What Does It Mean That God Is Sovereign?

by R.C. Sproul

which we define something not by stating positively what it is but rather by using negative language to say what it is not. In theology, we use the way of negation all the time. When we say, for example, that God is infinite, what are we saying? He’s not finite. When we say that God is immutable, we are saying that He is not given to change and mutation.

which means the power of being that is not dependent or derived but is located within oneself. And if it is essential and intrinsic to something to be, then that being must be an eternal being.

“In the beginning.” Eternity has no beginning. Genesis begins with a statement about the beginning not of eternity but of time, the beginning not of God but of the created realm. Why? Because there is no beginning to God. There is no beginning to eternity. But suppose there were a beginning to eternity.

What God creates, He sustains and upholds by the power of His might. We understand that we can do nothing apart from the sustaining power of God, as the Apostle Paul said to the Athenians on Mars Hill: “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). If God is out of the picture, so is life. If God disappears, so does all motion. And if God should die, all being disappears with Him. Whatever God creates, He sustains. Whatever He creates, He owns, and whatever He owns, He rules. He rules over all things.