The Son carries it all, and Paul bows (Colossians 1; Romans 11)
10 min read
In-depth:
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," Paul calls it mockingly — and its core is not that Jesus is wrong, but that Jesus is not enough. You need more, they whisper: extra 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 past to really reach God. Christ is a good start, they say, but He is one link in a longer chain. And Paul, imprisoned and far away, does not answer with a point-by-point rebuttal. He answers with a song — a hymn that towers so high above the whole error that nothing is left of that chain. For there is no "more," he sings, for the simple reason that in Christ everything already 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 into dust, and Paul says in a few words who does that. 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 — whether thrones or dominions, rulers or powers: all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
And Paul places those "powers" somewhere that will make you sit up. The very spiritual beings the false teachers were so afraid of, the thrones and dominions you supposedly had to keep on your good side — Paul, without ceremony, drops them into the list of the created. They are not Christ's competitors; they are His handiwork. He does not stand somewhere high up in the chain; He is the one who forged the chain. And then that one dizzying little sentence: 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 not only the stars but coherence itself falls apart; every atom, every law, every second is held together by His word.
And this is the same promise that once sounded in the courtroom of the prophets, now carried to its full height. There God had mocked the idols because they had to be carried, on oxcarts into exile, while He carried His people from the womb to gray hairs: I have made you, and I will carry you. Here that same God carries not only His people but the whole cosmos, the coherence of everything that exists. And the gripping thing, the thing this whole chapter turns on, is that the hands carrying that weight have scars. For this is not an anonymous force and not a blind law of nature; this is a Person with a face and a name, the same one who slept in the boat, bent down over a paralyzed man, and ran down the road in the form of a father.
And Paul does not leave the song hanging among the stars; he carries it 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. And those two sentences stand deliberately side by side, in a tension 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 false teachers who said "you need more than Christ," Paul sets this one word: fullness. The entire fullness of God dwells in Him, bodily — there is no "more," because more than everything does not exist. Whoever has Christ has everything; whoever wants to add something to Christ has not yet understood Him.
And there is another letter in which Paul's thought reaches its very highest point, and then does the same thing: it tips over into worship. In his letter to Rome he has wrestled for eleven 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. He has reasoned all the way to the edge of what a human mind can carry, and then, at the edge of the abyss, he stops reasoning and starts singing. 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 it should be repaid to him?
And in those three questions Paul quotes, without needing to explain it, precisely 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 His hand. And "who has first given to Him?" comes from the storm over Job, where God asked: who has given Me anything that I should repay him — everything under heaven is Mine. The question "who is like You?" had always had its answer, and Paul sings it out in the only form left once thinking has run its course: for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things — to Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Who is a God like You? The question has run through the whole of Scripture, from the song by the sea to the song in this prison cell, and at the end of the sharpest reasoning there stands no closing conclusion but a bent knee. For that is what happens to a person who truly catches sight of the Incomparable One: you can study Him, analyze Him, capture Him in doctrines — but at the point where it truly sinks in, the studying stops and the worship begins. The question of this book was never a puzzle looking for a solution; from the very start it was a song of praise looking for a voice. From Him, and through Him, and to Him is everything. The hands that carry everything carry scars. And the only honest response to all of it is not one more argument, but the bent knee — and then the worship.
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 re-creation, reconciliation (18-20). The hinge word is synestēken (1:17): "all things hold together in Him," stand firm in Him, are held together by Him. It is the fulfillment of the carrying God of Isaiah 46: what God did there for His people — carrying them from birth to gray hairs — the Son does here for the whole cosmos.
"Firstborn of all creation" (1:15) denotes not origin but rank: the firstborn is the heir, the rightful owner — and the verses that follow rule out any misreading: "for in Him all things were created." The "thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers" (1:16) are precisely the spiritual beings the false teaching in Colossae venerated; Paul ranks them among the created things, as Christ's subjects. And 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. The cosmic and the crucified coincide: the same One in whom all things hold together "made peace by the blood of His cross" (1:20).
ExcursusPaul's doxologies as incomparability hymns
Whenever Paul's thought reaches its peak, it turns to praise, and those praises are genuine incomparability hymns — the Old Testament question "who is like You?", now in Christian key. In Romans 11:33-36 he weaves together two classic texts: "who has known the mind of the Lord?" (Isaiah 40:13, from the courtroom against the idols) and "who has first given to Him?" (Job 41:11, from the storm over Job) — and he ends with "from Him and through Him and to Him are all things."
And it does not stop there. To Timothy he writes: "to the King of the ages, the imperishable, invisible, only God, be honor and glory" (1 Timothy 1:17), and a little further, about Him "who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see" (6:16). That last line picks up the thread from the mountain, where Moses was told: "no one can see Me and live." The invisible God of Exodus is still invisible — and at the same time, Colossians says, has become visible as "the image of the invisible God." Both are true, and the New Testament does not trade the Old Testament's incomparability for something smaller; it sings it, now, to the Father and about the Son.
HeartThe hands that carry scars
To some, "the cosmic Christ who holds everything together" sounds too vast, too distant, too cold — a doctrine for theologians, no comfort for someone lying awake at night. But this is exactly where the warmth lies, and it is this: the hands that hold the universe together are the same hands that were nailed to a cross. The power that keeps the stars in place and the love that let itself be pierced live in one Person. The Almighty is not someone other than the Crucified.
That means the power that carries everything is on your side. The same hand that holds reality together moment by moment also holds you — and it is no indifferent, mechanical grip, but the grip of Someone who knows what pain is, who knows the ash heap from the inside, who carries scars for you. If your life threatens to fall apart, that is not proof that no one is holding it together; it is the invitation to discover in whose hands you have been lying all along. And those hands do not let go; they have already held death itself and overcome it, and they can hold you too. Who is a God like this? No one. And the only thing left is to bow — and to be carried.
*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 "by the blood of His cross" (1:20). The background: the false teaching in Colossae that venerated intermediary powers. 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 46:3-4. The divine Name as YHWH.*
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," Paul calls it mockingly — and its core is not that Jesus is wrong, but that Jesus is not enough. You need more, they whisper: extra 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 past to really reach God. Christ is a good start, they say, but He is one link in a longer chain. And Paul, imprisoned and far away, does not answer with a point-by-point rebuttal. He answers with a song — a hymn that towers so high above the whole error that nothing is left of that chain. For there is no "more," he sings, for the simple reason that in Christ everything already 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 into dust, and Paul says in a few words who does that. 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 — whether thrones or dominions, rulers or powers: all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
And Paul places those "powers" somewhere that will make you sit up. The very spiritual beings the false teachers were so afraid of, the thrones and dominions you supposedly had to keep on your good side — Paul, without ceremony, drops them into the list of the created. They are not Christ's competitors; they are His handiwork. He does not stand somewhere high up in the chain; He is the one who forged the chain. And then that one dizzying little sentence: 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 not only the stars but coherence itself falls apart; every atom, every law, every second is held together by His word.
And this is the same promise that once sounded in the courtroom of the prophets, now carried to its full height. There God had mocked the idols because they had to be carried, on oxcarts into exile, while He carried His people from the womb to gray hairs: I have made you, and I will carry you. Here that same God carries not only His people but the whole cosmos, the coherence of everything that exists. And the gripping thing, the thing this whole chapter turns on, is that the hands carrying that weight have scars. For this is not an anonymous force and not a blind law of nature; this is a Person with a face and a name, the same one who slept in the boat, bent down over a paralyzed man, and ran down the road in the form of a father.
And Paul does not leave the song hanging among the stars; he carries it 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. And those two sentences stand deliberately side by side, in a tension 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 false teachers who said "you need more than Christ," Paul sets this one word: fullness. The entire fullness of God dwells in Him, bodily — there is no "more," because more than everything does not exist. Whoever has Christ has everything; whoever wants to add something to Christ has not yet understood Him.
And there is another letter in which Paul's thought reaches its very highest point, and then does the same thing: it tips over into worship. In his letter to Rome he has wrestled for eleven 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. He has reasoned all the way to the edge of what a human mind can carry, and then, at the edge of the abyss, he stops reasoning and starts singing. 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 it should be repaid to him?
And in those three questions Paul quotes, without needing to explain it, precisely 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 His hand. And "who has first given to Him?" comes from the storm over Job, where God asked: who has given Me anything that I should repay him — everything under heaven is Mine. The question "who is like You?" had always had its answer, and Paul sings it out in the only form left once thinking has run its course: for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things — to Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Who is a God like You? The question has run through the whole of Scripture, from the song by the sea to the song in this prison cell, and at the end of the sharpest reasoning there stands no closing conclusion but a bent knee. For that is what happens to a person who truly catches sight of the Incomparable One: you can study Him, analyze Him, capture Him in doctrines — but at the point where it truly sinks in, the studying stops and the worship begins. The question of this book was never a puzzle looking for a solution; from the very start it was a song of praise looking for a voice. From Him, and through Him, and to Him is everything. The hands that carry everything carry scars. And the only honest response to all of it is not one more argument, but the bent knee — and then the worship.
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 re-creation, reconciliation (18-20). The hinge word is synestēken (1:17): "all things hold together in Him," stand firm in Him, are held together by Him. It is the fulfillment of the carrying God of Isaiah 46: what God did there for His people — carrying them from birth to gray hairs — the Son does here for the whole cosmos.
"Firstborn of all creation" (1:15) denotes not origin but rank: the firstborn is the heir, the rightful owner — and the verses that follow rule out any misreading: "for in Him all things were created." The "thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers" (1:16) are precisely the spiritual beings the false teaching in Colossae venerated; Paul ranks them among the created things, as Christ's subjects. And 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. The cosmic and the crucified coincide: the same One in whom all things hold together "made peace by the blood of His cross" (1:20).
ExcursusPaul's doxologies as incomparability hymns
Whenever Paul's thought reaches its peak, it turns to praise, and those praises are genuine incomparability hymns — the Old Testament question "who is like You?", now in Christian key. In Romans 11:33-36 he weaves together two classic texts: "who has known the mind of the Lord?" (Isaiah 40:13, from the courtroom against the idols) and "who has first given to Him?" (Job 41:11, from the storm over Job) — and he ends with "from Him and through Him and to Him are all things."
And it does not stop there. To Timothy he writes: "to the King of the ages, the imperishable, invisible, only God, be honor and glory" (1 Timothy 1:17), and a little further, about Him "who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see" (6:16). That last line picks up the thread from the mountain, where Moses was told: "no one can see Me and live." The invisible God of Exodus is still invisible — and at the same time, Colossians says, has become visible as "the image of the invisible God." Both are true, and the New Testament does not trade the Old Testament's incomparability for something smaller; it sings it, now, to the Father and about the Son.
HeartThe hands that carry scars
To some, "the cosmic Christ who holds everything together" sounds too vast, too distant, too cold — a doctrine for theologians, no comfort for someone lying awake at night. But this is exactly where the warmth lies, and it is this: the hands that hold the universe together are the same hands that were nailed to a cross. The power that keeps the stars in place and the love that let itself be pierced live in one Person. The Almighty is not someone other than the Crucified.
That means the power that carries everything is on your side. The same hand that holds reality together moment by moment also holds you — and it is no indifferent, mechanical grip, but the grip of Someone who knows what pain is, who knows the ash heap from the inside, who carries scars for you. If your life threatens to fall apart, that is not proof that no one is holding it together; it is the invitation to discover in whose hands you have been lying all along. And those hands do not let go; they have already held death itself and overcome it, and they can hold you too. Who is a God like this? No one. And the only thing left is to bow — and to be carried.
*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 "by the blood of His cross" (1:20). The background: the false teaching in Colossae that venerated intermediary powers. 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 46:3-4. The divine Name as YHWH.*