God does not Need us, But He Longs to Shower us with Gifts
God created Adam in the beginning, not because he needs the human race, but so that he might have a recipient of his generosity.
Moreover, God commanded us to follow Christ, not because he has any need of our service, but because he wants to give us salvation. To follow the saviour is to share in salvation, just as to follow the light is to gain the light.
People who are in the light do not themselves provide the light but are illuminated and made bright by it; they do not contribute anything to it but, by being illuminated, they receive the benefit of the light.
Similarly, to serve God does not mean giving him any gift, nor has God any need of our service. On the contrary, it is he who gives to those who serve him life, immortality and eternal glory. He rewards those who serve him without deriving any benefit himself from their service: he is rich, he is perfect, he has no needs.
God requests human obedience so that his love and his pity may have an opportunity of doing good to those who serve him diligently. The less God has need of anything, the more human beings need to be united with him. Consequently, a human being’s true glory is to persevere in the service of God.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4, 25 (Harvey II, p. 184)
Growing up in the Word
‘Could not God make people perfect right at the beginning?’ someone may ask.
Take the example of a very small child. The mother can give her baby grown-up food, but the baby is still unable to take adult nourishment. Similarly, God could have given humanity perfection right at the beginning, but humanity could not have received it because it was only a child.
For that reason Our Lord, who sums up all things in himself when he came on earth in these last days, came not in the full glory which he could have done, but in a form we could see. Certainly, he could have come in his imperishable glory, but we should not have been able to bear the greatness of his majesty.
Therefore, like giving milk to infants, the perfect Bread of the Father revealed himself to us on earth in human form, so that we might be nourished by his Word like babes at the breast and so by degrees become strong enough to digest the whole Word of God.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4, 62 (Harvey, p. 292)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
