We have all, I am sure, pondered the majesty, glory and “awesomeness” of the One who in Genesis 1:1 “created the heavens and the earth”. I used to run a men’s Bible study group back in 2019 and we always started by reading Genesis 1:1 , no matter what passage we were studying. We did this in order to position ourselves to remember just WHO it is that we are studying, just WHO we are approaching, just WHO we seek to understand and to ground ourselves in the right perspective for our study and discussion.
I want today to look at Colossians 1:16-17 in relation to Genesis 1:1 and to explore what we think when we read that Christ “sustains all things”.
The parallels
Genesis 1:1 declares, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (ESV). This foundational statement establishes from the outset that everything which exists owes its being to the creative act and will of God. Nothing is self-existent apart from God Himself, and the entire cosmos is contingent upon His will and power.
When we turn over to Colossians 1:16-17, Paul expands on and specifies this truth with an explicit focus on Christ: “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” (ESV).
The connection between these passages is not accidental. Paul is deliberately echoing the creation narrative and identifying Christ as the divine agent through whom the Father spoke all things into being. The “Him” of Colossians 1:16 is the same divine Word present “in the beginning” of Genesis, and this connection becomes explicit when we read John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (ESV).
Creation through the spoken Word
What is striking about the Genesis account is the repeated formula, “And God said… and it was so.” Creation comes into being through divine will expressed through speech. God does not fashion the universe through physical labour or emanation but through the utterance of his Word. “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host” (Psalm 33:6, ESV).
The Church Fathers understood this “Word” not as mere sound but as the eternal Logos, the second Person of the Trinity. Athanasius wrote extensively on this in On the Incarnation and Against the Arians, arguing that the Word through whom all things were made is not a creature but the very expression of the Father’s being, co-eternal and consubstantial with him. Creation is the outworking of the Father’s will through the Son, and it bears the imprint of the Logos in its order, rationality, and beauty.
Augustine similarly taught that the Word is the divine Wisdom in whom the patterns or rationes of all created things eternally exist. When God speaks creation into being, he does so through the Word who contains within himself the intelligible structure of all that is made. This is why creation is not chaotic but ordered, not arbitrary but meaningful.
The sustaining Word and the concept of resonance
And now we come to the most intriguing aspect of this journey, the idea of resonance and how the ongoing sustaining of creation by the Word might be understood in relation to the physicality of our universe.
The word “resonance” in physics describes a phenomenon where a system oscillates with greater amplitude at specific frequencies. It occurs when an external force or vibration matches the natural frequency of an object, causing it to vibrate in sympathetic response. Think of a tuning fork that causes another tuning fork of the same pitch to sound, or a singer whose voice can shatter glass by matching its resonant frequency.
When we speak theologically of the Word sustaining all things, there is a beautiful analogy here, though we must be careful to distinguish analogy from identity. The creation is not self-sustaining that is, it does not possess within itself the means or power of continued existence rather, it is held in being moment by moment by the Word who spoke it into existence and who continues, as it were, to “speak” it into ongoing reality.
Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Christ “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (ESV). The Greek term for “upholds” is pherōn (φέρων), which carries the sense of bearing, carrying, or maintaining in motion. This is not a static holding but a dynamic sustaining, an active and continuous exercise of divine power that keeps all things in their ordered state.
The physics of existence and the question of coherence
Modern physics has revealed that matter is far stranger and more dynamic than our everyday experience would suggest. At the subatomic level, what we perceive as solid objects are composed of atoms, which are themselves mostly empty space, with electrons existing in probability clouds around nuclei made of protons and neutrons, themselves composed of quarks held together by gluons mediating the strong nuclear force.
The question that physics describes but cannot ultimately answer is this: why does any of this hold together at all? Why do the fundamental forces operate with such precise constants? Why does the universe exhibit such extraordinary fine-tuning that even the slightest variation in the gravitational constant, the electromagnetic force, or the strong nuclear force would render matter, stars, planets, and life impossible?
The Christian answer, rooted in Colossians 1:17, is that “in Him all things hold together.”
The coherence of the universe is not self-explanatory but is grounded in the sustaining will and power of Christ.
The laws of physics are not autonomous principles floating in some abstract realm but are expressions of the faithfulness and consistency of the Word who upholds all things.
If we take resonance as a metaphor, we might say that creation exists in a state of sympathetic vibration with the Word. It might sound a bit “new agey” but simply stated, the universe is not a mechanism wound up and left to run on its own, as the deists imagined, but a reality that continues to exist only because it is continually “sounded” by the voice of God. Just as a sustained musical note keeps a resonant object vibrating, so the Word continuously speaks creation into being.
This is not to say that the physical forces are literally vibrations of the divine voice in some crude sense, rather, the analogy points to the dependent, responsive, and derivative nature of creaturely existence. Creation has no being of its own apart from its participation in the sustaining Word. It exists only as a response to the divine utterance, held in being by the same power that first called it forth from nothing.
Chrysostom observed that Paul’s language in Colossians is designed to show that Christ is not merely the initial cause of creation but its ongoing ground. Without him, all things would not simply stop functioning but would cease to be entirely.
The universe is radically dependent on Christ at every moment.
Contemporary cosmology has drawn attention to what is sometimes called the “fine-tuning” of the universe, the remarkable fact that the fundamental constants of physics appear to be precisely calibrated to permit the existence of matter, chemistry, stars, and ultimately life. The gravitational constant, the charge of the electron, the mass of the proton, the strength of the strong and weak nuclear forces, and many other parameters all fall within extraordinarily narrow ranges that make a stable, life-permitting universe possible.
From a Christian perspective, this fine-tuning is not a matter of chance or necessity but of divine wisdom. The Logos through whom all things were made is not a blind force but the eternal Wisdom of God, the one in whom all the rationes or intelligible patterns of creation exist. The order of the universe reflects the mind of its Maker.
The Word as the ground of intelligibility
There is a further point worth considering. The fact that the universe is intelligible at all, that it operates according to rational laws which the human mind can discover and describe, is itself remarkable. Why should the cosmos be comprehensible? Why should mathematics, a product of human thought, so accurately describe the behaviour of physical reality?
The Christian answer is that both the universe and the human mind are creations of the same Logos. The rationality we discover in nature is a reflection of the divine Reason through whom it was made, and our capacity to understand it is grounded in our being made in the image of God. As Augustine put it, we can think God’s thoughts after him, tracing in creation the vestiges of the Word who made it.
This is why the scientific enterprise, properly understood, is not opposed to faith but is an exploration of the works of God. The regularities we call “laws of nature” are expressions of the faithfulness of Christ who upholds all things by the word of his power. The scientist, whether they acknowledge it or not, is investigating the sustaining activity of the Logos.
So what does all this mean for the Christian seeking to live faithfully in God’s world today?
Well, firstly it reminds us that creation is not a neutral or godless space but a theatre of divine glory. Every atom, every force, every moment of continued existence is a testimony to the sustaining power of Christ. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork (Psalm 19:1).
Secondly, it calls us to great humility before the mystery of existence. We did not make ourselves, and we do not sustain ourselves. Our very being is a gift, held in existence by the one who is before all things. This should evoke gratitude, worship, and trust.
Thirdly, it assures us that the universe is not ultimately chaotic or meaningless but is ordered by a personal Lord who knows us and loves us. The same Word who holds the galaxies in their courses holds us in his hand. “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28, ESV).
And finally, it connects creation and redemption. The Word who sustains all things is the same Word who became flesh for our salvation. The one who holds the universe together entered into it, took on our nature, and died and rose again to reconcile all things to himself. Colossians 1:20 tells us that through Christ, God was pleased “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (ESV).
The sustainer of creation is its redeemer, and the coherence of all things in Christ is not merely physical but also redemptive.
Pax Vobiscum
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