The Doctrine of Creation

Understanding the Gospel Focus on the Doctrine of Creation

The truth of creation should stop us in our tracks, fill us with awe and wonder, humble us, and drop us to our knees.

When we read Genesis 1 and 2 they are meant to put us in our place and insert God into the narrative and proper place in our lives.

All Good Biblical theology is creational theology. It’s a theology that puts God at the very beginning and center of everything. Without it you cannot have a good Biblical Apologetic.

Creation is at the center of everything that humans say or do in the world.

Coming to faith in Christ is impossible without an appropriate sense of God’s creation.

Guy Richard, associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary said the following about creation:

It is hard to imagine any topic within Christianity that has caused more debate or disagreement than the doctrine of creation. According to Richard, the idea that God created everything is the proverbial line in the sand that immediately divides people into two camps—those who believe in creation and those who do not.

In his book In the Beginning, Herman Bavinck calls the doctrine of creation “the starting point of true religion.” It thus divides the world into believers and unbelievers.

The question that causes people problems out of nothing (ex Nihilo) who made it? When? Why?

Testimony of Growing up in N.M.

All these questions are a part of the discipleship process for creating a new kind of apologist for a Post Christian culture.

Understanding what Life Looks like Considering the Doctrine of Creation

6 Points of the Doctrine of Creation in Everyday Life

1). God comes first: Before anything else was before there was a universe in the beginning: God. He comes first.

Eventually the bible fleshes out the notion of God in all kinds of ways to show that in the past the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father. So, there was a perfection of love in the past. This is very different from Islam which is slow to speak of God being a God of love because that would assume the importance of another.

2). God speaks He is a talking God: the first thing He does is speak the universe into existence.

This Shows Ownership

As Creator, God and God alone has the right and ability to tell me how to live and what the driving purpose should be for everything in my life.

The physical universe belongs to the Lord. It was created by him and for him. Romans 11:36 says, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” God is the rightful owner of all things.

God’s Creator ownership calls us to one more thing. It’s important every morning of your life to remind yourself that you don’t belong to you either. All kinds of dark and unholy things, all kinds of selfish and abusive actions, so much hurt and destruction, so much idolatry and addiction, and so many sad endings result when human beings live like they own their lives and can do whatever they want.

Throughout all of scripture God is a speaking God and dares to speak in words that human beings can understand.

God’s act of creating is also different from ours in the way in which it was carried out.

God spoke his creation into being (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14-15, 20, 24, 26; Ps. 33:6; 148:5). He did not put it together by hand or with the use of special tools. He spoke, and it was.

Once we understand this, we should not be surprised that he would later choose to reveal himself specially in the written word and in the person of his Son—the incarnate Word of God (John 1:1-2; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2).

Anyone who has a position of authority as a human being has representative authority. All human authority is ambassadorial; that is, it is designed to be a visible representation of the authority of God.

Paul says it this way: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1).

3). God made everything: this is against pantheism, which claims everything in the universe is God. (Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism.)

When God says to us, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,  the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1), he means it. The doctrine of creation is not just about origins, but it’s also about how you think about and approach everything in your life.

Believing in the doctrine of creation is much more than having the right view of the origin of the universe. This truth calls you to surrender everything you are and everything you have to the ownership of your Lord. When you do this, everything changes.

4). There is one God who is good, and He made everything good.

That is, he stands behind good and evil in different ways. He stands behind good in such a way that the good is always creditable to him, and the evil is always creditable to secondary causalities, like the serpent, even though it can’t sweep away God’s sovereignty.

When Paul finds himself evangelizing pagans in Acts 17 in the great city of Athens, one of the things that he stresses is that God is so sovereign and other, the Creator of all things, that he doesn’t need anything.

5). The doctrine of Grace is established in the doctrine of creation:

We are made by God and for God; therefore, we are all accountable to God.

6). There is an orderto God’s creation:

God designed a beautiful framework of royal authority into His creation.

God built authority into creation from the beginning, and Satan’s strategy—his plan for maximizing the humiliation he wanted to inflict on God—was to tear down those good and beautiful structures of authority.

Have you ever wondered why Satan tempted Eve instead of Adam? Paul mentions this in 1 Timothy 2:12–14.

Through the centuries, people have given a lot of frankly stupid answers to that question: “Women are more gullible than men, so Satan thought he had a better chance with her than with Adam.” or “Women are seductresses, so Satan thought he could get Eve to seduce Adam.”

The right answer, though, is that Satan was never interested in just getting Adam alone to commit a little sin against God. He wanted to upend the entire structure of authority that God had established in the world. He wanted the woman to convince the man to rebel against God.[2]

Understanding Being Created in the Image of God

To be made in the image of God is to be made communal, moral, spiritual, and ruling.

Central to the Bible's teaching are the words in Genesis 1:26: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” The Westminster Confession of Faith defines the imago dei of God as:

God … created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His image.

The most magnificent part of being created in the image of God involves one’s identity in communion with one’s maker.

Just as God exists in loving community – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, humanity bears God’s image in relationship of community and love.

Man bearing God’s image is kingly rule into which mankind is called.

1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Man possesses a sense of conscience and performs moral decision-making. (Ecc.3:11)

Understanding what it Looks Like to Live the image of God in Everyday Life

Being created in the image of God changes how one views their identity.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ESV

19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

WE ARE ALL IN A GLORY WAR

All of us are tempted somehow, someway, to worship and serve something in the physical creation rather than the one who created it. Our lives are always shaped by what glory is in functional control of the thoughts and desires of our hearts.

One of the more significant identity crises in culture today is defining one's gender. However, one of the greatest blessings of being a Christian today is knowing who we are as God's creation and why we exist.

How one views their creation in the image of God changes how one considers the idea of justice, mercy, love, and respect in everyday life. It is in God, as Paul exclaims, that we live, move, breathe, and find our being.

Not only is human creativity a product of God’s work in creation, but the weekly cycle of work and rest is as well.

This weekly pattern is mirrored in eternity, as human beings work for their lifetimes and then enjoy an eternal Sabbath rest in heaven through faith in Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of creation, therefore, ultimately points us to that reality and calls us to “strive to enter that rest” by holding fast to Jesus Christ by faith to the end.

Hebrews 4:9–10 ESV

9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.