When God’s way of doing things brings delight
Posted at Reformation Scotland:
Do we sometimes lose the wonder of the fact that we have our existence from God and we exist for God? For Paul, this simple, basic fact wasn’t something to grudge, or to disregard. Instead, Paul grounds everything in this given and delights to glorify God. Hand in hand with offering us the comfort of knowing that our good God is in control of everything there is and everything that happens, this truth draws us on to take delight in God and our total dependence on Him. In the following updated extract, we can see that this is how John Brown of Wamphray understands Paul’s message in Romans 11:36, “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”It is our ignorance of our dependence on the Lord that makes us ready to quarrel with Him for arranging things for us otherwise than we would wish. If we knew at all that we had our life and all from Him, we would not grow as proud as we do, nor think that He wrongs us, whatever He does. God is obliged to none, but may do with all His creatures as He pleases.
God’s glorious independence
“Of him are all things.” God, whose being is in and of Himself, His name being I AM THAT I AM, is the sole author of being to all His creatures, great or small. “Of him are all things.” All of them, however glorious they may be, are only pieces of life and being borrowed from the fountain and well-spring of all being. He is the first cause of their being, and from him alone they have the being which they have.
“Through him,” or “by him,” are all things. That is, as they have their being from God, so they have their dependence on Him. They would not subsist in their being without Him; When God has given a being to His creatures, and brought them alive them with a ray of His life, they cannot subsist without Him; he is the preserver of both man and beast, and of all things. He has framed the creature in such a way that it must owe its dependence to its Creator every hour and moment, and must be preserved by Him. He who first kindled this spark of life in the creature must keep blowing at the coal constantly, or else it will die out again, for in him we move, we live, and have our being (Acts 17:28). “Through him are all things.” The creatures would fall into pieces, if the same omnipotent hand as gave being to start with was not still upholding.
“To him are all things.” They are not ordered for themselves, as their ultimate end, but for Him and His glory. As the being of all creatures came first from God the ocean of all being, so like a stream it must run back into Him again. He Himself was the ultimate end of all these borrowed beings, and there is no creature, no human being nor angel, that is created for themselves. Instead, God’s giving them a being, and preserving that being, and disposing of it, is wholly for Himself, the author of all. God may dispose of all His creatures, to whom He was graciously pleased to give a being, as suits best with His own ends. Just as all things are of Him, and through Him, so “all things are to him.”
