(1) By virtue of his aseity, God is necessarily Lord and possessor of all creation.
Psalm 24:1—The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
(2) Everything that creatures are and have comes from God.
James 1:17—Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
(3) When we give to God, we give back only what he has first given us, or, in the words of Augustine, “When God crowns our merits, he is crowning his own gifts in us.”
1 Peter 4:10—We are “stewards of the manifold grace of God.”
(4) When we give back to God, he therefore has no obligation to recompense us.
Luke 17:10—Stewards who serve their master are “only doing their duty.”
(5) God owes nothing to any creature.
Job 41:11 (cf. Rom 11:35–36)—Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
(6) God has no needs.
Psalm 50:9–13—I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
Stand Firm! 