Christians confess that God created the world and that Jesus is the Son of God. But how do these two truths fit together? Did Jesus help his Father create? Was it the Father’s role to create and the Son waited back until the world needed saving? Hebrews 1 will shed light on our questions.
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.
The Identity of Jesus
This beautiful passage speaks deep truths about the identity of Jesus as God’s Son. The author of Hebrews structured these truths like a bullseye, or an onion, with layers that can be peeled back to get to the heart of the teaching. We find that heart in verse 3, which tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” In other words, the Son, though a distinct person from the Father, is one with him in being. That is the core of Jesus’ identity as God’s Son.
The next layer out builds on that core truth to reveal how the Son is involved in creation. “…and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (v 2-3). In this layer, we learn two truths about Jesus. The first truth is that God made the universe through Jesus. The wording of that statement may raise some questions for us. What does it mean that God made the universe through Jesus? Does this mean that the Father is the one who really did the work and Jesus sort of helped or maybe was a tool that God used? On the contrary, this statement means that the Son is the Creator. The Son—who is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being—worked as one with God the Father to create the universe.
If this is true, then why didn’t the author of Hebrews simply say that God created with his Son, rather than through him? The reason is that the language of God working through his Son protects our understanding of God’s oneness.
The Unity of the Trinity
Once again, we know that there is one God and, defying human logic, that this one God is three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are equal and one in every way, but somehow also distinct. They are each God, but there is only one God, not three Gods. We know we can’t fully understand this truth, but when we try to make sense of it, especially as it applies to how they work in creation, we might be tempted to think that when they created the world, they cooperated, they worked together.
During the Pandemic, my wife, Becky, and I decided to build a back deck for our house. We spent a long time working on it together and, as we worked on it, our cooperation got a bit tense at times. But finally, after a few weeks of working on Saturdays and in the evenings, we were finished and could enjoy our new deck together.
God didn’t create like that. Father and Son (and let’s not forget the Spirit!) didn’t cooperate to create the world. They certainly never got tense or disagreed, but they actually didn’t divide up the work in any way or “work together” in any way that humans do. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit don’t do different parts of the job when they act, they act as one because they are one. There is no division of labor in the Trinity. The Father doesn’t act separately from the Son or the Spirit. They act as one.
When the Bible speaks of God’s undivided action toward his creation, it often uses the language of God acting through his Son and by his Spirit. This language shows us that he acts as one while still maintaining a distinction in the persons of the Trinity. Ephesians 2:18 uses the same language about salvation and says we have access to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. The Nicene Creed has served as the definitive statement on how Christians understand the Bible’s teaching on the trinity for the past 1700 years. It picks up this biblical trinitarian language and says of Jesus “Through him all things were made.”
Jesus as Sustainer
Not only is Jesus the Creator, but the other side of this layer from Hebrews 1 tells us that Jesus is also at work right now “sustaining all things by his powerful word.” God isn’t like a clockmaker who built the universe, wound it up, and then let it go and walked away. The universe is held together by the laws of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces. But those laws only work because Jesus keeps them working (or we could even say, the Father does, through Jesus). He sustains all things by his powerful word. His decree and command keep our atoms together and planets spinning around their stars. If he were to remove his sustaining power, the cosmos would dissolve.
It’s worth noticing again that this isn’t the heart of Hebrews 1:1-4. When we think of what makes God God, we tend to think of him at this level, the Creator and Sustainer of life. Jesus is God because he is our Creator and Sustainer. But this isn’t the core truth of this passage, the mysterious eternal relations of the Trinity are. This points to the important truth that God’s work in creating the universe isn’t fundamental to who he is as God. He didn’t have to create us, and if he never had, he would still be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He would still be the one who has life in himself shared perfectly and eternally in the three persons of the Trinity. Praise Jesus for his relationship to the universe as the one through whom God created and sustains all things. And praise him for his eternal identity as God the Son, “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”
