INTRODUCTION
Romans 11:33-36 are the concluding verses to the apostle’s doctrinal treatise; a treatise which commenced in Romans 1 and continued through Romans 11:32. The apostle expresses his amazement at God’s ways in a captivating doxological statement in verses 33 through verse 36,
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.
The term “doxology” comes from the Greek word doxologia, which means “giving glory.” As we read through it, we cannot help but to be impressed by Paul’s description of the glorious persona of God in all of His perfections. Scripture is much like an onion. It has many layers, and sometimes you need to peel one layer off to see the underlying beauty of the next layer.
There are times when reading the Scriptures that we tend to either rush through them or gloss over them. We think we understand a verse immediately on its face. In doing so we miss the beauty, the content, the essence, the truth expressed therein. John 3:16 is a fine example of this. Those that hold up signs with John 3:16 embossed on them believe it is a verse understood on its face. No further examination is needed. They believe it is offering a universal opportunity for salvation to whoever believes in the Son of God. However, that is not true. I would challenge any who sees John 3:16 this way to attempt to harmonize it with John 17 where Jesus Christ says, “. . . Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him” (Emphasis added). Care should always be taken when interpreting Scripture. Rightly dividing the Word of truth requires this.
As we arrive at Romans 11:36, we might be tempted to pay little attention to it, especially considering the profound statements by Paul immediately preceding it. Verse 36, however, will be the focus of this article. At first blush, it does not immediately garner much attention; however, upon closer examination, it is dazzling in its hidden beauty!
You will notice that the apostle uses three prepositions here; of, through , and to. These three prepositions are filled with profound meaning in respect to God, and they in a very simple fashion express His transcendence over all things . Because of that, this verse should arrest our attention and cause us to spend some time peeling back its many layers.
FOR OF HIM ... ARE ALL THINGS
The preposition “of” is translated from the Greek ek or ex and means “out of” or “from.” The point that Paul is making is that God is the source of “all things.” When we turn our attention to Genesis 1:1, we plainly see this. Genesis 1:1 reads, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” You have heard of the law of cause and effect. It is defined as “the universal principle that every action (cause) has a specific consequence (effect), and every effect has a preceding cause.” By way of example, if I knock over a glass of water and the water spills on the floor, I am the cause and the spilled water is the effect. As God is the Creator of all things, He is the cause of all things. Everything that exists is uniquely His creative fiat. The question we have, based upon the law of cause and effect, is “Who created God?” The Bible does not address God’s creator because God does not have a creator. God existed in eternity past; He exists in eternity present; and He exists in eternity future. Therefore, God is the “uncaused cause” of all things. He exists in and of Himself in eternity.
In Genesis 1:1, the word translated “created” is the Hebrew word bara. Bara is never used of man’s making or forming anything. It is always used of God’s creative activity. It occurs some fifty-five times in the Old Testament and it carries the idea of instantaneous, miraculous creation. That is, it is the creating of something out of nothing (ex nihilo). In Genesis 1:3 we read, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” John Philips in his Genesis Commentary says it this way: “God said, ‘Light be’ and ‘Light was.’”
The great theologian John Calvin summarizes the work of the Godhead this way in his Institutes of the Christian Religion:
To the Father is attributed the beginning of activity and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things, but to the Spirit is assigned the power and efficacy of that activity.
He further adds, “All of God’s actions are trinitarian actions, all of the Persons being essentially involved.”
And again, he adds, “We must be careful in making these distinctions and not turn them into strict divisions of activity because the work of one Person is always the work of the other two.”
Calvin’s statements are supported by Deuteronomy 6:4, which states, “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.” LORD is Jehovah, and Jehovah is the great I am and the covenanting God. God, in this verse, is the Hebrew Elohim. The “im” ending indicates a plurality, and it is therefore referring to all three members of the Godhead. Therefore, as Calvin stated, “All of God’s actions are trinitarian actions, all Persons being essentially involved.” When the apostle writes “For of him . . . are all things,” the trinitarian activity of the Godhead is stated in the simplest of ways.
AND THROUGH HIM... ARE ALL THINGS
Paul is emphasizing God’s governance, His administrative activity over His creation. God is transcendent. That means that He is totally different from His creation. Some have referred to this as “His otherliness.” He possesses attributes that we can never possess; omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, just to name a few. God emphasizes this distinction in Isaiah 46:9 stating, “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me” (Emphasis added).
God is also immanent. He is immanently involved in His creation. The definition of immanent when speaking of God is “permanently pervading and sustaining the universe.” Sadly, the philosophical position of Deism asserted the existence of a creator God who is not involved in the daily affairs of the universe. R.C. Sproul comments on the Deist’s beliefs this way:
The deists believed that God was the great watchmaker. In their view, God formed the universe, established its laws, and fixed the gears and machinations of the machine, much as a watchmaker builds and watch. He then wound up the mechanism and stepped out of the picture, allowing the clock to run on its own.
Norman Geisler in his Christian Apologetics wrote: “The deist believes that God made the world but does not ‘monkey’ with it.”
The 1689 London Confession of Faith will have none of this deist foolishness. In Chapter 5, under the heading “Of Divine Providence,” it states:
1. God the good Creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most holy providence, to the end for which they were created . . .
2. Although in relation to foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly; so that there is not anything that befalls any by chance, or without His providence; yet by the same providence He ordered them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.
3. God in His ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them at his pleasure.
There are two magnificent examples of God’s providential involvement with His creation. There are two passages I want to share. The first is found in Genesis 45:4-8,
And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall be neither earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
Joseph repeats this amazing acknowledgment of the providence of God in Genesis 50:20 stating, “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”
Secondly, I believe King Nebuchadnezzar said it best. You will recall in the book of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was prideful and lifted up in his own mind. In Daniel 4:29-31 we read,
[H]e [king Nebuchadnezzar] walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee.
The king had been previously warned in a dream interpreted by Daniel that he would find that he would be driven from men and his
[D]welling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsever he will (Daniel 4:32).
At the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s humility, after his understanding returned to him, the king made this marvelous statement:
I blessed the most High, and I praised and hounoured him that liveth for ever whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?
God through His amazing control over His creation will bring it to its ultimate conclusion. Nothing is out of His control.
AND TO HIM... ARE ALL THINGS
“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever amen.” God is not only the beginning of all things. He is also the ending, the conclusion, the destination, of all things. Scripture speaks of Him as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. He is where all creation is moving towards. The beauty of this reality is that the corruption of sin, which has plagued all men and His creation, will be removed. Peter refers to this as “the great consummation.” This is found in 2 Peter 3:10-13,
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
First Corinthians states the necessary changes that will take place in God’s chosen people: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53).
Yes, the God of creation has determined the final destination described by Peter in his second epistle (See 2 Peter 3:10-13).
TO HIM BE GLORY FOREVER. AMEN
Paul has ascended this mountain of thought to a glorifying crescendo. This was the pinnacle of his normally indefatigable ability to comment, and he concludes with “to him be glory for ever. Amen.” The word “glory” is translated from the Greek doxa. This Greek word is defined as “splendor, brightness, magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace.” In the long ago, Moses desired to see the glory of God. This moment is revealed in Exodus 33. Viewing the fullness of God’s glory is deadly to the natural man. Therefore, God said to His servant:
I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. And he said, thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen (Exodus 33:19-33).
Moses was allowed to see God’s “after glow.” The “after glow” that Moses was allowed to see was the glory of God as the LORD passed by.
Israel experienced the Shekinah glory of God throughout their existence. The Shekinah glory of God symbolizes His glory made visible. It represented His dwelling with His active presence in the world. Israel witnessed the Shekinah glory as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Moses experienced this glory at the burning bush that was not consumed. Isaiah speaks of God’s glory filling the temple in Isaiah 6:1-4,
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke (Emphasis added).
Smoke is the visible manifestation of the Shekinah glory of God. Paul emphatically declared that the light of the glory of God was brighter than the noon day sun in his defense to King Agrippa, “At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me” (Acts 26:13). In fact, he declares that he was blinded by the intense brightness of that light (See Acts 9:8). Once again, the Shekinah glory of God is revealed to a man.
The disciples were allowed to see Christ’s glory on the mount of transfiguration in Matthew chapter 17. In that passage we read that Jesus “was transfigured before them and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Matthew 17:2).
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for glory is kabod. Its meaning is interesting when applied to God’s glory. It means “heavy, weighty.” It would seem that this one word expresses the “depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” It is an acknowledgement of the great things He has done in creation, salvation, predestinating His chosen people unto the adoption of children and causing them to be made accepted in the beloved (See Ephesians 1:5 6). Beyond that, He has guaranteed them a home in heaven (See John 14:1-3).
CONCLUSION
Paul concluded his summary with the word “Amen.” Amen means “so be it” or “it is true.” Fanny J. Crosby’s beautiful hymn “To God Be the Glory” is a perfect description of this subject. She captures the thought perfectly as she writes:
To God be the glory, great things He hath done, So loved He the world that He gave us His son, Who yielded His life an atonement for sin, And opened the life gate that all may go in.
[Chorus] Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the earth hear His voice! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice! Oh, come to the Father, through Jesus the Son, And give him the glory, great things He has done.
To this, we can only submit and agree with Paul and say “Amen.”