The King Who Needs Nothing

God doesn’t need us.  Nope.  He doesn’t.  There is nothing He needs from us.

³³Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
³⁴“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
³⁵“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”
³⁶For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.           (Romans 11)

¹Lord, our Lord,  how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens.

³When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
⁴what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?            (Psalm 8)

But — He loves us!! He wants us to love Him back!   But we really don’t know how in and of ourselves:

⁶You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.

⁸But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

³Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

¹³As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
¹⁴for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
¹⁵The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
¹⁶the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
¹⁷But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
¹⁸with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
¹⁹The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.     (Psalm 103)

¹You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
²You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
⁵You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

⁷Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
¹²even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

¹³For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
¹⁵My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
¹⁷How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—           (Psalm 139)

⁶With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
⁷Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
⁸He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.            (Micah 6)

³⁶“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”          (Matthew 22)