What does Hebrews 1:3 mean by 'upholding all things'?
It means the Son is actively holding the universe in existence right now — not that he wound it up and stepped back, but that he is the ongoing reason everything continues to be.
It means the Son is actively holding the universe in existence right now — not that he wound it up and stepped back, but that he is the ongoing reason everything continues to be.
"Who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature, upholding all things by the word of his power." — Hebrews 1:3
The key word is pherōn (φέρων, G5342) — a present active participle, which in Greek signals continuous, ongoing action. It doesn't say the Son "upheld" things at creation and completed that task. It says he is upholding, right now, in the present tense. And the direct object is ta panta — literally "the all things," meaning the totality, with no exceptions.
What does that actually mean? Not that God is identical with the universe (pantheism), but that the universe depends on him in every moment. Think of it like a note held on an instrument: the note doesn't persist by inertia after the player stops — it only exists while the player sustains it. The writer of Hebrews is saying the universe is like that note, and Christ is like that player. Remove him and the note doesn't fade — it was never there.
Paul says the same thing from a slightly different angle: "In him all things hold together" (Col 1:17). The Greek verb there — synestēken (συνέστηκεν, G4921) — is a perfect tense, meaning "they were brought together and are still held together." And in Acts 17:28, Paul tells the philosophers of Athens: "In him we live and move and have our being." The middle form of "we are moved" (kinoumetha, G2795) is passive — we are not self-movers; we are being moved.
The tense structure within Hebrews 1:3 itself makes the point neatly. The verse contains three verbal ideas: the Son made purification (completed — aorist), he sat down at the right hand (completed — aorist), and he is upholding all things (ongoing — present participle). The redemptive work is finished. The cosmic sustaining is not, because it is not the kind of work that finishes.
This isn't decorative religious language. It's a direct claim about who holds the world together — and the grammar insists it is happening at this moment.
For the full word study with the Hebrew and Greek texts, see Upheld by His Word.
Did the 2022 Nobel Prize disprove materialism? What does this mean for the Bible?
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics didn't prove God, but it did rule out 'local realism' — the assumption that matter exists independently and locally, which had been the default secular picture since Newton. The Bible never needed that picture, and its claims about creation and sustaining hold on their own ground.
Does the Bible say God sustains the universe right now — not just at creation?
Yes, and the grammar of the original languages makes it unambiguous — across Hebrew and Greek, across eight centuries of writing, whenever Scripture describes God's relationship to the created order, it uses the ongoing present tense, never a completed past.
What does Colossians 1:17 mean by 'in him all things hold together'?
It means Christ is the reason the created order has coherence — everything that exists is held in a state of structured togetherness in him, not as an abstract principle but as an active, ongoing relationship.
What is the difference between logos and rhema in the Bible?
Both Greek words translate the Hebrew 'dabar' (word) and are used for God's speech in Scripture — logos tends toward the word as meaning or message, rhema toward the word as spoken utterance with immediate effect. Hebrews uses rhema specifically when describing the word that frames creation and upholds the universe.