Self-Sufficiency of God — A.W. Tozer

The Father Has Life in Himself

Dr. Townsend's text comes from John's Gospel, chapter five, verse twenty-six.

The Father hath life in himself. The Father hath life in himself. Now, it is characteristic of Jesus that when he would utter this profoundest observation about God, when he would challenge the highest powers of human thought, he put it into six words of one and two syllables.

Four having one syllable and two having two syllables in our English. The Father hath life. Now, this statement singles out God alone as having life in himself, and thus being self-sufficient. And that's what I want to preach about today, the self-sufficiency of God.

The Trinity and Divine Self-Sufficiency

But some people are ready to say, You are talking about God so much, but you're not talking about Jesus. I'd like to reply that whenever I talk about God, I talk about the Trinity. I'm a Trinitarian, and I believe in the Father, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and also in the Holy Ghost.

And I believe what the old Fathers said, that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, yet there are not three God but one God. That the Father is Lord, and the Son is Lord, and the Holy Ghost is Lord, yet there are not three Lords but one Lord.

The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding.

So, there's one Father, not three Fathers, one Son, not three Sons, one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity, nothing is before or after, nothing is greater or less, but all three Persons co-eternal, together and equal.

So, in all things, the unity in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, is to be worshiped. So, when I talk about God, I talk about Jesus, and when I talk about God, I talk about the Holy Ghost. And everything that I shall say about God, you may include, and mean, and expect me to mean, and know that I do mean the Trinity, the Triune God, so that God has life in himself, and is self-sufficient.

And this is true of no other being in the universe, because of all other creatures, it has to be said that they derive their life from God.

Dr. Tanzer's text comes from John's Gospel, chapter 5, verse 26.

The Father hath life in himself. The Father hath life in himself. Now, it is characteristic of Jesus that when he would utter this profoundest observation about God, when he would challenge the highest powers of human thought, he put it into six words of one and two syllables.

Four having one syllable, and two having two syllables in our English. The Father hath life in himself. And nobody gave him that life, because if there was anybody that could give God life, then that body would be God, and God wouldn't be God.

God’s Independence from Creation

He would be a being dependent upon God for life, so that he is life, and there is no life apart from him, and all life in heaven, and all life on earth is derived from God, and dependent upon God. Now, in his created selfhood is all that God needs, and he has no necessary relation to anything outside of himself.

Now, God has relation to things outside of himself, but he doesn't have any necessary relation to anything outside of himself, because if he had any necessary relation to anything outside of himself, he wouldn't be self-sufficient.

It couldn't be said that I am that I am, and it couldn't be said God has life in himself. But you see, my brother, that God does have relation to things which he has created, but that relation is sovereignly done, and it is by the good purpose of God that he has these relations.

He is not dependent upon them, for if he were dependent upon them, he wouldn't be a sovereign God. For instance, God has relation to the angels, but God was before the angels were, and the old poet said, Unfathomable see, all life is out of thee, and thy life is thine, thy blissful unity.

So that God was, and was complete and perfect before there was any archangel to share his glory or any seraphim. So let us not think of God as having dependence on anybody. God doesn't lean on anybody, and God hasn't any tributaries.

You take a river, and it will start somewhere, a little thing you can jump across, and before it reaches its mouth, maybe it's a mile and a half wide. It got that way by tributaries feeding into it. But God has no tributaries feeding into him, because you see, my friends, God is all there is, and where would you get anything to God?

Where would you look for anything to make God greater than he is, inasmuch as God is God before there was anything else? And therefore, God has no tributaries, you can't make God any greater, and God has no complements.

By that I mean that God needs nothing to make him complete. Now, you and I do. A man needs a woman to make him complete, a woman needs a man to make her complete, a child needs a mother to make that child complete, and we all need each other to make us complete, and the individual needs society to make it complete.

But God needs nothing to make him complete, because God being God is already complete, and he leans on nobody and needs nothing. And we can say, "'Dread unbeginning one, single yet not alone, creation has not set thee on a higher throne.'.

God Cannot Be Elevated

God did not elevate himself when he created the heaven and the earth, neither does he elevate himself when he creates you or me, or when he saves us, because God can't be elevated. You see, God already is the supreme elevation, and therefore you can't elevate God, you can't push him up or make him any greater than he is, because God already occupies the topmost pinnacle of all being, and any direction away from God is down, and any direction toward God is up, so that if I move back from God I'm less, and if I move toward God I'm more.

But God can't move any direction and become greater, because God is already greatness in absolute perfection. He is infinite greatness, and your God and mine, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, can't be elevated.

Nobody can do anything to make God greater. I have a warfare on these days against these poor, misguided, ignorant leaders who try to make Jesus Christ dependent upon people. A prizefighter gets converted, and so they want to write a story or have the prizefighter come and say, I'm the great so-and-so, the great pulverizer, I am the great knocker unconscious, and I believe in Jesus, therefore Jesus must be all right.

Jesus Christ is God, and all the pug-nosed bums in the universe can't make him any greater. And all the actresses in the world, these actresses that sweep in, literally reeking of sex and costly perfume, and testify about how they found Jesus, and want you to believe Jesus must be somebody indeed, because that hunk of sex believes on him.

Why, I'm indignant inside my heart, and I don't mind telling you that I'll have nothing to do with it at all. When I preach Jesus, I preach a Jesus that doesn't need the help of any man. He doesn't need President Eisenhower, he doesn't need Churchill, he doesn't need Augustine, he doesn't need Moses, he doesn't need Paul, he doesn't need anybody.

God can't be elevated. And if all the great people in the world were to believe on God, it wouldn't add one else to the glory that is God, and it wouldn't put one diamond in God's crown, because God already is all there is, and he occupies the highest peak of all possibility, and nobody can raise him any higher.

So if a movie actress moves toward God, she's moving up. If she moves away from God, she's moving down. She is not the criterion of what is great, God is the criterion of what is great. Only God is great, and then God has nobody to support him.

And I'd like to tell you that, that he upholds all things by the word of his power, and if God upholds all things by the word of his power, then who can uphold God? I want to ask you. If God's upholding everything, who can put a prop under God's throne or uphold God?

God Needs No Defense

And God needs no defense. God is the eternal, undefended one. It's rather humorous to me when I see the brethren now trying to defend God. Now, it's possible that we can defend the truth of God against the enemy, and we can defend the church of God against the foes, and we can try to defend men against their own foolishness.

All that is true. But when did God need any defense, my brother? When did the great, eternal God need anybody to defend him? And yet you think that some people are out-defending God. He doesn't need your defense.

So you might just well relax, my brother. Before you were, God was. And before your grandpappy was, God was. And before Adam was, God was. And God is. And anything that God was, he still is. And anything that he was and is, he always will be, world without end and forever.

Therefore, you don't need to worry about God or God's throne. Nobody needs to rush into God's defense and come rushing with a sword to the defense of the Almighty. I know, my brother, God needs no defenders, because God could breathe on an army as he once did, and 185 ,000 of them would lie down dead.

And God could whisper, and the world would cease to be. Talk about an atom bomb destroying the world. The day will be when God will speak the word, and all the heavens and the galaxies and stars and planets and satellites in the universe will be burnt with it with awful fire.

God isn't afraid. God isn't scared. The idea that God is dependent upon somebody and needs their support and their defense is all wrong, my friend, because if all the total population of the world were atheists, God would still be God.

I like that verse of a hymn that stands that nobody sings anymore. Our lives through various scenes are drawn and vexed with trifling care, but God's eternal pot moves on his undisturbed affairs. That's why I don't get excited when I hear Morgan Beatty or somebody on the radio, and why I don't get all the jitter and get goose flesh when I read Time magazine or hear some preacher trying to equate prophecy with present-day events and scare the congregation into giving and coming.

I shrug that all off. When did God Almighty send for some little guy with his breath in his nostrils and say, Would you please help me? I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble, Reverend, won't you rush to my defense?

Reverend, go fishing. God doesn't need you anyhow, and you only think he does, that's all. And God needs no helpers. Now, you know we've degraded God in the day in which we live, and our whole conception of God is degraded, and we put God on charity so that much of our preaching and much of our missionary preaching, these missionaries will forgive me, they're my friends and I don't know their do it, but we often make out as though God was in great need of our gifts.

God Does Not Need Human Financing

Now, you gave a good gift here this morning, and I hope it was $5 ,000, but did you know God didn't need that? If any of you came marching stiff-legged and swollen-chested down the aisle thinking you were going to bail God out, you might as well ask God for the money, because you've wasted it.

God isn't in debt, and God doesn't need your money. Now, that's hurtful, and I know that hurts some people, because some of you big shots who make a lot of money and give lots to missions, you think you're financing God.

But let me tell you, God doesn't need anybody to finance him. That's why I don't care one whit for the man who gives a lot of money as compared to the man who hasn't a dime to give. I love both alike, and in my church in Chicago I have some well-to-do people, reasonably well-to-do, and I haven't been in their home for years.

I don't want to go cultivate these fellows with big checkbooks. They'll get the impression that God and I are on relief. And, brother, we're not. We're not. God doesn't need any helper, and God doesn't need your help.

I hope Brother Kopp doesn't jump on me for this, and I know he won't. But I want you to give, and I want you to go home broke. But don't imagine that if you give, you're helping God out. You aren't. You're getting Kopp off a hot seat, but you're not getting God out of it.

But I can't listen with any sympathy to these appeals for missionaries. Please come, the dear Lord needs you, he needs you. I don't believe that at all. The Lord doesn't need anybody. He is no indispensable man.

Nobody is necessary to God, except as God loves him, and as a child is necessary to the mother's affection. And if the child dies, the mother would grieve, and yet the mother doesn't need the child. So the love of God is so wonderful and sweet that he loves us, and he talks about us as if he needed us, but he actually doesn't because he was here before we got here.

And if anybody that's here before I get here doesn't need me, isn't that common reason? Shake your head a little bit and see if that won't register. Huh? And then you'd dust to blame it on this morning if you sleep.

Spiritual Gifts and God’s Sovereign Calling

Now, God needs no helpers, and God isn't appealing for any gifts, and he isn't appealing for any talents. We have talent scouts in the Kingdom now, and we go around looking for talents. Well, I don't believe in that.

I believe that God gives gifts to men, and I believe in the gifts of the Spirit, and I believe they ought to all be in the Church, and I believe in all the gifts of the Spirit. Now, I don't know what you believe, but I think all the gifts of the Spirit ought to be in the Church, including the gift of tongues and discernment and all the rest.

I don't think any one of them can be picked out, and I never spoke in tongues in my life except the rattly one I've got now. But I'll tell you this, Brother, I believe in all the gifts of the Spirit, and I believe they ought to be present.

And I believe if the Holy Ghost is in a congregation and he puts a gift there, the congregation will soon discern the gift is there, and they'll soon lay their hands on that gift and send the man out to the mission field, or out to preach the gospel or something.

But the idea that God has these scouts going around looking for talent is absolutely preposterous. God doesn't need your talent. Somebody can sing, and so he says, Well, I'll tell you, if God had me, he'd have a whopper, because I can sing.

I get to people listening, well, did you ever hear an archangel sing? God hears the seraphim and the archangels and all the creatures in heaven around the body, and he hears the harpers harping with their harp, and that makes this orchestra sound awfully bad by comparison.

It makes Mrs. What's-her-name over here be an awfully poor pianist compared to the angels that harp on their harps. Brother, God doesn't need anything. God dwells in a world where he is the apex and center, and all beings are on their knees in ecstatic delight, crying, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty, and they rest not day nor night.

So why should we imagine God needing us? Sometimes I feel if I die, what would happen to my church in Chicago? Brother, if I die, you'll get some guy in there that doesn't amount to much, and he'll make that thing boom, and it'll be bigger and better than ever I've been able to do there.

God is nobody's indispensable. Some of you imagine you are, I suppose, and it's bad for you because it's pride, and pride is always a bad thing. Well, God stooped to let us work, and that is, he stooped to work through us.

God, I don't even like this idea that God uses a man. I don't find that in the Bible. I find that God works through a man. That's quite another thing. If I owned a factory, I might hire a man and say, Now, you go and work in department so-and-so, and I'd be using the man.

But God doesn't use us in that way. He works through us, and there isn't any work that's done except what God does. So that God doesn't even use us, he stooped to work through us. And in that sense, it might be remotely thought that God needs us.

But if you backslide, God will raise up somebody else. Oh, don't forget that fellow. God will always raise up somebody else. Always it's so that God has a second, and if you slip away, God gets somebody else.

It's always been like that, and always would be. And again, God puts his trust in no one and in nothing. He holds all things in hand, and how then can God put his trust in anything? He puts his trust in himself.

God’s Purposes Continue Without Human Dependence

He's all-sufficient, and all beings are dependent upon God, and God is dependent upon no being. So that if Archbishop so-and-so should happen to have a heart attack, God's plans would move on, God's undisturbed affairs, and that eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began would never miss a stitch.

It would never slip a cog nor a thing. It would go right on, right on. Some of you dear Alliance people, I've been Alliance since 1919 when Dr. Schuman was my first superintendent, and I'm in the Alliance, and I'm not going to go out of it until the Lord takes me over and I'm voted out, and I don't anticipate either soon.

But, Brother, I'll say that some of us Alliance people imagine that we are the cream of the crop, that we are the top crust on the pie, and that if anything should happen to us, Christianity would collapse in rubble and dust.

That's not so, sir, that's not so. And it's always been that if one group leaves the path of righteousness, God writes them off and raises up another group, and it'll be so here. One time the Jews said, Why are you calling us fornicators?

We're not born a fornication. Abraham is our father, and he said if Abraham were your father, you'd act like Abraham. He said, I want you to know that you can't hide behind Abraham, he's dead. He said, if you don't live right, God will hew you down, God will chop you down, and you'll fall like a great tree that's been chopped down, and you'll be cast into the fire.

Instead of our looking back with nostalgic yearnings to better days in the Alliance, we ought to look up to the God who ordained and brought into being this missionary society, and anything God has ever done for anybody, God will do for anybody.

And anything he's ever done for any society, he'll do for any society, so that we don't have to run around and bag our heads like a bulrush and go mourning all the day and not see the face of the King.

We have a perfect right to walk out into God's sunshine and say, God, Dr. Simpson is gone, and Brother Richards is gone, and Sam McGarvey is gone, but thou remainest, and thy years fail not, and thou art the same.

Human Frailty and Dependence on God

They tell me I preach negatively so much, but I want to tell you that I'm one of the most optimistic men in the world. I'm not optimistic when I look at you. God knows that doesn't make me optimistic, that's deeply discouraging.

But I'm optimistic when I look to God. Do you see what I mean? Some preachers manage to get along by complimenting their congregations all the time. From their first pastoral prayer to the last benediction, it is either a direct or implied flattery of their congregation.

I never flatter anybody, never, because it's not good for them to be flattered. That's the reason I say I'm negative, because I'm not running and telling people how wonderful they are, and the reason I'm not is because I don't think they are.

I think that they're once made in the image of God and thus worthy of dying for. Jesus died for us, and the poor little blackest soul in the jungles of Africa is of infinite value to God, for God made him and God redeemed him.

But in himself he simply does. In 70 years he'll go back to the arms of the mud he came from, and so will you. Pretty lady, you really look sweet. I see you back there, and you're absolutely charming.

You look almost like Lana Turner. But wait around a while, sister, wait around a while. You'll bulge where you shouldn't bulge, and you'll cave in where you shouldn't cave in, and your hair will get gray and wrinkles will come, and nobody will whistle at you, and you'll go down the street, nobody will look at you twice.

So come on, young lady, come on, snap out of that. You're not so important, you're just a big hunk of good looks, and you'll set some fellow's heart on fire sometime. But that fellow whose heart gets set on fire, live with him a few years and watch him.

He'll lose his hair, he'll get big around the belt, and he'll stop complimenting you, and he'll only bring you flowers when you remind him. So let's get this idea out of our heads that we really amount to something.

I never saw anybody that didn't, yet I never saw anybody that didn't. The humblest little child walking around over these grounds is infinitely dear to the heart of God. Yet God isn't depending on the little chap, and if he'd never been born, God wouldn't have lost anything.

So let's get straight about this. It'll help us to think realistically about ourselves, and that's one thing we both desperately need to do, start thinking realistically about ourselves. Now, my friend, you see, don't you, that because God doesn't depend on anybody nor trust in anybody, we all have to depend on and trust in God.

Unbelief and the Call to Trust in God

And therefore, the man who doesn't trust in God is abnormal because he's trusting in himself, and a man who trusts in himself is abnormal because God made him to trust in God. And he trusts in himself, and therefore he's slipped to cause, you see.

He's not where he should be. He's like a door pulled off a building lying out in the woods. He belongs somewhere else. He's not complete in himself. So that's why unbelief is such a terrible thing, corrosive and destructive and suicidal and damning.

Unbelief, what does it mean? It means that we started trusting in ourselves or trusting in other people. Some of you preachers trust in the district superintendent, and you butter him up to try to keep on his good side so you get a bigger church.

Now, you can't butter this Dutchman up, I know him too well, so you might just as well save your butter. But a lot of people are trying to butter up big shots in order to get a higher place. Listen, young fellow, you're a young preacher, let me give you a little advice.

Don't butter anybody, and don't make anybody necessary to you, and don't get under anybody's thumb or on anybody's hip, not even your mother-in-law, nor anybody. And get on your knees and look to Jesus Christ and say, Lord, you called me to preach, now where will I preach?

And he'll show you. He'll show you, and you'll be all right. Don't depend on anybody, depend on God. Here we go around, we've become timid time-servers and lickspittle hand-kissers, and we're scared and afraid, all because we're depending on ourselves or depending upon the Democrats or depending upon the Republicans.

I don't know which you are out here, but both are batten up, God knows. But we're depending upon somebody. We're worrying about a depression and hoping that prosperity will keep up. You see, our faith's in the wrong place.

Put your faith in the Triune God, and you never can fail. Never can fail. That's why unbelief is such a terrible thing, I say. It makes little imposter gods and sets them up and gets down on its knees before these little gods of self.

Jesus, our Lord, said that if we trusted in him, if we believed in him, we should be saved, and if we didn't believe, we'd be damned. The reason is, the man who believes in Jesus Christ comes back to normal again by the second birth and by the power of the Holy Ghost, and he's gotten back to normal.

But the man who doesn't believe in him is abnormal, and he's got to perish because God won't have any spiritual deformities in heaven. So God offers himself to our trust in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Not only offers himself to us in Jesus Christ, but he offers himself to us as Jesus Christ.

Christ as the Revelation of the Self-Sufficient God

See the difference? A lot of these liberals say, God was in Christ. Very good, Paul said that, and if you mean it the way Paul meant it, very good. But they also say God was in Shakespeare, and God was in Plato, and God was in Dr. Schweitzer, and God was in Einstein.

Back off of there, brother, don't accept that. That's deluded. God not only was in Christ, but Christ was God and is God, so that he offers himself to me as Christ. I can't pass by Christ and know God because God is the unknowable, and old Herbert Spencer would write when he said he was the unknowable.

The human mind can't grasp God, it can't rise to God, for two or three reasons. One is because we haven't a mentality in the first place, and because we're fallen, and again because we've sinned until our minds are dulled.

So we never can find God. Some say, I found God out in under the tree, and I found God on the lake. No, you didn't find God, you just found sentimentality there, that's all. The God you found was just poetry.

But the true God can't be approached. He is too infamously removed from creatures, but he sent his other part, his second person himself, the son to the world to become incarnated and make a door, and through that door we now can come to God.

And so Jesus Christ is God, and God offers himself to us as Christ. And now we approach Jesus Christ, and he that will not come to Jesus Christ rules God out. The Bible says that if you have the Father, you have the Son.

But if you have not the Son and reject the Son, you have not the Father. So, my brethren, we must believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord. We must put our trust in him, the second person of the Trinity, of equal age.

For there is no age in God. God doesn't age. God holds time in his heart like a diamond, and God surrounds time, and time doesn't make God old. And it's wonderful to know that the man Christ Jesus, who came down into the stream of time and subjected himself to the changes of time and grew to be thirty-three years of age, the top peak of a man's maturity, then it was cut off there and raised and glorified, and now he is perpetually and forever a mature man without age, and he counts no more birthdays.

We say, and it dawned in 1957, the year of our Lord, but in heaven there is no such thing as age nor years. So Jesus Christ has no more birthdays. That's why I can't take all this baby worship at Christmas time, baby worship.

Get a cradle and get a wax baby in it and make ashes of ourselves on Christmas Day, thinking we're pleasing Jesus. They built, somebody built one in a weak moment in the church back in Chicago, and I threw it out.

I wouldn't let them bring it to the platforms. They'd bring that thing up here and put a little make-believe Jesus in it. There is no more baby Jesus. God sent him to the world and made him a baby, but he grew up in stature and in wisdom and in favor with God and man, and at thirty-three years old they slew him, and now there's no more baby Jesus.

And whoever worships the baby Jesus is worshiping a figment of his imagination, for there's no more baby Jesus. Your big boy John, all right, he's twenty-five years old now, weighs two hundred pounds.

You take his baby pictures out and look at them the way my wife and I do. Very great big John. Two hundred pounds of good nature and fun and strength and seriousness. All right, there he is. Where's that baby that you look at?

He's gone. You can't find him anymore. You can't change that baby anymore. You can't buy a present for that baby anymore. He's gone. Look, look, there he stands, six feet high, two hundred pounds. Big, strong fellow.

So you can't bless the little baby. He's no more a baby. Jesus Christ is no more a baby. So let's throw off all this sentimentality. Between old maids, God bless their memory, who write sentimental poetry and make doll babies to worship on Christmas, and liberal pastors and cowardly evangelicals, Christianity isn't a pretty bad fix in this country.

So why don't we just come out and be absolutely frank and not be afraid of anybody? It's wonderful to walk around on the earth and not be scared, you know it? Before I was converted, I was afraid of everything that moved, everything, including the wind, everything.

But I don't know anything I'm afraid of now, particularly, except God. Well, I'm not afraid of him, I only fear him, as I said yesterday. Now, he that believeth not shall be damned, because he's not believing in the God, the self-sufficient God who trusts nothing in nobody and needs nobody, for whom we all need.

Somewhere I read the definition of God as being that which needs nothing to be complete, but which everything needs in order to be complete. That's just a philosophic definition, you can forget that one if you want to, but it'll help you some morning when you're tired, hate to get up.

Recovering the Presence of God in Christian Worship

Now, brethren, I have a conviction that our problem in Christian circles today is we've lost God out of our midst. And it's programs and something somebody's thought out to do, and we're making converts to programs.

Never do that, never do that. I think the least important thing about the Alliance is its programs. The most important thing about the Alliance is that God's in it. And the program, I don't like programs.

It's a French word taken from the theater, and I have to use it because there isn't any other word, I suppose, but I don't like it. God isn't working according to a program, he's working according to an eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began.

And we need God, we need God in our midst, we need to worship God. If any of you came here to hear me, I'm awfully sorry, because I'm not worth hearing. But if you came here because God is here, very well, very well.

Somebody called up down in Washington one time, the pastor of the church where the President goes, and said, Reverend, is the President going to be in service tomorrow morning? And the pastor had enough.

So he said rather stiffly, I do not know, sir, whether the President will be here or not, but I can tell you God will be here, and up to now that has been enough to draw a reasonably good crowd. Goodbye, young 'un.

I'd rather I'm on his side on that, sir. Yes, sir. I don't run across the country hunting men, listening to men. I listen to them, but I don't run across the country after them. Give me a New Testament and a pair of bent knees, and I'll get as much as I'd get at a camp meeting.

Anyhow, I don't want to tell you that. Of course, keep that secret, because you won't come next year. But that's a fact. Well, my brethren, we need God, we need God. You know why Mahaffey is Mahaffey?

Nobody told him. You know why Mahaffey is Mahaffey and has the reputation it has all over? Because the eternal, trying God in his infinite condescension has been pleased to come down to this little old scarred hole in the hill here we call Mahaffey and make himself manifest over the years.

That's why Mahaffey is Mahaffey, my brethren. Not who you've got preaching here. No. Mahaffey is Mahaffey because God is here. And if you miss God, you'd better stay at home, send your money in, because it'll do you no good.

Worship of the Triune God

All the powers that are therein. Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabbath. Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. The glorious company of the apostles praise thee. The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee.

The noble army of martyrs praise thee. The holy church throughout all the world hath acknowledged thee. The father of an infinite majesty, Jesus Christ, thine only begotten Son. And worship the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Amen.

Holy, holy, holy. Now shall we stand, and the brother will lead us in singing, Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty. Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee. And they depend for that life upon God.

But the life of God is his own, and it is not a gift from anybody. If God's life were a gift from somebody, then that somebody would be God, and God wouldn't be God. Don't you see that?