Hebrews 1:1-4 — Part 4: Creator and Sustainer

Creator and sustainer

There is yet another strain in these opening verses, by which, it seems to me, the writer is setting up the easel and the canvas on which the revelation which is the remainder of the book will be painted. Something is revealed here which could not possibly have been fully known even by Christ’s Apostles before their Lord departed. But when the Spirit, who is promised to them by Jesus, brings his ‘this is that’ enlightenment to their understanding of all they have seen and heard, then they know completely what previously they had only glimpsed, even though they had begun to know it then. They had asked, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41). Now they know.

Creator

Later, Hebrews 11 declares:

“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
(Hebrews 11:3, ESV)

The very man who lived and breathed and walked and slept in their very midst is both Creator and sustainer – upholder – of all that is.

Pause and think of that. The Word that called light and life into being dwelt among us; the Voice that spoke at the forming of the earth was heard – and heeded – by earthly ears. The hands that formed Adam from the dust broke and gave the bread to them. The Author of life lived as a man. He who was hidden was revealed.

Paul says the same:

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
(Colossians 1:16–17, ESV)

Sustainer

And the very fabric of the physical universe not only came into being by his word, but continues to exist by it. What is seen has for its very foundations what is not seen. If we trace that through to what is later said about ‘faith’ we will see that it is not just something the author of Hebrews decides to throw in. It is here at the start and underlies all that he goes on to say. If, for one moment, the mighty sustaining power of the word of the Son was to cease, existence itself would stop.

Light is another picture. We hardly ever look at the sun, yet we see everything else by it. C. S. Lewis said he believed in Christianity as he believed the sun had risen – not only because he saw it, but because by it, in his words, he saw “everything else” (“Is Theology Poetry?”). So with the Son: the one by whom, and through whom, all else is seen and held.

Think of breath. We never notice it, yet it is given moment by moment, and the day it is withheld we are gone. Paul told the Athenians that God “himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). Every breath the atheist draws to deny him is a breath he was given.

Paul goes on:

“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.”
(Acts 17:26–27, ESV)

And then he quotes, with approval, a line from the Greek seer, poet and sage Epimenides – “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). It was written to Zeus; Paul takes it and shows who it really belongs to.

Even the atheist, the denier of God’s existence, depends in entirety on the enabling action, in pure grace, of the Son of God he refuses to turn to. What irony is that!

This is the Lord we worship. There is none greater. See how magnificent he is. Begin to grasp what privilege and honour we have been given to not only know his name, but to apprehend his person, through the Apostles’ witness. To worship him, not from afar, as if we were staring up at the night sky, captivated by all it is, but heart to heart, soul to soul. To have him – HIM! – call us his very own and know us by name.

Commenting on this, I have been heard to say that non-believers are people with no invisible means of support! But those who know him have their feet on solid ground.