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In Him All Things Hold Together
The Son carries it all, and Paul bows (Colossians 1; Romans 11)
7 min read
Who is like You?
the question"For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, that he should be repaid?"
Rom 11:34–35Paul, to the church in Rome
From Him and through Him and to Him are all things, the galaxies and this cup, the cross and this moment.
In an unremarkable town in the interior of Asia Minor, Colossae, a temptation is creeping into the young church. Teachers have arrived with a refined story, a "philosophy," as Paul mockingly calls it. Its core is not that Jesus is wrong, but that Jesus is not enough. You need more, they whisper: intermediaries between you and God, powers and angels you must keep on your good side, special visions, strict rules about food and festivals, a whole ladder of spiritual beings you must climb to really reach God. Christ is a good start, they say, but He is one link in a longer chain. Paul, imprisoned and far away, does not refute it point by point. He answers with a song that towers so high above the error that nothing is left of that chain. There is no "more," he sings, for the simple reason that in Christ everything is.
Right now something is within reach, a cup, a pen, the edge of the table, and it stays whole. The atoms in it don't fly apart, the table doesn't sink through the floor, the earth doesn't tumble into the sun. There is, in every indivisible moment, something holding reality together instead of letting it scatter, and Paul says in a few words who does that. Just before, he calls Him by a name of love: "the Son of His love" (1:13). He is the image of the invisible God, he sings, the firstborn of all creation. For in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, thrones and dominions, rulers and powers: all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Paul places those "powers" somewhere that will make you sit up. The spiritual beings the false teachers were so afraid of, the thrones and dominions you supposedly had to keep on your good side, he drops without ceremony into the list of created things. What posed as Christ's competitor turns out to be His handiwork. Whoever called Him a link forgot that He forged the chain. And then, almost in passing, the text says: in Him all things hold together, in Him everything stands firm. The Carpenter from Nazareth is the coherence of the universe. Take Him away, and along with the stars coherence itself falls apart. Every atom, every law of nature, every second is held together by Him.
The prophets had heard God mock the idols that had to be carried into exile on oxcarts, while He Himself carried His people; here He holds the whole cosmos together. The One who does this is no anonymous force or blind law of nature. It is a Person with a face and a name, the same One who slept in the boat and bent over a paralyzed man. Paul has just called Him the Son of His love. What keeps the stars in their courses has a heart: the Father's Beloved holds on the way love holds on, and does not let go.
From the stars Paul carries the song all the way to the cross. He is the head of the body, the church, he continues, the firstborn from the dead, for it pleased God to let all the fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross. Those two sentences stand deliberately side by side, and the tension is left unresolved. The same One in Whom all things hold together made peace through the blood of His cross. The hand that holds the galaxies in place let itself be pierced with a nail. Against the teachers who said you need more than Christ, Paul sets one word: fullness. The whole fullness of God dwells bodily in Him (2:9), and there is nothing more than everything. Whoever wants to add something to Christ has not yet seen Him.
In his letter to Rome Paul reaches the same summit by another road. He wrestles there for 11 chapters with the deepest riddles there are: God's mercy and His judgment, election and hardening, how Jew and Gentile both fit into His plan. Midway he had already reached a height no argument can climb: nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8:39). Now he reasons all the way to the edge of what a human mind can grasp, and at the edge of the abyss he stops reasoning and starts to sing. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how untraceable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, that he should be repaid?
In those three questions sound the two places where Scripture had spoken most deeply about God's incomparability. "Who has known the mind of the Lord?" comes from the courtroom of Isaiah, where God asked who had ever directed His Spirit or measured the waters in the hollow of His hand. "Who has first given to Him?" comes from the storm over Job, where God asked who had ever advanced Him anything that He should have to repay, for everything under heaven is His. Paul does not need to explain it. He sings the answer in the only form left once thinking has run out.
The cup within reach is still whole. It stayed whole while Paul reasoned and while he sang, and it stays whole while you read this, because Someone is holding it: the same One who made peace through the blood of His cross. From Him and through Him and to Him are all things, the galaxies and this cup, the cross and this moment. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Expert"In Him all things hold together"
The hymn of Colossians 1:15–20 divides into two stanzas: the Son and creation (15–17) and the Son and reconciliation (18–20). The key word is synestēken (1:17): "all things hold together in Him," stand firm in Him, are held together by Him.
"Firstborn of all creation" (1:15) denotes rank and not origin, for the firstborn is the heir, the rightful owner. The verses that follow rule out any misreading: "for in Him all things were created." The "thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers" (1:16) are the spiritual beings the false teaching in Colossae venerated; Paul ranks them among the created things, as Christ's subjects. Against the demand "you need more" stands the word plērōma, "fullness" (1:19). The entire fullness of God dwells in Him bodily (2:9), so that nothing remains to be sought elsewhere.
ExcursusPaul's doxologies
Romans 11:33–36 does not stand alone. Whenever Paul's thought reaches its highest point, it tips over into praise, and those doxologies are incomparability hymns: the Old Testament question "who is like You?" in a Christian key. To Timothy he writes: "to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever" (1 Tim 1:17), and further on, of Him "who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see" (6:16).
That last sentence picks up the thread from the mountain, where Moses was told: "no one can see Me and live" (Exod 33:20). The invisible God of Exodus is still invisible, and at the same time, Colossians says, He has become visible as "the image of the invisible God" (1:15). Both are true. The New Testament does not trade in the Old Testament's incomparability for something smaller; it sings it to the Father and about the Son.
HeartWhen everything falls apart
There are days when a life seems to be falling apart. A diagnosis, a marriage that tears, a child who no longer calls, a faith that gives way. Then "the cosmic Christ who holds everything together" sounds big and distant, a doctrine for theologians, no comfort for someone sitting on a plastic chair in a hospital waiting room.
Yet the text says "all things," and that word leaves no one out. The grip that holds the atoms together is not indifferent or mechanical; it is the grip of Someone who knows what pain is. That your life is shaking does not yet prove that no one is holding it. Paul's list includes the thrones and the powers, the visible and the invisible, and there is room among them for that diagnosis, that marriage, that child. All of it falls under "all things." What falls apart does not fall out of His hands.
*A note on the source text. The hymn of Colossians 1:15–20: the image of the invisible God and the firstborn (1:15); "in Him all things were created [...] thrones, dominions, rulers, powers" (1:16); "in Him all things hold together" (synestēken, 1:17); the head of the church and the firstborn from the dead (1:18); the fullness (plērōma, 1:19; cf. 2:9) and the reconciliation "through the blood of His cross" (1:20). The background: the false teaching in Colossae that venerated intermediary powers. "The Son of His love": Colossians 1:13; nothing separates us from the love of God: Romans 8:35–39. The doxology of Romans 11:33–36, quoting Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:11. Further doxologies: 1 Timothy 1:17; 6:15–16 ("whom no one has seen"; cf. Exodus 33:20). The carrying God versus the carried idol: Isaiah 46:1–4. The divine Name as YHWH.*