by Garrett Glende
When it comes to doctrines, there aren’t many more crucial or life changing than the doctrine of creation. As we open the Bible and begin to read, we are challenged immediately as to how we will consider our lives in light of creation. Did God really create the world and all that exists in six days or is this some sort of poetic device? This is a serious question, as the manner in which we interpret Genesis 1 will actually influence our hermeneutics going forward in our study of Scripture. While this article is not intended to cover all the details of creation (i.e. age of the earth theories), it will provide a summary and defense of the Bible’s teaching (hopefully in much less words than it took me last week to explain the Trinity).
The first foundation of Biblical creation is that God created the world ex nihilo or out of nothing. When God made the universe, there was no pre-existent material that He used to form everything that we see today. John 1:3 says that “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” Even things that we cannot see have been created by God. Colossians 1:16 tells us that “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…” There are many more verses attesting to this truth, but we should ponder the idea of something existing that has not been created by God, such as time. Wouldn’t this diminish the sovereignty of God? For if He has not created time, then how is He able to exercise any sort of authority over it? Would God then be at the mercy of anything that He has not created? Certainly, the Bible teaches otherwise and we can know that God has indeed created everything and uses it all to fulfill His good purposes.
Secondly, the Bible presents the creation of the world as an event that took place over the course of six literal twenty-four hour days. Many will try to explain this account away, citing modern science and logic, but we must remain faithful to the Scriptures. Nothing else in the book of Genesis allows us to interpret chapters one and two as anything but historical narrative. Genesis is as much history as Psalms is poetry and Daniel is prophecy. We must be faithful to a sound hermeneutic and take God’s word at face value. The reality is that God’s act of creation was a miracle and that it cannot be explained any other way. If we question Genesis 1, then what happens when we read about Jesus walking on water, feeding 5,000, or rising from the dead? Science cannot explain these things, so we must believe that God has interceded and done the miraculous. I should add that even though science does attempt to explain away miracles, the Christian must take the Bible as authoritative above all else. All that is genuinely true about science is because God has made it that way.
Lastly, it is important to understand that God has created all things for His own glory. Being the most wonderful and supreme being that He is, there is no greater purpose than to create a world in which His own beauty is mirrored. We see that nature and all that fills the earth has been intended to bring glory to God (Psalm 19:1, Isa. 43:7, Rev. 4:11). All we need to do is take a ten minute drive to the cliffs in La Jolla to realize what a wise and powerful God we have. This simple act of worship is exactly the response that God intends us to have in light of His creation.
As Christians living in view of the vastness of God’s works, we realize how small we really are. When we understand that we are just one of millions of things God has made, we should be truly humbled. He has made so many things that have little association to our lives. We should look around and sense that God has not created the world to center around us, but rather that He has made everything to point back to His own glory. A healthy humility and submission to the authority that God has as Creator are character qualities that are essential to living out the Christian life as it ought to be. May the words of Steven Curtis Chapman resound: “God is God and I am not.”