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The Sermon on the Mount Hedges the Torah

July 20, 2026 No Comments

Many issues ail the Charismatic church. Near the top of the list is a lack of appropriate appreciation for the Old Testament. Many Christians have been raised to believe the untruth that the New Testament is the Bible of the church, having moved past the age of the Old Testament. This is ridiculous on many levels, but the most important point is that the Old Testament was the Bible for Jesus and all the Apostles. To move past the Hebrew Bible is to miss out on the wisdom that Jesus and the early believers leaned on.

Some scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries argued that Jesus opposed or superseded the Torah in the Sermon on the Mount. This view shaped the term “antitheses,” still in use in Matthean scholarship. Now, we know Jesus did no such thing, and his sermon was misread. But the idea is still well and alive in many churches. For instance,

Matthew 5:21-22 ESV
[21] “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ [22] But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

This portion of the Sermon is said to contain “antitheses” – a term that communicated that Jesus’s teaching or stance was somewhat in opposition to the Torah. The Torah says one thing, but Jesus sees fit to update or refine it in his authority. Modern scholarship has since abandoned the antithetical reading. It is not the case that Jesus pits himself against the Torah. In fact, he earlier states this point clearly:

Matthew 5:17 ESV
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

That Matthew clearly states this point before the “antitheses” should be a hermeneutical handle or lens for reading the text. Jesus is not opposed to the Torah in any way. He came to fulfill the hopes held out in the Torah for Israel and humanity at large, as we have shown elsewhere. He could not be opposed to the thing he came to fulfill. Indeed, he further states:

Matthew 5:19 ESV
Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever else Jesus’s ministry might be about, opposing the Torah is not one of them. What, then, are the antitheses about if Jesus is not opposing the Torah? A few clues point us in the right direction. First, consider this verse:

Matthew 5:43 ESV
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

The first half, “You shall love your neighbor,” is from the Torah. The second half, “You shall hate your enemy,” does not exist anywhere in the Torah. But the quotation lumps together loving your neighbor and hating your enemy. To insist that Jesus quoted the Torah is to imply that he did not know the Law well. A more plausible alternative is that Jesus was not here directly interacting with the Torah.

Second, Matthew earlier, in the temptation account, shows Jesus using a standard formula when he cites the Torah: “It is written” (4:4, 7, 10). But in 5:43, he says, “You have heard that it was said.” This implies that Jesus is addressing interpretive oral traditions circulating in Second Temple Judaism that the people were likely familiar with. If we assume that Jesus accurately represented the interpretations of his day, that further suggests that the Torah had already been distorted. And there were understandable reasons for such a development. The people were colonized by a brutal state in Rome that did not always allow them to live in accordance with their ancestral ways. It is not difficult to see how some preachers may begin to hate their oppressors. Such distortions misrepresented God, and Jesus sought to restore the way of God consistent with the Torah.

The antithetical hypothesis, however, was correct in recognizing that Jesus goes beyond the text of the Torah. But he remains within its spirit. I think, at minimum, what Jesus does here is not different in kind from what other Rabbis did: hedging the Torah. Jesus is here building a fence around the Torah by helping his audience recognize early when they were in danger of breaking the law. Hence, he formulates other rules that, if observed, would prevent the breaking of the Torah. But, unlike other Rabbis, Jesus’ hedges are not merely preventative fences; they are also kingdom‑forming internalizations of Torah, shaping disciples into the renewed Israel – themes the epistles will later flesh out. For instance,

Matthew 5:27-28 ESV
[27] “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ [28] But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Exodus 20:14 forbids adultery, and Matthew 5:28 hedges the Exodus command. Committing adultery with a woman in one’s heart is not the same thing as physical adultery – if in doubt, know that women who have suffered abuse would be happy if it only happened in the hearts of men. Jesus here teaches an obvious truth: noumenal adultery precedes physical adultery. Hence, if a person catches adultery in their heart before it is full-grown and addresses it, they will not end up breaking the Torah. So, Jesus is calling his disciples to a higher level that protects against breaking the Torah.

Here is another example:

Obviously, anger and murder are different things. But anger typically precedes murder. Again, if someone catches anger rising in them and addresses it, they will not murder. Jesus is not legally equating anger with murder, but he is morally intensifying the command by addressing the root that leads to murder.

Let us take another example:

Matthew 5:38-39 ESV
[38] “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ [39] But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

This rule predates the Torah, as it appears in the Hammurabi Code centuries earlier. It was an improvement for its time because it ensured that the offended party did not exact greater damage in retaliation. If someone accidentally killed a neighbor’s goat, this law ensured that the offended party would not kill a herd. In the Torah, this law – better known as the Lex Talionis – is a judicial principle, not a personal ethic, since it applies to court cases, not interpersonal conflict. However, Jesus extends the application of the law to interpersonal relations, implying that he believed the spirit of the Torah was not merely about damage control but also about loving one’s enemy. Indeed, he soon would explicitly say that in Matthew 5:44-48.

It is worth noting that the Hebrew Bible contains a cluster of themes that lead to Jesus’s teaching on loving an enemy. To begin with, Torah’s “eye for eye” rule is not a command to retaliate. It is a limit on retaliation, a justice – and loving – principle. Besides, the Torah explicitly teaches principles that together amount to loving people who have done wrong. Leviticus 19 contains many laws pointing in this loving direction. For instance, 19:18 says ancient Israelites shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against a neighbor. Indeed, 19:17 forbids hating a brother in one’s heart. Also, Exodus 23:4-5 teaches the Israelites to care for an enemy’s ox and donkey. This ensures that an enemy’s business does not suffer. Hence, no matter how mad one might be against an individual, it was still one’s responsibility to ensure that the enemy’s means of livelihood did not suffer in certain cases.

Furthermore, Proverbs contain explicit turn-the-cheek teachings:

Proverbs 20:22 ESV
Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.

Proverbs 24:29 ESV
Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

Proverbs 25:21 ESV
If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,

These texts essentially teach not to repay evil with evil and, in certain circumstances, to care for an enemy in need.

Moreover, and most strikingly, Isaiah’s suffering Servant offers his cheeks to those who strike him (Isaiah 50:6). Matthew identifies Jesus as this Servant (Matthew 12:18–21), making ‘turn the other cheek’ a direct extension of the Servant’s ethic. So, Jesus’s teaching to resist escalation and love the enemy is not a new ethic. Jesus massages Torah’s wisdom to the specific context in which he taught while also revealing its fulfilled, kingdom‑shaped form. He is not asking his disciples to do what he has not embodied, as he soon would show what loving one’s enemy ultimately looks like.

The notion that the New Testament superseded the Hebrew Bible is both historically misinformed and spiritually impoverishing. It blinds believers to the very Scriptures Jesus read, prayed, taught, and fulfilled. When we treat the Old Testament as obsolete, we cut ourselves off from the wisdom that shaped the Messiah and the entire apostolic movement. The Hebrew Bible is not a discarded relic; it remains the soil from which the gospel grows. Indeed, we cannot adequately understand the gospel without significantly upping our appreciation of the Hebrew Bible. To ignore it is to rob ourselves of the contexts and covenant story that make Jesus intelligible. Recovering the Old Testament is not optional because, to be provocative, it is the primary Bible. The New Testament is mostly an inspired commentary on the Hebrew Bible, and, on the evidence of a typical Sunday sermon these days, it is quite counterproductive to read a commentary without knowing the primary text well.

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The Contingent Security of Salvation: A Critique of OSAS

July 9, 2026 No Comments

Background

Now and then, a theological issue boils over into a national conversation in Nigeria. One recent such matter concerns the doctrine Nigerians dubbed “Once Saved, Always Saved” (OSAS). The theologically savvy reader might know the matter as the hotly contested issue of the perseverance of the saints. Some years ago, we explored this matter here on the blog, focusing on four various Christian positions on how to read Hebrews 6:4-6. So, this entry may be considered a continuation of that conversation.

What is OSAS?
It is a cute summary of a doctrinal synthesis that posits that once Jesus saves a person, absolutely nothing in the entire cosmos can reverse it. There are various ways a Christian might arrive at this conclusion. For most Western believers, this is just the conclusion of Calvinism. But I suspect there may be other reasons this position is appealing to African believers: our traditional worldview is deterministic. See our treatment of Yoruba cosmology, for example. Besides, OSAS can be quite comforting, as it teaches that the believer does not need to live in fear of what might happen. Her future is already settled in Christ. Christians are merely occupying until Jesus returns; we are in no doubt about our destiny.

The Hidden Premises of OSAS
Like most Christians influenced by the Word of Faith movement, I, too, initially affirmed OSAS. Much later in my journey, however, I learned more about the origin of this idea. In particular, once I learned about the ideas that underpin OSAS, I could not, in good faith, continue to affirm it. The idea that a person is always saved (in and by Jesus) if she was ever once saved is a result of other theological claims within a particular 16th-century European Reformation theology. Some of the hidden claims include the following:

1. God sovereignly chooses who gets saved and who gets eternally damned. And this divine choice has no input whatsoever from the humans affected.

2. That saving grace of God is both irresistible and efficacious. The selected humans cannot reject the grace extended, and the grace is guaranteed to do complete work for and in the recipients.

From these claims (and a few others), the conclusion follows that once a person is selected for salvation, it must be because God sovereignly chose that person. Since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, it is impossible for that person ever to become unsaved.

Furthermore, there is a Word of Faith spin on the same idea above. The apostles of the Word of Faith movement taught that when a believer gets saved, she receives eternal life into her recreated human spirit. Obviously, if it were true that eternal life is woven into one’s constitution at rebirth, then it becomes very difficult to see how one can lose it. Besides, Word of Faith theology holds that if eternal life can be lost, it is not eternal to begin with. To be eternal is to continue without end. Hence, once anyone receives eternal life, it is irreversible.

Both ideas, the Calvinistic and the Word of Faith ones, lead to the same end: a believer cannot forfeit salvation. For reasons to be explored shortly, I reject both ideas in their entirety. I shall argue that the Calvinistic premises and the Word of Faith conception of eternal life are mistaken. A believer, once saved, will always be saved provided she continues to abide in Jesus. If she fails to abide, she may forfeit salvation.

We have explored at length elsewhere reasons to reject the idea that God, by divine fiat, chooses who gets saved and who does not. Furthermore, I do not believe that Jesus’s saving grace is irresistible. In other words, I do not think that humans cannot say no to Jesus’s offer. Interested readers should see our interaction with these ideas in the entries on Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will. We shall soon interact with more biblical data in this entry.

Understanding Eternal Life

The Word of Faith conception of eternal life is cute, but it is an imagination foreign to the Bible. Indeed, Jesus gives “eternal life”, but this life is not what some Charismatics have imagined it to be. To begin with, eternal life is not like a substance one receives. This is a deeply Hebraic idea that must be understood on its own terms.

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On Paradise and the Divine Council

April 27, 2026 No Comments

This piece is written to address possible questions readers may have from reading the entry arguing that heaven is not the goal of the Christian life.

In this entry, I want to address well-known passages from 2 Corinthians concerning Paul’s vision and Jesus’s words to the thief on the cross. As we shall see, both Paul’s vision and Jesus’ promise rely on Second‑Temple Jewish categories that modern readers often flatten or misread. These passages, often isolated from their Jewish context, actually speak a common language about divine authority and the geography of the unseen realm. We begin with Paul:

2 Corinthians 12:1–3 (ESV)
[1] I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. [2] I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. [3] And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—

This is one of three places “paradise” occurs in the New Testament. The serious Bible student might recall that part of the Corinthian problem Paul faced was that he was being compared to some “super-apostles.” In effect, the church questioned some of the things Paul taught them. So, Paul had to demonstrate in different ways that the things he taught the church are legitimate and divinely sanctioned. To do that, Paul arguably pulled a big card from the Hebrew Bible.

In the Old Testament, the only Bible used by all early believers and Jesus, there are two major ways to tell whether someone is a true prophet who genuinely hears from God. The first is obvious: if what you claimed you received from God came to pass, you very likely heard from God. This is especially so if what you prophesied was non‑obvious, complicated, or otherwise unusual. Of course, if what you asserted did not materialize, you were not a prophet. No do‑overs. Neither could there be do‑overs because the one you claimed to hear from is omniscient. He could not be wrong. The second way is different in that it is not verifiable, but it is weighty. True prophets often participated in the divine council. Isaiah saw the LORD and other members of the council (Isaiah 6). God himself directly speaks to this point in Jeremiah:

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On Hebrews 12:1: No Human Witnesses in the Cloud

April 27, 2026 No Comments

Hebrews 12:1 NRSVUE
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

Since I wrote the piece on humanity’s destiny being permanently tied to the earth, I have decided to keep putting out short posts to address the conceivable whatabouts bound to emerge. In this piece, I want to address the famous text above.

Hebrews has a long history of torturing exegetes, especially those who come to it with unyielding preconceived notions. This work is full of warnings and encouragements to believing Christians facing severe hardship. The author draws copiously on the Hebrew Bible to encourage believers. For instance:

Hebrews 2:1-3 NRSVUE
[1] Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. [2] For if the message declared through angels proved valid, and every transgression or disobedience received a just penalty, [3] how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It was declared at first through the Lord, and it was confirmed for us by those who heard him,

The contrast here is that just as unbelieving Israelites perished in the Hebrew Bible, so will believers perish, even more severely, if they “neglect so great a salvation.” Of course, much of Western Christianity has strongly disagreed on the question of the perseverance of the saint – whether a believer can forfeit salvation. I’m not going to rehash the points, but I will include links to my entries on the various positions below. But if we read Hebrews on its own terms, there is no escaping the fact that the author believed and argued that a Christian can forfeit salvation. But that does not have to happen precisely because of Jesus. The first 10 chapters detail Christ’s priestly work, established on firmer grounds than the Levites’. Jesus has opened access to God in ways the old order of priestly functions only dreamt of. Indeed, Jesus is right now functioning as a priest on humanity’s behalf as he intercedes for us:

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Death, Sheol, and Resurrection: What Happens When We Die?

April 16, 2026 1 Comment

This piece is adapted from a longer entry investigating Word of Faith theology.

Generations of believers have been taught that they will go to heaven when they die. People, of course, know they will not go to heaven as they are on earth. Everyone knows that the body decays in the grave when someone dies. Hence, one tradition says it is the spirit of the person that goes to heaven. So, life after death is quite spiritual. In this piece, I want to show that this common view is mistaken by exploring biblical data on life after death.

Let us begin with this: Do humans continue to exist when they die—that is, when the spirit separates from the body? This is a remarkably complex question that we cannot do justice to in this short entry. However, we will make a few key points. First, the answer is both Yes and No. When people die, they obviously cease to exist in the way they used to be. Indeed, death seems to be the precise word we use to describe the cessation of the life of a person as we knew it. Properly speaking, a human life is an embodied life. So, once the body ceases to be animated, life as we know it ceases. But it is also true that the ancients in the Bible thought that a dead person continues to exist:

Ecclesiastes 12:7 ESV
and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

This text, made famous by its frequent use at Services of Songs for the deceased, suggests a reversal of the creation of the human in Genesis: the breath of life returns to God, and the body dissolves into the earth. This may lead one to think the dead continue to exist with God in some spiritual form. But as we shall soon see, this existence consists of almost nothing. Some other texts suggest that the dead go to the realm of the dead, characterized by inactivity:

Ecclesiastes 9:10 ESV
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

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By God’s Design: Heaven is not the Goal

April 14, 2026 3 Comments

Introduction

For several decades now, Christians worldwide have been taught that the ultimate goal of the faith is heaven. Considering longevity, this idea has essentially achieved a canonical status in believers’ minds. Yet, Christians before the 1900s did not entertain such a thought. One major reason the notion became popular was the publication of the Scofield Bible in 1909, which presented the idea alongside the Bible’s text, not as one among many options, but as the only reading offered. Rapture theology became synonymous with eschatology. Other enabling factors, including the later rise of American fundamentalism and Cold War anxieties, contributed to the popularity of this idea.

I recognize that this can be an emotionally charged and potentially disorienting issue. There are people in their 80s who have believed all their lives that heaven awaits. So, I’m aware of the potential distress that this entry might cause. But I owe it to such persons to rigorously interact with Scripture to extract the truth. In this piece, I shall argue that the earth has always been and will forever be humanity’s destiny. Yes, there is a heaven, but it is not the residential home of humans.

In the Beginning

Let us take it from the beginning. Humans were not the first created beings. The Bible reveals that a host of heavenly beings were created before humans. For reasons best known to God, he made the angels, cherubs, seraphs, and others to reside in heaven. But when God made humans, he first prepared a cultivated portion of the Earth for them to dwell in. He could have made humans join the heavenly beings. Instead, heaven – that is, God – regularly comes to the earth to fellowship with humanity in the special spot he has earmarked for them. It was not long before things went south. The humans became corrupted, and God must act:

Genesis 3:22-24 NRSVUE
[22] Then the LORD God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”— [23] therefore the LORD God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. [24] He drove out the humans, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

I have written elsewhere that knowing good and evil is not, in itself, a sin. In his famous prayer when he became king, Solomon asks:

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Christian Marriage: Untangling Culture from Scripture

April 11, 2026 1 Comment

I. Introduction: The Problem Behind the Debate

Christian marriage is often discussed as if Scripture handed the church a fixed blueprint—one rooted in timeless roles, divinely sanctioned hierarchy, and a “headship” model that places men over women. But when we look closely, much of what passes for “biblical marriage” is not drawn from the Bible at all. It is inherited from Greco‑Roman patriarchy, medieval canon law, and modern Western tradition. The result is a theological framework that treats hierarchy as sacred, even when the biblical text points in a different direction.

This essay asks a simple but disruptive question: What if Christian marriage has been misread through the lens of cultural tradition rather than Scripture itself? When we return to the text—Genesis, Paul’s letters, and the early Christian vision of community—we find not a system of gendered authority but a movement toward mutuality, shared vocation, and new‑creation identity. The Bible’s trajectory does not reinforce patriarchy; it steadily undermines it. To see this clearly, we must read the Scriptures on their own terms, in their own contexts, and with attention to the social worlds they address. Genesis offers a picture of partnership, not hierarchy. Paul writes within patriarchal structures but reshapes them around the self‑giving love of Christ. And the early church models a community where men and women serve, teach, prophesy, and lead together. This essay is not an attempt to modernize the Bible. It is an attempt to take the Bible more seriously; to let its own vision speak, even when it challenges long‑held assumptions. What emerges is a richer, more faithful understanding of Christian marriage: one grounded not in domination or role‑based authority, but in the cruciform love that defines the people of God.

II. Genesis 1-2: Humanity as Co-Image Bearers

As argued at length elsewhere, Genesis 2 does not teach that woman was created for man. We cannot rehash the arguments here but will give a high-level summary. Below are crucial points emerging from Genesis 2:

Hebrew Grammar Rules

Just as in English, a proper noun does not follow the definite article; the same is true in Biblical Hebrew. For instance, a competent speaker would not say, “I saw the Ade over there under the tree.” Ade, being someone’s name, doesn’t require a definite article. Why does that matter? In Genesis 2, the word “adam” serves multiple functions. Ordinarily, the word means “human.” However, the account also uses the word as a proper name for the male human in the story. Interestingly, this latter use of the word does not occur until verses 22-23 in the story. However, sloppy English translations, perhaps influenced by the patriarchal mindset, have given a misleading impression. Consider the following:

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Proverbs 8, Philo, and Early Christian Thinkers

March 10, 2026 1 Comment

The following piece is adapted from a longer entry that argues that the New Testament identifies Jesus as the cr eator.

Proverbs 8 is a highly influential text within Second Temple-era Judaism and its first-century mutations. Jews and Christians alike engaged with it, each trying to understand the passage’s contribution to the identity of the creator. Many great Christian thinkers have read this passage as descriptive of the Trinitarian Father-Son relationship. Justin Martyr and Origen were among the first to use Proverbs 8 in this way, a move that would later influence Nicene theology. They read the passage as saying that the Father created with the aid of, or through, Wisdom, later identified with the Son. Below is the relevant portion:

Proverbs 8:22-31 NRSVUE
[22] “The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. [23] Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. [24] When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. [25] Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, [26] when he had not yet made earth and fields or the world’s first bits of soil. [27] When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, [28] when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, [29] when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, [30] then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, [31] playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

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On the Identity of God in 2 Corinthians 4:6

March 10, 2026 No Comments

This entry is adapted from a longer piece that argues that New Testament authors identified Jesus as the creator of the cosmos.

In a recent entry, I argued that three New Testament authors see Jesus as the creator of the cosmos, including Paul. However, Paul also pens 2 Corinthians 4:6. Traditionally, commentators take “God” in this verse to refer to the Father. There are good reasons for doing so. Typically, when Paul says “God” in proximity to terms referring to Jesus (e.g., Jesus, Christ, Jesus Christ, the Son, etc) as a distinct person, “God” refers to the Father. For instance, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:4). If we apply the same reasoning to 2 Corinthians 4:6, “God” will refer to the Father. This may then imply that the Father is the divine person in Genesis who says, “Let there be light,” and hence the immediate creator. Furthermore, the same divine person would be shining “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” in human hearts by the gospel that Paul preached to the Corinthians. However, in light of the christological saturation of the passage, I shall argue that Paul’s language in 4:6 allows “God” to include Jesus and that this verse does not invalidate the conclusion that Jesus is the immediate creator of the cosmos.

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Jesus as the Creator

February 27, 2026 4 Comments

Three New Testament texts by different authors explicitly claim that Jesus is the creator of the cosmos. For some strange reasons I do not fully understand, many in the church have historically been uncomfortable with the claim and have found ways to blunt the force of the assertion:

John 1:1, 3, 14 ESV
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
[3] All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
[14] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Colossians 1:15-17 ESV
[15] He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. [16] For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. [17] And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Hebrews 1:1-3 ESV
[1] Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, [2] but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. [3] He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

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