“Can God do anything?” The honest answer is yes — and no. Scripture says His power is unlimited, and in the same breath names things He cannot do. The two are not in conflict once you see the difference between unlimited power and unbreakable character.
First: nothing is too hard for Him
“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?” — Jeremiah 32:27
“For with God nothing shall be impossible.” — Luke 1:37
And when Jesus said, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), the subject was salvation — the thing most impossible for man is exactly what God can do. Keep that in view; it is where this all lands.
What God will not do
Some of God’s “nots” are chosen. The clearest is this: He will not force you to love or believe Him. He could overwhelm every will in an instant — but love that is compelled is not love, and worship that is coerced is not worship. So He woos rather than forces, knocks rather than breaks down the door (Revelation 3:20). That is not weakness; it is the restraint of a love that wants to be freely returned. (See Why does God allow evil? on the gift and cost of free will.)
What God cannot do — and why it is His glory
Other “nots” run deeper: God cannot act against His own nature. These are not cracks in His power — they are the perfections of His character:
- He cannot lie. “God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Titus 1:2). This is not a limit but a guarantee: because He cannot lie, every promise He makes is certain.
- He cannot deny Himself. “If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). He will always be true to who He is.
- He cannot be tempted with evil. “For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13).
- He cannot change His essential nature. “For I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6); “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19).
- He cannot let His word fail. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
Notice that a God who could do these things would be less trustworthy, not more powerful. His inability to sin is the strength of His holiness; His inability to lie is the security of His promise. And the old riddles — “can God make a statement both true and false at once?” or “a stone too heavy for Him to lift?” — are not questions of power at all. They are contradictions, like a square circle: there is no real “thing” there to be done. Omnipotence is the power to do all that power can do — never the power to un-God Himself.
The deepest question: can the Almighty limit Himself?
Here is where it gets wonderful. Can the Almighty voluntarily limit the exercise of His own power without ceasing to be Almighty? The answer is not a theory. It is a Person — lying in a manger, kneeling at a basin, hanging on a cross.
“Who, being in the form of God… made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant… and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” — Philippians 2:6-8
“Made himself of no reputation” is, in the Greek, He emptied Himself. The One who upholds all things chose to be born, to grow, to get tired at a well (John 4:6), to hunger in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2), to sleep in a storm (Mark 4:38), to weep at a grave (John 11:35) — and to be nailed to a tree. “Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
— and never stopped being God
This is the heart of it, and it is the glory of the Apostolic reading: it was not a lesser, second god who stooped — it was the one true God Himself, veiled in flesh. “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9); “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16; see Who Is Jesus?). Hear how He speaks from inside that self-limitation: “The Son can do nothing of himself” (John 5:19); “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30); “the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 14:10). He laid aside not His deity but the independent, unrestrained exercise of it — living as a dependent, obedient man while being God the whole time.
And the restraint was the power. At the cross He said, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down” (John 10:18), and “thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53). He had the power to be rescued and chose the nails. A God who could not stoop would actually be less than Almighty — trapped by His own greatness, unable to serve, unable to save. True omnipotence is free enough to become small.
Self-limitation is the signature of love
See how the two ends meet. The same God who limits His power so He will not force your love is the God who limits His power so He can come and win it — at a manger, a basin, and a cross. In the hero of this page He is doing the thing no god of human imagining would ever do: the Lord of glory on His knees, washing the dirt off His creatures’ feet. “I have given you an example” (John 13:15). Love does not coerce, and love stoops. That is the whole motion of God in one picture — the Almighty made small enough to be held, and killed, and to hold you.
What it all comes to
So the thing “impossible with men” — your salvation — is the one He bent all the way down to accomplish. The God who cannot lie has made you a promise, and the way into it is not hidden:
“Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” — Acts 2:38
He will not force it on you. But He knelt to offer it — and He cannot lie.