God's Omnipresence

In preparation for this week’s theological term, this is another reposted and re-edited piece from the past.

That God is omnipresent means that he exists everywhere. There are many more statements of this aspect of God’s infinitude in scripture than there are of his eternality. Psalm 139 has a well-known description of God’s omnipresence:

Where can I go to escape your spirit?
Where can I flee to escape your presence?
If I were to ascend to heaven, you would be there.
If I were to sprawl out in Sheol, there you would be.
If I were to fly away on the wings of the dawn,
and settle down on the other side of the sea,
even there your hand would guide me,
your right hand would grab hold of me.(7-10 NET)

There is no “going from” or “fleeing” God, because He is present everywhere. God doesn’t just see into every place, but his power—“his hand”—is there. He acts in all places. If God’s activity—his power—is in every place, then the whole of God’s essence exists in every space, since his power is one aspect of his indivisible essence.  All that God is can be found in every place.

Scripture tells us that God is everywhere present, but we also read there that God is not contained in space. From one of Solomon’s prayers:

“God does not really live on the earth! Look, if the sky and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this temple I have built!…” (I Kings 8:27 NET).

God cannot be contained in creation; the universe cannot hold him. The boundaries of the highest heaven can’t enclose our God. God’s presence is everywhere within creation, but God does not dwell within creation. Indeed, he cannot dwell within creation. We can understand from this that God is both in every space and yet beyond space.

Paul tells the Athenians that all people “live and move about and exist” in God (Acts 17:28). God is our place; God is the place for his creatures. Paul says that God himself has set times and fixed limits to our placement, and those set times and fixed spatial limits are all within God, ensuring that he can always be found by us.

This statement—that in God we live and move and have our being—makes me think of a fish tank with fish that live and swim and exist within the environment of the tank. Of course, seeing God’s omnipresence and our relationship to it like fishes in a fish tank has some problems. For one thing, the whole essence of the fish tank doesn’t exist in every spot a fish does. A fish needs to move from one place to another to experience all the fish tank can offer it, yet all of God—all of what he is for us—is in every place we are. Then, too, the fish tank ends right beyond where the fish can go. The fish tank is contained in space, just like the fish are, only in a little more space; but we know from the verse from 1 Kings quoted above that there is nothing “containing” God. However, in the same way that the fish are contained in the waters of the fish tank—they do not leave its presence no matter where they swim—we are contained within our God’s presence. He is always there, “not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27).

If we are one of God’s own people, understanding this should be a great comfort to us. Not even an insignificant sparrow dies apart from God, so we can know that everything that happens to us takes place in God’s presence, too. He is there beside us and in us and around us with His guiding hand—a right hand that can grab hold of us when we need it. Nothing happens to us outside of the presence of God himself, so nothing happens outside the knowledge and the power of the God who is forever working good things. Every circumstance of our life belongs to our good God, for what is a circumstance but a time and place where God is? Why would we not trust him in everything?

Of course, that God is omnipresent also means that none of our sins are hidden from him. I can hide my sins from other people, but never from God, who is privy to everything about me because nothing exists outside of his presence. Knowing this ought to spur me on to righteousness, and also to confession. And when we come in confession of our sins, we can be assured that he is always there to hear us, for he is never far away from us. Since he cannot be contained in temples, it is not necessary for us to go to a particular location for prayer or confession. He is always and everywhere with us, ready to hear us.

Here’s a little side note that occured to me while thinking about God’s omnipresence: Omnipresence is an attribute of God alone. No creature possesses it, so it is not something that Satan has. Do you unconsciously think of Satan as omnipresent—knowing all and being everywhere? He isn’t. He may have millions of minions, but even they—the entire lot of nasty helpers, along with their evil captain—aren’t omnipresent. When we think of him as omnipresent, we are elevating him to a position he doesn’t have, giving him an attribute that belongs only to God. It’s not a dualistic system we live and move and have our being in, and that’s a good thing. No, we live in a creation in which the right always has the upper hand, because the King of Righteousness is eternal and omnipresent and infinitely powerful, and his enemies—as created beings—aren’t. We can trust in this, too.