CREATION

 

THE CREATOR

The work of God – who, which Person or power did  what – had confused people.  They talked of the Spirit of God – if there was a Spirit was He an emanation from God – but He is spoken of in Scripture, especially later prophets, as  with personality.

 

I read Genesis 1 as Trinitarian, (the name of  God – ‘elohim’ is plural of ‘el’ ) and verse 26 “let US make man’, links with previous ‘let there be’ utterances. 

 

We can see that if God made anything at all, He did so for one reason – He wanted to do it. It was not just for something to do either, because He is never bored but is the thrice blessed One. He made things for a purpose greater than the things. That purpose also was not just a bright idea one day but arose out of His character or nature. It expressed what He was. God never acts out of  character. What He does He does because of what He is. All He does is our way of knowing Him – what He does is what He was, and is, for He never changes. Spurgeon said that what God does is a prophecy and sign of what He will do, because God is like that.

 

 The work of God is unprompted.  Creation expresses His own desire and self. He loved doing it and then He admired it and said it was ‘very good’.  That’s Him.

Nobody asked Christ to die for us.  God lives by no standard outside Himself.  He does not measure up to anything except His own character.

 

That is illustrated at the Exodus, the basic act of revelation. When Moses did not want to go to Pharaoh, the people did not want to leave Egypt, and Pharaoh did not want them to go - it was all only God’s compassion. John’s Gospel is a book of signs but not one sign, one miracle, was performed by request– but was the Sovereign will of Christ. What He did unasked shows what He is

 

 My comment.  Our prayers  should never be to persuade God.  God heals and delivers because He is a healer and deliverer – He names  Himself in that very way. We don’t beg a musician to play – he wants to play.  Long prayers vigils pleading with God suggest God is reluctant or  sullen and doesn’t want to do this or that. In that case He never will!

 

When He had finished the initial work of Creation He said it was ‘very good’. Gen 1.31.  This world and all that it is, shows us God’s idea of goodness - material, physical, rich, beautiful, not only the spiritual. The earth is full of His treasures planted for us. God talks of goodness, because He is good,  and is good in the way we say is good.

 

The  Creator is changeless but is the author of change. He does nothing suddenly, but He plans all eternity and the Creation is part of it.  The physical world  was not an after-thought or a second rate creation below heaven.  The material creation and humans of  flesh are not temporary ideas to tide over until the spiritual comes in. They are fundamental for ever. After the resurrection we shall have a body – that is the idea of resurrection.

 

God made the world because He wanted such a world. John 3.16 – He loved the world . So - why did He want it? It was for a gift to His Son. Christ is the ‘heir of all things’. God made the world as a gift to His Son and it belongs to the Son of God, BUT He is also the Son of man. The world was also made for man -  man in Christ.  What Adam forfeited, Jesus has reclaimed. Our Lord owns this world.  ‘By Him all things were created and for Him in heaven and on earth’  Hebrews 1:2. Col. 1:16.  In Christ we are joint heirs with Him. Gal. 4:7. Rom 8.17.  John 1.10-11 -   He made all things and ‘came to His own’. 

 

When the world was planned and created, prior consideration was for Christ. It was all  planned for Him. It would be His. He would come here, die here, and by His incarnation became man to belong here.  This world was His home and He will come back home.  The Cross is the consummation of Creation.  Rev. 13:8. 1 Peter 1:20., Acts 2:22.  Peter says Christ was ‘slain  from the foundation of the world’.  This is a remarkable statement, but Peter heard that when Christ’s death was being discussed on the mount of  transfiguration – something He vividly remembered.  2 Pet. 1:18.

 

 Ephesians 3.8-11 and Rom 16:25-26 – speaks of the ‘mystery’ of the manifold wisdom of God now made known through the church – that all things were made for the Son of Man and  for the work which He would accomplish here  “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness  thereof”. Ps 24:1 – realised in Christ.

 

Though God ‘rested on the seventh day’ He broke His own Sabbath when Adam sinned and He came to rehabilitate him.  Jesus used this as grounds for His own work on the Sabbath. He said “I work and my Father works till now”.  The  Creator must create. Christ came to do the work of the Father and the Father worked with Him. God established the on-going laws and they always falls into a pattern.  God makes all things in shape from the dance of the atoms  and particles and established the processes of nature at Creation. This including the mysterious law which science calls ‘chaos’ . That law shows that chaos has a pattern. The atomic particles seem all kind of wild dance but they adhere by some unknown force – God in fact to make what we see. He ‘sustains all things by the word of His power”. Heb  1:3.  He makes all things beautiful in its time. Eccles 3:11.  “He gives all men life and breath and  everything else” Acts 17: 25.

 

My comment. He is always the Creator, not just once and for ever. The hand that shaped the universe was crucified for us and in His hands is all power – for us.

 

Man’s state of sinfulness was prepared for at Creation. Genesis 3:16 tells the promise of a conqueror of Satan to be crushed by the offspring of the woman.  The word ‘offspring’ in the Septuagint is singular- one Person, Paul said it a seed, not many seeds.  It was not plan B or a pro-tem measure.

 

My comment. God made the heavens and the earth.  The universe baffles our minds.  TV showed a star 3 billion light years distant from earth.  The stellar glories are the glory of God.  He – our Lord – is greater than His glory.  What He does is always worthy of Him.   An infinite (?) universe  for an infinite Creator. He ‘does all things well’.  The earth  was made for Man, and  the heavens for the display of what God is like.  “The heavens declare the glory of God” – that is their purpose? People ask what good is all this infinite creation.  They mean  what good is it to us?  It was made for God’s Son, not for us but we  are heirs together of Christ. 

 

How did the Son create all things?  The active power was the Holy Spirit. Now – very special relevant note. The Spirit was brooding over chaos – Gen. 1:2.  The Spirit did nothing, just hovering  there. The Spirit did nothing until God spoke.  But that speaker was the second person of the Trinity – the Logos, who expressed the will of the Father. That is a principle all through the Word. The Spirit acts with the Word only, and John 1 shows us who He is – Christ the Son of God.  The Spirit and  the Son act together to do the will of the Father.  The Son is  the ‘Word’.   All through Scripture it is the same – God ‘upholds all things by the word of His power”. When the Spirit hears  the Word, He acts.

 

My comment.  That is why the Gospel is the power of God. We preach the Word and the Spirit goes into action. The word precipitates the action of the Spirit.  The Spirit of Creation is with us.

 

God made all things for His son and  the Son has a purpose  for His inheritance. It is when we look through the Word to trace out the eternal purpose of God that the Creation becomes so stupendous. This was not just a one-off act but the beginning of the architecture of eternity by the eternal God. The incarnation involved the  eternal God taking humanity into His own nature and us taking His nature into ourselves. How is too profound for us to know as we have no idea  whatever of spirit and God is a  Spirit.  But the human is taken up into God. We are one with Him.

 

Why did God make everything? Not for us – we  are part of the everything.  The Father made them through the Spirit for His Son. The earth and all in it was for Him – a living

Creation as Christ’s crown. 

 

Creation was  the beginning of eternal activity.  God knew it would become a troublesome planet costing Him dear. Our present problems of suffering and war, have an explanation in the eternal dimension.  We are here by His will purposely exposed to things which are wrong  - because in  the eternal ages we shall be examples of the triumphant grace of God.  He is making a new race, not by an instant word or act of Creation but making us what He wants through great tribulation to His own glory.

 

George  Canty