Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

The familiar opening lines of Genesis that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

introduces a simple but profound idea. Everything that exists visible and invisible

was created by God. Now if true this world is infused with purpose and design life's not random

it's ordered. There are givens in creation and about the human condition to which we must

conform and yet as significant as those implications of creation are, there's much more to this doctrine

of creation than just God created.

Other passages throughout scripture, notably John 1 and Colosians 1, claim that God's creative work is not confined

to the distant past. Instead, God remains present, involved, and sovereign over and in his

creation.

And specifically, it's in and through Christ

that God remains present involved in sovereign over and in his creation.

In Closha chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, Paul wrote that it was by Christ, the image of the invisible God

and the first one of all creation, that all things were created, and also that in him all things hold together.

In other words, God is more than just a first cause.

He not only created the world, he sustains it.

20th century theologian Robert Cape and helpfully describe this truth this way.

If God wanted to get rid of the universe, he wouldn't have to do anything.

He would have to stop doing something.

Not at the same time, it would be inaccurate to think of God's sustaining work as if it were a kind of animating impersonal energy.

That's what older generations called vitalism or what Star Wars fans know as the force.

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