Ex Nihilo

Only God is from everlasting to everlasting.

Consequently everything else has an origin.  God is that origin.

Everything, contrary to immediate instinct, does not therefore come from something.  Everything comes from nothing [ex nihilo].

Everything must necessarily come from nothing.  This is deep observation, that there was a First Cause that, well, wasn't.  Faith believes that Everything comes from nothing by the work of Someone.  The First Cause is God.

On Sunday evening I was explaining the way that this apparently philosophical truth is profound in understanding how God can do the impossible.  More than that - there is no real difference (I didn't venture to say this in a sermon though) - between what we call possible and the apparent impossible.

We define the possible by reference, for example, to a baby coming from a sperm and an egg.  The virgin birth therefore seems impossible.  Or we consider a dead body to be past life (more inevitable than merely possible).  Resurrection on the other hand is impossible.

But if all life - my life, your life - derives ultimately from nothing and if Someone has made that so? Well, then there can be no impossibilities for that Someone.  The things I think are possibilities are but the outer reaches of one great ex nihilo Impossibility.  In Him we live and move and have our being.

Charles Simeon, the great Cambridge divine, was wise enough to take this great truth and apply it to the most desperate pastoral moment of anyone's life. On his deathbed he informed his visitors:

"I find infinite consolation in the fact that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Why, if he can bring all the wonder of the worlds out of nothing, He may yet make something out of me!"