God is Eternal

The second thing John makes clear is that not only is God triune, but He is eternal. He put it like this: “Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come.”

Now let us consider the first phrase: “Grace and peace from him who is” (emphasis added). There is something happy about those words, something so peaceful and gracious. Do you know what it is to be treated unkindly? Do you feel no one understands you or wants your friendship? God understands; He wants you and He comes to you offering “grace and peace.”

When you are in trouble, great peace comes to you from Him who is. Perhaps your life is in great turmoil, and you feel there is no hope and nobody cares. Listen. God is there and He promises you His grace and His peace. Nobody else can make this promise: only the triune God, beyond our comprehension, can come to you and say, “Grace and peace.”

Yet not only does He tell us He is but He tells us He was. “Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was” (emphasis added). That means before you were born He was, before creation and time began, before Satan and before the angels existed, God was. He has always existed; He is eternal.

But there is more: God says, “Grace and peace from him who is, who was, and who is to come” (emphasis added). This is important: God is to come. After our lives are over, after the judgment and after we have been in eternity for a million years, He is to come. God is eternal.

The third thing John saw was that God is spirit; He is not material; He is not a physical being. In fact, He is unlike anything in creation, for creation is matter.

We are dealing with almighty God who is spirit; He is totally independent of His creation. Jesus said, “You have never heard his voice nor seen his form” (John 5:37). Indeed, one of the most intriguing passages of Scripture is Exodus 33 when Moses asked to see the glory of the Lord and God accommodated him to a certain extent, saying:

“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence.…But…you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

—Exodus 33:19–23

Jesus Himself said that God is spirit when He spoke to the woman at the well: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). But we first learn that God is spirit at the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 1:2, which says that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” This is the first evidence of the triune, eternal God.