All Is All

A four-page standard version, condensed from the Expanded version above.

A longtime pastor once said something so simple it could be missed if a person wasn't paying attention: all is all, and that's all all is. God is not one piece of the picture. He is the whole of it, and there is nothing left over once that has been said.

I am who I am (Exodus 3:14). He is not defined by comparison to anything else, because there is nothing else to compare Him to. Being is already everything He needs to be. He can't be anything else, not because He is limited, but because nothing is missing that could be added and nothing extra could be removed.

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The Phrase and Where It Came From

A pastor in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania said it plainly one day to a man chasing after God with everything he had: all is all, and that's all all is. It was not a clever turn of phrase meant to sound profound — it was the opposite, an attempt to say the simplest possible thing about God in the fewest possible words, because the truth about Him has never actually needed to be complicated. Something in that sentence stuck immediately and has been returned to again and again in the years since.

What makes a phrase like that worth building a whole teaching around is not its cleverness. It is how much weight four small words can carry once a person actually sits with them. All is all. Not almost all. Not all except the parts too hard to explain. All, completely, without remainder.

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The Great I AM

When Moses asked God what name he should give the Israelites, God did not offer a list of attributes or a genealogy. He gave a name that is really no name at all in the ordinary sense — a bare statement of pure existence. I am who I am (Exodus 3:14). He is not defined by comparison to anything else, because there is nothing else to compare Him to. He simply is, and being is already everything He needs to be.

Every other name in Scripture describes God in relation to something — Provider, Healer, Shepherd, King. Those names are true and good, but they are still attached to a role God plays toward someone else. I AM is different. It describes nothing but Himself, in relation to nothing but Himself — which is exactly why the phrase all is all is even possible to say truthfully.

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From Him, Through Him, To Him

For from him and through him and to him are all things (Romans 11:36). All things — without exception — trace back to Him as their source, move forward through Him as their sustaining power, and are aimed toward Him as their final purpose. There is no third category of things existing outside that circle.

This has a practical edge: gratitude is never misdirected when it is ultimately aimed at God, no matter how many human hands a gift passed through on its way to a person. All is all does not erase the human middlemen. It simply refuses to let the chain of gratitude stop short of where it was always headed.

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All Things Hold Together

In him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17) — present tense, ongoing, right now. God is not merely the biggest thing in existence. He is the reason existence itself continues to hold its shape, moment by moment.

Scientists describe the same universe in terms of forces and constants — gravity, the strong nuclear force. Colossians does not contradict that description; it names the Person those forces answer to. The forces are real. They are also the visible fingerprints of an invisible hand that has never once let go.

This is part of what makes the phrase all is all more than a poetic flourish. It is a description of ongoing, active reality. God is not merely the biggest thing in existence, one large object among many smaller ones. He is the reason existence itself continues to hold its shape, moment by moment, everywhere, all at once.

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All Things Working Together for Good

In all things God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) — not most things, not the pleasant things, but all things, without a carve-out for the pieces too broken to redeem. There is no circumstance dark enough to fall outside His reach.

This does not mean every hardship gets a tidy explanation in this lifetime. Joseph did not understand, in the middle of slavery and imprisonment, how it would resolve into the saving of many lives (Genesis 50:20). The promise is not that a person can see the good as it happens, but that God is already weaving it, whether or not the weaving is visible yet.

This is where the phrase moves from abstract theology into something a grieving person can actually hold onto. A God who is only sovereign over some things would leave a person wondering whether their particular pain fell inside His jurisdiction or outside it. All is all closes that gap entirely.

A God who is only sovereign over some things would leave a person wondering whether their particular pain fell inside His jurisdiction or outside it. All is all closes that gap entirely, and that is not a small comfort. It is the whole comfort.

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All Have Sinned, All Can Be Saved

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) — no exceptions. But whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16) — a door open to all who walk through it. The same completeness that names the problem also names the solution.

If God is truly all, then no one's sin is too unusual to be covered by a solution that is also all-sufficient, and no one's background disqualifies them from a door built to be open to whoever, without exception.

This is the same pattern seen everywhere else in this teaching, applied now to the most personal question a person can ask. The same word that flattens every excuse for pride also flattens every excuse for despair, because a solution this complete leaves no one standing outside its reach.

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God All In All

So that God may be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28). Not merely present in all things, but the sum and substance of all things once history reaches its intended conclusion — the Alpha and the Omega (Revelation 1:8), the beginning and the end of everything in between.

This ending is not a story of erasure, the way most human stories of triumph involve one side destroying another. It is a story of everything finally being seen in right relationship to its source, no longer competing with Him for glory that was never available for anyone else to claim.

It is worth pausing on how different this ending is from every human story of ultimate triumph, which usually involves one side winning and something else being destroyed or erased entirely. Every act of genuine love, every moment of real beauty a person has ever shown another person, is not erased when God becomes all in all — it is finally, fully understood for what it always secretly was.

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Simple Enough for a Child

Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3). God did not hide the truth about Himself behind complexity only the educated could unlock. He made it plain enough for a child to hear and immediately connect the dots.

That simplicity is not a lesser, watered-down version of the truth. It is the truth itself, small enough for a child to hold and large enough that a lifetime of study never exhausts it.

Watching a seven-year-old or a nine-year-old hear this phrase and immediately connect the dots is not watching a simplified gospel land. It is watching the real thing land exactly where it was always meant to — in a heart still young enough to receive it without first needing to argue itself out of it.

A man who has spent years teaching this same phrase to his own grandchildren has already seen this play out firsthand. The tears that come from watching a child grasp something this large are not tears over a simplified gospel — they are tears over watching the real thing land exactly where it was always meant to.

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Closing: All Is All, and That's All All Is

God is not one piece of the puzzle. He is the source, the sustainer, the purpose, and the destination of everything that has ever existed, and once that has been said, there is genuinely nothing left to add. Simple enough for a child to repeat, deep enough that a lifetime of study never exhausts it.

Whenever life gets complicated enough to make God feel distant or divided among competing concerns, this small sentence is worth returning to: He is not divided. He was never divided. All is all, and that one sentence is still standing exactly where it always has.

That is the whole gift of a phrase this small: it never runs out, and it never needs replacing with something more sophisticated once the first excitement of hearing it wears off. Years from now, it will still be exactly as true, exactly as complete, and exactly as able to hold a person's whole life inside it as it is today.

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For Further Study

• Exodus 3:14 — I AM WHO I AM
• Romans 11:36 — For from him and through him and to him are all things
• Colossians 1:16-17 — In him all things were created, and in him all things hold together
• Romans 8:28 — In all things God works for the good of those who love him
• Romans 3:23 — All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
• John 3:16 — Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life
• 1 Corinthians 15:28 — God may be all in all
• Matthew 18:3 — Unless you change and become like little children
• 1 John 4:8 — God is love
• Revelation 1:8 — I am the Alpha and the Omega