1. God is, and all things are from Him

At the bush, Moses asks for a name to carry to Israel, and God answers from His own being: "God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you’”" (Ex 3:14). The name is not derived from anything before it; God names Himself from Himself. Beside it stands the confession Israel is commanded to hear: "Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one" (Deut 6:4). One God, and the one God is.

What He is, He declares. The seraphim call to one another: "Holy, holy, holy, is Yahweh of Armies! The whole earth is full of his glory!" (Isa 6:3). Passing before Moses, He proclaims His own name and character: "Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation" (Ex 34:6-7). Mercy and judgment stand in one proclamation, from His own mouth. The apostle states the same being as an essence: "He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8). And the one God is named in the baptismal formula as three: "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt 28:19) — one name, three named. Of the Son, John writes before all narration: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). The Word was with God, and the Word was God; both stand in one verse, and the text qualifies neither.

He sustains all

The God who is does not withdraw from what He made. Of the Son it is written that He is "upholding all things by the word of his power" (Heb 1:3). The holding is present and continuous: "He is before all things, and in him all things are held together" (Col 1:17). Paul states the same before the Athenians: "The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwellings, that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring’" (Acts 17:24-28). Life, breath, seasons, and boundaries are given, not merely begun. Nothing in the passage runs on its own: men live, and move, and have their being, in Him.

He does all He pleases

His rule over what He sustains is unqualified. "But our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases" (Ps 115:3). He says of Himself: "Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done. I say: My counsel will stand, and I will do all that I please" (Isa 46:9-10). The end is declared from the beginning, and the counsel is stated as standing before the things are done. Paul carries the same word into the church: the inheritance was foreordained "according to the purpose of him who does all things after the counsel of his will" (Eph 1:11). All things; the texts name no remainder.

On seeking

On seeking, two words stand side by side, and they are stacked here as they stand, without reconciliation beyond what is written. Acts states God's purpose in the placing of the nations: they were set in their seasons and boundaries "that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27). Romans states man's condition: "There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God" (Rom 3:11). The purpose stands. The condition stands. What the texts add is where seeking that finds comes from: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up in the last day" (John 6:44); "No one can come to me, unless it is given to him by my Father" (John 6:65). The coming is by drawing, and by gift. And the finding runs in the direction opposite to man's seeking: "I am inquired of by those who didn’t ask. I am found by those who didn’t seek me. I said, ‘See me, see me,’ to a nation that was not called by my name" (Isa 65:1). Paul takes the word up without softening it: "Isaiah is very bold and says, “I was found by those who didn’t seek me. I was revealed to those who didn’t ask for me”" (Rom 10:20). God states His purpose that men should seek Him. Man, by the same Scriptures, does not seek after God. Those who come were drawn; those who did not seek were found. Both sets of words stand.

The whole section is gathered into the close Paul sets at the end of his argument: "For of him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen" (Rom 11:36). Of Him, through Him, to Him — the compass of all things is stated in one sentence, and the glory is assigned to Him.