Classic Christian theology teaches the following: At this very moment, God sustains the universe and everything in it into existence. This means that everyone and everything in the universe depends on God for their ongoing existence. Nothing currently exists apart from the active role that God is playing right now in giving it existence. To say the least, every heartbeat that we presently enjoy, we enjoy because God is giving it to us. Every breath we take, we take because God is permitting us to do so. If God refused to sustain our lives, we wouldn’t merely die; we would disintegrate. The atoms that compose our bodies would vanish.
Even the physical laws of the universe—which appear to us as a given state of affairs—cannot govern time, space, and matter apart from God’s enabling them to do so at every moment. Ultimately, physical objects in the universe do not operate according to laws, but to the very hand of God.
If anything, Jesus speaks with great modesty when he offers us these reassuring words about God’s sovereignty from Matthew 10:29-31:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Paul and the author of Hebrews paint a fuller picture of Christ’s sustaining role (emphasis mine):
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17).
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3a).
The only proper response to these words about God’s sustaining power is awe. But pastor Tim Keller brings them down to earth for us. In his book Hidden Christmas, he describes the level of faith that God asked of Mary when she spoke those astonishing words of surrender, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
The woman who spoke [at the conference] said, “If the distance between the Earth and the sun—ninety-three million miles—was no more than the thickness of a sheet of paper, then the distance from the Earth to the nearest star would be a stack of papers seventy feet high; the diameter of the Milky Way would be a stack of paper over three hundred miles high. Keep in mind that there are more galaxies in the universe than we can number. There are more, it seems, than dust specks in the air or grains of sand on the seashores. Now, if Jesus Christ holds all this together with just a word of his power (Hebrews 1:3)—is he the kind person you ask into your life to be your assistant?” That simple logic shattered my resistance to doing what Mary did. Yes, if he really is like that, how can I treat him as a consultant rather than as Supreme Lord?[1]
Indeed.
This morning I meditated on the following words from Psalm 3, which David wrote, we’re told, when he and his royal entourage were fleeing Jerusalem, after his son Absalom led an insurrection to overthrow his kingdom:
I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around (Psalm 3:5-6).
There’s that word again: sustained. And it is on the basis of God’s sustaining power over our lives that we can be fearless. Why? Because God is giving us the life that we currently enjoy for a purpose—or purposes. And until those purposes are fulfilled (as pastor John Piper said in a different context), we are literally immortal. We are un–killable. Even if “many thousands” of men or devils are plotting against us, literally no one or nothing has the power to harm us.
Our Lord Jesus, who at this moment is holding your life together—along with the rest of universe(!)—will protect you until the moment that he has decided to bring you safely into his presence through death—an enemy that he’s already disarmed for us who belong to him.
1. Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas (New York: Viking, 2016), 91-2.
December 7, 2018 at 3:08 pm
Very encouraging!
December 7, 2018 at 3:35 pm
I hope so! It was for me.