Our Integration Point

For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Romans 11:36

Commenting on this enigmatic passage of Scripture, the late Dr Francis Schaeffer believed that it explained the comforting fact that God is our “integration point. “ We live in a world that is both physically and morally disintegrated and furthermore it is insidiously disintegrating to a greater extent day by day. On the physical side we have the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamic, the law of entropy, which is patently observable proof of a winding down of order and energy in nature. Simply put the 2^nd Law points out the fact that all physical systems are moving from a state of complexity to simplicity, from a state of order to chaos and from a state of highly available energy to less available energy. Our physical world is surely and gradually disintegrating. It the midst of that we need a reliable source of integration and stability. The psalmist provided us with reassuring information in that realm when he wrote: In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. (Psalm 102:25-27). God is utterly immutable and while every thing else is in a state of instability, He alone remains eternally stable.

Morally, we live in a fallen world. That moral instability causes fallen humanity to engage in all sorts of despicable behavior. Writing to the Galatian church, the apostle Paul listed those crimes against God as being: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. (Galatians 5:19-20) Our only defense against such behavior and our singular ability to stay integrated in this disintegrated world, is the grace of God the Father, the atoning work on the Cross of God the Son, the regenerating power of God the Holy Spirit who makes us new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17) and the infallible, inerrant and inspired instruction of the Holy Bible.

With all things coming from, through and to our sovereign Lord, nothing escapes His knowledge, affects His ability to control every molecule in the universe and every being in heaven, or violates His perfect will. For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)