Through him all things were made
As we have been looking at the second person of the Trinity in the Nicene creed, we have noted that the only Son of God is eternally begotten, not made, of the Father. He is the same essence as the Father. God from God, Light from Light, very God from very God. One of the critical aspects of this is that the Son is NOT a created being but is the creator. This error is the beginning of many heretical views throughout history. We have touched on this throughout our study, but we will spend a brief moment to look at Jesus as the creator. The line in the creed “through him all things were made,” comes straight from the bible. John 1:3 says, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” All things, visible and invisible, Paul writes in Colossians 1:15. If Christ is created, it would read almost all things… However, Christ is the creator of all things.
The prologue in John’s gospel is a great passage to study when looking at the second person of the Trinity. He explains the eternality of Christ, his existence in the eternality, his relationship in the eternality, his essence in the eternality, and his role as creator. The creed shows all of these points. We will briefly be focusing on the last. Because Christ is eternal, not created, he was with God in the beginning. The theology of the Trinity can be complex for us to wrap a small little head around. God is three in one. The complexity can come when we understand this with creation or his divine activity. Our minds want to focus on the Three-ness or One-ness of God. We look at God creating the world, but then we want to divide each person’s roles among the Trinity. Even in this creed, we have one line about One God but look at the three persons (majority on the second person of the Trinity).
Often, we might think of God the Father as Creator, the Son as Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit as the Helper. This is true and Biblical, but we need to understand God is not Tritheistic, three separate Gods, but Triune. God is one, so every person of the Godhead must be involved in everything God does. This is known as the doctrine of Inseparable Operations. God’s divine activity cannot be divided because God is simple and has no parts. Augustine explains that God “works indivisibly.” Every person of the Godhead is a creator because “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Hence in the creed, we can say, the Father is “maker of heaven and earth;” through the Son, all things were made; and the Spirit is the giver of life.
As our small minds need to be in bewilderment of our amazing God, we should go from the unity of the Godhead and then to the persons in the Godhead. Then back and forth as we try and grasp the infinite God with our finite brain. We realize our small feeble, fallen, finite body and are driven to worship the infinite, unchangeable, eternal God. We worship the God of creation, who made the heavens and the earth and all that is within them, by the power of his word, in the space of six days. We worship the living true and Triune God of the bible, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As we worship one person of the Trinity, we worship the Godhead.
