God Alone and God allow
Luther said of this book, “There is nothing more beautiful than the Book of Genesis, nothing more useful,” and he regarded the opening verses as “certainly the foundation of the whole of Scripture.”
Brief excerpts from Humanist Manifesto I and II will suffice to illustrate the point: “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created … we begin with humans not God … we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species … no deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”
Where scientists worship their scientific approach to an extent that everything becomes verifiable only in terms of scientific evaluation, or where theologians distrust scientists so much that they automatically dismiss their findings when applied to Scripture, only conflict can arise.
The devastating result has been that the man in the street has tended to reject or ignore fundamental truths about himself and his world.
God is Creator
As the Creator, God has made everything that exists. God Himself designed, initiated, and brought about the creation of the entire universe. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him: male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:1, 27). The Bible further clarifies that Jesus Christ as God not only made everything, but everything in creation was made for Him! “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens, and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16).
God re-creates our heart
In response to our confession, God doesn’t just wipe the slate clean, washing our sins away. No, it gets even better: God re-creates our heart. The word in verse 10 for “create” is the same word that’s used in Genesis 1 to describe how God creates the world. Just as God creates a sun and a moon, light and darkness, the earth and the seas, God has the power to create a new heart in you and me. And this is exactly what God does for us in Christ. He says in 2 Corinthians 5:17—“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
SOME POWERFUL REVELATIONS
“In the beginning God …,” the opening words of Scripture, promptly place the emphasis where it rightfully belongs—on God. The interest in Genesis chapter 1 as it relates to the cosmos, to mankind, and to the natural sciences has been such that this emphasis on God has often been overlooked. This chapter should be read primarily as a revelation of the God of creation rather than a statement about that which God created
1. His Attributes
Knowing God is at one and the same time the most noble and the most frustrating pursuit of man. Whenever mankind tries to figure out God, the result is God made in the image of man. When mankind is open to a divine initiative in which God reveals Himself, the result is rewarding in the extreme. God has revealed:
a. His self-existence. It was “in the beginning” that God created “the heavens and the earth” (v. 1). The concept of the beginning of the universe is mind boggling. We even have trouble thinking about the beginning of something as familiar as a house. When did my house originate? Was it when it was completed, or the first brick was laid, or the foundations were started, or the excavators came in with bulldozers, or the surveyors brought their instruments, or the architect drew his plans, or the developer had an idea, or some man somewhere had the first idea of a house? The answers to my rhetorical questions may not be important but, whatever the answers to similar questions about “the beginning,” the unapologetic statement of Scripture is that whatever and whenever the beginning was, God was there, alive and well. In fact, what Genesis states implicitly the New Testament writers make explicit
For example, John recorded Jesus’ words, “Father … You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). This immediately puts Him above and beyond the material world. It states that He is independent of all that everything else depends upon, that He is totally and utterly “other.”
Any suggestion that God needed the universe to be fulfilled or that He was less than complete without mankind totally misses the point of the Trinity in whom love and communication were perfected.
I have often asked men to tell me about themselves and they usually tell me about their Jobs. Apparently identity is inextricably bound up in what they do. In the same way, when women are asked about themselves they often talk about their children.
There is no doubt that human identity is discovered and displayed in terms of relationships and activities, and this has led some people to assume that God created the worlds to prove something to Himself and then created mankind to make it possible for Him to have relationships which in some way would complete His personhood. This line of thinking serves only to suggest that if God had not created, He would have been less than He is and therefore the creation served to meet some kind of need in Him. God did not have to create in order to feel good about Himself; neither did He need mankind to relate to in order to discover His identity. The triune God was always and continues to be complete and entire—needing nothing. To understand this is not only to appreciate God more fully but also to recognize the wonders of God’s grace in choosing to create all that is when there was no necessity for Him to do so.
c. His self-determination. The idea to create was God’s and His alone. It was God who repeatedly spoke the creative word to bring material things into being and it was He who, communing with Himself (not with the angels as some have suggested), brought
Isaiah the prophet captured the significance of this when he asked rhetorically: “Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has taught Him?” (Is. 40:13). And the answer came loud and clear from John on Patmos: “You are worthy, O Lord … for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created” (Rev. 4:11).
2. His Actions
The key word describing God’s actions in Genesis chapter 1 is “created,” and it is used in connection with “the heavens and the earth” (v. 1), “great sea creatures” (v. 21), and “man” (v. 27).
Therein lies the problem. The natural scientist talks convincingly in terms of millions of years and evolutionary eras while the Bible believer looks at the six days and wonders what on earth to do. Bernard Ramm has looked into various theories and suggested ways in which these matters can be harmonized in his book, The Christian View of Science and Scripture. While it will not make everyone happy, it can serve to make many wiser! It is not at all unreasonable to believe that “day” (Hebrew, yôm), which can be translated quite legitimately as “period,” refers not to literal days but to eras and ages in which God’s progressive work was being accomplished. Some who find this interpretation unacceptable suggest that periods of time were concluded with literal days in which the process of creation was fulfilled. Others suggest that Genesis is teaching that God revealed His creative activity in six days rather than performed the creation in such a period.
This leads to another matter relating to the days which requires our attention. Do the “days” describe a series of creative acts in chronological order or did the writer concern himself more with a literary structure? This question has arisen because of practical concerns such as “Could there be light on the first day when the sun and moon were not created till the fourth day?” In the same vein, “Could the vegetation of the third day have survived before the sunlight arrived on the fourth day?” and “How could there be ‘the evening and the morning’ of the first three days without the benefit of the sun?” These considerations have led some to believe that the writer’s intent was not so much a detailed chronology of creation as a logical explanation using pictorial language leading up to the final creative act—the arrival of man on the scene.