His name of power. Job recognized that absolute
power belonged only to God (Job 9:19). John exclaimed, "For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth" (Rev. 19:6). God's power is not acquired. It is like God Himself -- self-existent and self-sustained. He can do anything as easily as anything else. He spends no energy that must be
replenished. When we work we get tired and need rest. This is not so with God (Isa. 40:28).
When the Bible says God "rested" (Gen. 2:2) after the creation was finished, it does not mean
that God was tired and had to relax. It means that GOD WAS SATISFIED WITH HIS WORK.
His rest after creation was the satisfaction (contentment and pleasure) He took in the revelation of
His glory in creation. This is significant as we see that God's "rest" in Hebrews 4, the rest into
which believers enter by faith, speaks of the satisfaction God took in the revelation of His
redemptive glory in mediatorial accomplishments of Christ.
Absolute power seems dreadful to us because when fallen men have power, we are always
reminded of how "absolute power corrupts absolutely." Of course no man has absolute power,
but those who gain power here on earth are always corrupted because men are sinners and full of
self-love. But this is not so with God. In God, absolute power is guided by perfect holiness,
goodness, knowledge, and wisdom. God does love Himself, but this, contrary to sinful man, is
good for us. When a sinful man, full of self-love, gains earthly power, he usually uses it to
promote his own self-interest to the detriment of others. But when God who loves Himself, first
and foremost, and who by His very nature has absolute power, exercises that power, it is for His
own glory and the good of all creation.
God's omnipotence does not mean that God can do anything. It means God can do
anything according to infinite power that is consistent with Himself, His holy character and
being. For example, God cannot sin, for He is holy. God cannot change, for He is immutable.
God cannot lie or tolerate sin. This is important as it shows us why God cannot save sinners apart
from His holy law and justice being satisfied. This is why we are going to see that the greatest
expression of God's awesome power is in the salvation of sinners based on the imputed
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Man's desires are more extensive than his power, but with God, "His counsel shall
stand, and He will do all His pleasure" (Isa. 46:10). God's power is such that He does
whatever He pleases without difficulty. He cannot be restrained, hindered, or frustrated (Dan.
4:35). "His eternal counsels would be worthless if His power could not execute them. His mercy
and grace would be no more than feeble pity if He had no power to relieve the oppressed. His
love would be no more than mere sentimentalism if He did not have the power to insure the well-being of its objects. His justice would be no more than empty threats if He did not have the
power to punish. His promises would be idle wishes if He did not have the strength to accomplish
them." (Charnock)
I. EXPRESSIONS OF GOD'S POWER.
When the Bible speaks of God's awesome power and seeks to use some expression that
our finite minds can understand, it represents God's power in human terms by using the word
"arm." The arm and the hand are symbols of power and strength. God does not have a literal
arm. He is spirit. But expressions referring to an arm in reference to God describe His unlimited
and absolute power. Consider God's power --
A. In creation and providence --
The first thing revealed in the Bible about God is that He created the heavens and the
earth, and certainly creation would be an expression of God's omnipotence.
This world in its order, harmony and uniformity, its sophisticated complexity, reveals and
reflects a sovereign, good, wise, and powerful Creator. Of course we would say that creation is
one of the greatest expressions of God's power (Psa. 33:6). No one helped God create the world
(Isa. 44:24). He willed creation into existence, and He maintains, sustains, and preserves what
He has created (Heb. 1:3). At this very moment God sustains everything in this universe. What
most refer to as the law and activity of nature is in reality the law and activity of God. This
universe would cease to exist if God were to relinquish His sustaining power. Things do not
happen in our universe by accident. God sustains it by His power and decree. We see that this
awesome power is also attributed to God the Son. Colossians 1:15-17 speaks of Jesus Christ --
Christ is the firstborn, the Head, and He has preeminence over every creature because He
created all things. He also has preeminence over the new creation, the Church, the new heavens
and the new earth, because He redeemed it with His precious blood. "Firstborn of every
creature" does not refer to His essential nature as God the Son. It speaks of Christ's sovereign
preeminence over both the old and the new creations.
"He is before all things" speaks of His sovereign preeminence. "By Him all things
consist" (or holds together), everything in its proper place headed towards its proper goal to
glorify Christ as Lord of both the old and new creations. This Christ is our Savior, our Surety,
our Substitute and Representative. This is the Christ who has already satisfied all the conditions
of our salvation, and this satisfaction is the ground of His Lordship over the new creation. This
shows us that the ultimate reason God has revealed His awesome power in creation and providence is to encourage sinners to trust His awesome power in salvation. Even this is meant to lead
us to Him for salvation by Christ.
The first part of this verse reveals the God of creation. The second part reveals the God
of salvation. All of it is revealed to encourage sinners to believe God's faithfulness and power to
save sinners conditioned on the Lord Jesus Christ, based on His righteousness alone.
We see this in providence too. Providence is God's government, His control, of all things
to move and manage them for His own wise and good purposes. God continually showed this in
His dealings with Israel. Many times He reminded the nation that they had been delivered from
Egypt, the most powerful nation on earth at that time, not by their own strength and power, but
by the might, the outstretched arm, of the Lord (Ex. 6:6; Deut. 7:19; Jer. 32:21). Just as in
creation, God's power displayed in Israel's history, and in all providence, is ultimately to lead
sinners to seek Him and to trust His power to save through Christ.
B. In salvation --
We know that God displays His awesome power in His judgments against the wicked. He
proved this in the great flood, and He will prove it at the final Judgment when every knee shall
bow and every tongue "confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father"
(Phil. 2:10-11). We know that God's judgments are always according to truth (Rom. 9:20-23).
But like all the other attributes of God, the greatest manifestation of His omnipotence is in the
salvation of sinners by Jesus Christ. Christ Himself, as God the Son incarnate, displayed the
power of God when He performed miracles. He controlled the elements when He changed water
into wine. He showed His power over disease and hunger when He healed and fed people. He
displayed His power over the demons when He casts them out. He revealed His power over the
forces of nature when He walked on water and stood on the boat and calmed the storm by His
word. He displayed His omnipotence over death when He raised Lazarus from the dead. But
there was no greater display of His awesome power than when He hung on the cross of Calvary
and conquered sin, Satan, and eternal death by establishing an everlasting righteousness of infinite
value to insure the salvation and final glory of His church, His sheep. This proved that there was
no obstacle in the way of redemption that Christ was not powerful enough to remove it.
When God promised Abraham and Sarah a son, they were way past the age of child-bearing. Sarah laughed, but God said, "Is any thing too hard for the LORD?" (Gen. 18:14).
God had promised that the Messiah would come through this promised child. Job said, "I know
that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee" (Job 42:2).
When the disciples were amazed that a dedicated, moral, religious person was lost, they asked,
"Who then can be saved?" (Matt. 19:25). Our Lord replied, "With men this is impossible; but
with God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26).
As creation is of the Lord, so is salvation. The same God who set the standard of good
and evil has set the terms and conditions of the redemption of mankind through His elect people.
The Bible teaches that even before the fall of man, God had chosen a particular number of sinners
out of Adam's fallen race and gave them to Christ, God the eternal Son. God conditioned all of
the salvation of the elect on Christ and in time sent Christ into the world as their Representative
and Surety to fulfill these conditions by establishing a righteousness for them. This righteousness
is the entire merit of His obedience and death for their sins. Righteousness is the condition for
salvation. And sinners do not have it by nature and cannot produce it by practice. It has been
provided by God through Christ, therefore, it is called the righteousness of God.
This is revealed in the preaching of the Gospel of salvation conditioned on Christ alone,
which is called the "power of God unto salvation" (Rom. 1:16-17). It is here we see how every
attribute of God's character is honored and magnified in the salvation of sinners. This is all
summed up in the question "How can God be just and justify the ungodly?" By deeds of law no
flesh can be justified (Rom. 3:20). How can God be a loving, merciful and gracious God towards
sinners and still honor His justice and righteousness and holiness which demands He punish all
sin? The only answer is through Christ and based on His righteousness alone.
C. In the new birth --
The new birth includes regeneration (quickening) and conversion, both by the Holy Spirit.
Sinners are born spiritually dead, which means they are controlled by the powers of darkness --
self-righteousness, self-love, and religious pride. This is why sinners will not bow to God's way
of salvation and come to Christ. God the Holy Spirit must impart a new principle of life and grace
whereby sinners are made willing in the day of God's power (Ps. 110:3) to come to Him for
salvation based on the righteousness of Christ. If left to their own desires and wills, sinners will
refuse to come this way and choose their own self-righteous way. Therefore, the new birth does
not come about as the result of a sinner exercising his own power or will to believe and repent.
Believing and repenting comes about as the result of God exercising His sovereign power to bring
that sinner to faith in Christ and true repentance --
This in no way removes the sinners responsibility to hear and believe the Gospel. It tells
no sinner who hears the Gospel, wherein the power of God unto salvation is revealed, to wait for
a work of the Holy Spirit before he believes. It tells sinners that they are lost and in need of a
righteousness that they cannot produce. It tells sinners that God in His infinite justice, mercy,
grace, love, and power has provided such a righteousness in Christ. It commands sinners to
believe in Him and repent, and this is the first evidence of the Holy Spirit's sovereign, powerful
work of grace in the hearts of sinners.
When a sinner sees the glory of God in Christ and believes it, THIS IS SALVATION, because to see this glory is to be saved. This is a spiritual illumination by the truth of the Gospel in
the power of God the Holy Spirit. This is where the veil of self-righteousness, self-love, and
religious pride is removed and a sinner sees the first and foremost purpose of the law. The same
God who created the world is the same God who creates a new creature in Christ and brings him
to a knowledge of His glory in Christ. The same power that raised Christ from the dead brings
spiritual life and understanding to all of God's elect --
Isaiah asked, "Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD
revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1). At that point he launched into a description of the humiliation and
substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus Christ. All who see the glory of God in salvation
conditioned on Him alone, who see that His righteousness enables God to be a just God and a
Savior, and who see that His meritorious obedience and death insures the salvation and final glory
of all for whom He lived and died, these are the ones to whom the "arm of the Lord" has been
revealed. The Gospel has come to be the power of God unto salvation for them. Again we see
how universal notions of God's love and of Christ's atonement deny God's power in salvation.
Many who believe such God-dishonoring notions argue that God limited Himself in these matters,
but this is opposed to God's glory in salvation, and it is opposed to the scriptural testimony.
II. THE APPLICATION OF GOD'S POWER.
We see many applications of these revelations of God's omnipotence both to the unbeliever and to the believer.
A. To the unbeliever expressions of God's power ought to be a great encouragement to trust
Him for salvation and have no confidence in the flesh. The Scripture says, "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31; Rom. 10:9). Why? Because "He is able
also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make
intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25). Abraham came to God who justifies the ungodly
because he was "fully persuaded that, what [God] had promised, [God] was able also to
perform" (Rom. 4:21). God had promised Abraham all of salvation based on the righteousness
of the promised Messiah. This is how God displays His power in salvation.
Sinners who insists on a universal atonement and a conditional salvation do not trust God's
power to save them. They deny His power and His Gospel. They also claim that multitudes are
in hell whom God promised to save and tried to save. This is a denial of both God's power to
save and of Christ's righteousness as the only ground of salvation. They are actually saying that
God either did not foresee the obstacles that would hinder His power and promises, or that God
foresaw them but did not have the power to remove them. Some argue that God foresaw these
obstacles, and had the power to remove them, but would not do it because He did not want to
step on the dignity of man and the rights of man to exercise his free will. In the Bible, the dignity
of man is non-existent as man is represented as sinful and unwilling to seek God and come to Him
for salvation HIS way. So if God foresaw the obstacles but refused to remove them for fear of
stepping on man's dignity, that would doom the whole sinful human race. No matter how sinners
reason it, when they believe salvation or any part of it is conditioned on themselves, they have
confidence in the flesh, trusting to the arm of the flesh and not in God.
When God reveals His awesome power in creation, providence, and especially salvation,
this should show sinners their responsibility and warrant to reject such God-dishonoring, Christ-denying notions and to cling to the omnipotent God who insures the salvation of every sinner who
comes pleading the righteousness of Christ (Mark 16:15-16; Rom. 10:13).
B. To the believer expressions of God's power ought to give us the utmost assurance of our
salvation and final glory based on the imputed righteousness of Christ. It ought to establish our
hearts with grace and cause us to be ashamed when we doubt our salvation.
Many say that they do not doubt God's power to save them, but they doubt themselves,
really meaning they doubt their own power. But the whole point of the Gospel of God's grace in
Christ is that salvation is never conditioned on our power at any point. It is always conditioned
on Christ's. God's power in salvation ought to inspire us in all humility, joy, peace, comfort,
assurance, and this ought to motivate us in love, worship, obedience, good works, and prayer.
It is said by many that God creates and God destroys. This is true. But this is not
revealed to frighten sinners into religious reformations aimed at removing God's wrath and
gaining God's favor seeking to establish a righteousness of our own. It is not revealed to promote
doubts as to whether God will save us or damn us. Someone once said, "I knew I was saved
because I came to the realization that God could save me or God could damn me." It is true that
God is sovereign, and He can save a sinner or He can damn a sinner. But this realization, in and
of itself, is not salvation. God's sovereign power in salvation is revealed to encourage sinners to
believe that the same God who in His sovereign power and wisdom created all things by His
word, and who can damn a sinner or save a sinner, is willing and able to save all who come to
Him pleading the righteousness of His Son according to His promise. This sovereign, powerful
God is the Source and Originator of salvation. "SALVATION IS OF THE LORD" (Jonah
2:9). This sovereign, powerful God promises to save us, keep us, and bring us to final glory,
based on the righteousness of His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Consider the following --
This means that believers are to be confident that God is willing and able to save them
keep them, bless them, and bring them to final glory based on the righteousness of Christ.
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