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the God who stays

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.  (Romans 11:36 ESV)

 I am studying the second half of the 11th chapter of Romans.  How much of the glorious nature and character of God is included in the doxology of 11:33-36!  I was also reading in Carl Henry's 6th volume of God, Revelation and Authority and came upon these words, a good overview of what it means that all things come from God, through him, and unto him, for his glory... 

 "The Bible depicts God as the providential sustainer of the universe by his omnipotent omnipresence and also the divine governor of all things. The living God everywhere upholds and maintains the created universe; he does so, moreover, for the sovereign purpose and goal for which he initially created it.

 "God who stands -- who eternally exists -- and who stoops -- first in voluntarily creating the finite universe and then in voluntarily redeeming his fallen creation -- is also God who stays to preserve and to renew and finally to consummate his purposeful creation.

 "From its first moment of creation the space-time universe has been pervasively dependent on the Creator.  Without his omnipresent power it would have reverted to the nihil or nothingness that prevailed before God's ex nihilo creation.  ... 

 "The providence of God, in short, attests the fact that nature is not metaphysically ultimate; its continuity is no less contingent that its origin, and both its creation and continuance are dependent on the one sovereign God.  Thus every pretension to creaturely independence, to self-sufficiency, to inherent existence, is shattered by the certainty that man and cosmos alike are entirely contingent, moment by moment upon the God who stays."

 ~ Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority (Word Books, 1983), VI:455.

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