Held Together in Christ: The Mediator of All Creation

I’ve been reading a remarkable book titled The Mediation of Jesus Christ by Baxter Kruger. I highly recommend it—it’s one of those books that opens your eyes to how vast and intimate the work of Christ truly is. Kruger weaves together the voices of the apostles, early church fathers, and theologians like Athanasius, Calvin, and even Thomas Merton to show how all creation flows from and is sustained in Jesus Christ.

Following the apostles and early teachers, Calvin once emphasized that both the creation and the continued existence of all things flow from Jesus Christ. This is not a novel idea—it is the bedrock of the Christian tradition:Jesus is the mediator of creation, not just once long ago, but continually.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, echoed this truth beautifully:

“All creatures, spiritual and material, are created in, through, and by Christ, the Word of God. It is He who sustains them in being. In Him they hold together. Without Him they would fall apart.”

That’s what I’ve been trying to say through all these reflections and readings—the cosmos itself exists in the Son, in Christ. We are held together in Him.

This isn’t a new teaching; it was the position of the early church. Calvin, for all his brilliance, seemed to lose sight of this when he spoke of Christ being “outside of us” because of sin. But the early fathers saw something deeper—that we have never existed apart from Him.

The theologian Colin Gunton wrote,

“There is already and always a relationship between the Son of God and the world, and it now uniquely takes the form of personal presence.”

Already and always. Why? Because He is the Creator. As Paul said in Acts 17, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

Karl Barth put it even more bluntly:

“Man never at all exists in himself. Man exists in Jesus Christ, and in Him alone.”

That statement brings everything into focus. Even this small collection of voices—Athanasius, Calvin, Merton, Gunton, Barth—exposes the great illusion of separation. The idea that we could ever exist apart from Christ is not just mistaken; it’s disastrous. We were made in Him, through Him, and for Him.

One day as I pondered these things in John 1, it struck me like the dawning of a new day:

“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Everything that has come into being has come through Him—and it is in Him that it continues to exist.

That’s what Kruger means by the mediation of Christ. The One who created the world and humanity is the same One through whom it is sustained. When we speak of Jesus, we speak of the Father’s eternal Son, anointed in the Holy Spirit—the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists. This eternal Son became flesh. And in becoming flesh, He did not cease to be who He always was.

The eternal Son of the Father, Creator and Sustainer of all things, stood in our midst—flat-footed on the earth—as the man Christ Jesus.

So what happens to Him happens to the cosmos. What happens to Him happens to humanity.

Paul expresses it perfectly in Colossians 1:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in Him all things were created—in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.…For in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, making peace through the blood of His cross—whether things on earth or in heaven.”

Think about that: In Him all things hold together.

This same Christ—the one who made and sustains everything—was crucified, buried, and raised up in resurrection life. What happened to Him happened to us. His resurrection was not just personal; it was cosmic. The life of the age to come has already entered into time through Him.

Paul says in Colossians 3,

“You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

And in John 14:20, Jesus said,

“In that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.”

That’s the reality of our existence. We live in a new creation because the old has passed away in Him. Jesus, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, has entered our world to recreate, restore, and reconcile it all.

And what is our part? We get to tell people the good news:They already have life in Christ. It’s already theirs. They cannot exist apart from Him.

The light has come and the darkness cannot overcome it.