Our Creator God
When contemplating the creation of the universe, there are three principal questions we are able to ask: Who? How? and Why? Of these three questions, the primary query is essentially the most foundational. It is also the obvious. In keeping with the Bible, God is Creator of all issues seen and invisible.
We can’t overstate the significance the Bible provides to the revelation of God as Creator. “To start with, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Studying in English, lets say aseity is the very first thing we encounter about God. To start with—earlier than all and impartial of all—there was God. Within the authentic Hebrew, nonetheless, the verb bara (“to create”) comes previous to the phrase Elohim (“God”). This isn’t an uncommon grammatical development for Hebrew, however it does imply that even earlier than we’re launched to the phrase for God, we all know that he’s a creator.
Our God is the one by whom all issues got here into being. He’s the maker of heaven and earth. Again and again the Bible reminds us that the God of Israel is not any territorial deity. Because the individuals confessed in Nehemiah’s day, “You’re the Lord, you alone. You’ve gotten made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that’s on it, the seas and all that’s in them; and also you protect all of them; and the host of heaven worships you” (Neh. 9:6). There is just one Creator, and subsequently there is just one God. “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he’s God!), who shaped the earth and made it (he established it; he didn’t create it empty, he shaped it to be inhabited!): ‘I’m the Lord, and there’s no different’ ” (Isa. 45:18).
To make systematic theology clear and accessible for the on a regular basis Christian, this one-year information breaks down necessary theological subjects into every day readings. Every studying options concise and accessible writing and verses for meditation and utility.
When Paul preached to the Gentiles, he emphasised that they need to put away their idols and switch to “a residing God, who made the heaven and the earth and the ocean and all that’s in them” (Acts 14:15). Because the Creator of all issues, God wants nothing from his creatures. Famously, Paul defined to the Athenians that “the God who made the world and all the things in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made by man, neither is he served by human arms, as if he wanted something, since he himself provides to all mankind life and breath and all the things” (Acts 17:24–25).
God provides us the reply to one of the enduring questions: The place did the cosmos come from? Is the universe the results of some free private agent, or did the universe by some means create itself? The biblical account teaches that creation is distinct from God (the 2 aren’t the identical being) and on the identical time that creation is solely depending on God. He’s earlier than all issues and on him all issues rely. As we’ve seen earlier than, there by no means was when God was not, however there was when matter was not. Because the psalmist exclaims, “Lord, you’ve been our dwelling place in all generations. Earlier than the mountains had been introduced forth, or ever you had shaped the earth and the world, from eternal to eternal you’re God” (Ps. 90:1–2).
Creation Days
Of the three questions—Who? How? and Why?—the how query is the one the place essentially the most controversy has arisen. On the coronary heart of the how query is the controversy surrounding the creation days. Amongst evangelicals, there are 4 typical approaches.
(1) The six days of creation are regular twenty-four-hour days. This view often means (however doesn’t must equal) a perception in a younger earth (e.g., 1000’s of years previous as an alternative of billions of years). (2) The Day-Age view argues that the creation days symbolize an unspecified size of time and {that a} “day” in God’s reckoning can consult with a protracted time frame (Isa. 11:10–11; 2 Pet. 3:8). (3) The Framework Interpretation popularized by Meredith Kline maintains that the primary three days symbolize creation kingdoms, dominated over by the creation kings of days 4 by six. The times, subsequently, must be learn topically, not sequentially. Based mostly on Genesis 2:5 (“the Lord God had not brought about it to rain”), Kline argues that God oversaw creation by way of extraordinary windfall. (4) The Analogical strategy understands the times extra usually as divine work days.
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Whereas the occasions recorded could also be broadly consecutive, the size of the time is irrelevant to the aim of the Genesis account. The times are God-divided days or extraordinary cosmic days. Our human week is copied from this creation week, however “copy” is to be thought of analogically not actually. Whereas there are believable causes for every view, and orthodox Reformed representatives could be listed for every of them, I discover the twenty-four-hour view most convincing.
First, there are a number of indications that the Hebrew phrase yom is utilized in Genesis 1 within the regular sense of a twenty-four-hour day: the references to morning and night, the cycles of darkness and light-weight, the truth that we nonetheless have seven days in our week. Most crucially, the chorus of “days, years, indicators, and seasons” suggests we’re coping with regular calendar demarcations.
Second, there are good explanations for the looks of the solar on day 4. For instance, the universe may need been illuminated by the particular, supernatural presence of God. Alternately, one can argue that the solar was already made (Gen. 1:1), however not separated till the fourth day. Mild wasn’t created on the fourth day; reasonably, the better gentle and lesser gentle had been separated (Gen. 1:14).
Third, regular days enable for the world to be comparatively younger, which signifies that demise within the animal world needn’t have existed earlier than the autumn.
Fourth, God might have created the world with the looks of age. Simply as Adam on his first day didn’t seem like an toddler, so the universe, although created in six regular days, might look a lot older.
Fifth, this view of the creation days was affirmed by early commentators (Basil, Ambrose), by medieval scholastics (Lombard, Aquinas), by the magisterial Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Beza), by the Puritans (Perkins, Owen, Edwards), and was the one identified view of the Westminster divines.
Sixth, God didn’t merely accommodate himself in how he defined the work however in how he really achieved the work. As Calvin put it, Moses didn’t converse of six days “for the mere goal of conveying instruction. Allow us to reasonably conclude that God himself took the house of six days, for the aim of accommodating his works to the capability of males.”1
We don’t take a look at the universe rightly except we see in creation an excellent cause to reward the residing God.
The Finish for Which God Created the World
We don’t take a look at the universe rightly except we see in creation an excellent cause to reward the residing God.
“Let all of the earth worry the Lord,” the psalmist tells us, “let all of the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!” And why? “For he spoke, and it got here to be; he commanded, and it stood agency” (Ps. 33:8–9). Equally, Psalm 148 calls on the heavens and the heights, the Lord’s angels and his hosts, the solar and moon and shining stars, the best heavens and the waters above the heavens to reward the identify of the Lord. The rationale? “For he commanded and so they had been created. And he established them eternally and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not move away” (Ps. 148:5–6). Briefly, God shaped us and made us; he created us for his glory (Isa. 43:7).
To make use of the language of Jonathan Edwards’s well-known treatise, divine glory is “the top for which God created the world.” We must not ever suppose that God created the cosmos out of lack—as a result of he wished a relationship, or he wished somebody to like. God didn’t create the world as a result of he was thirsty. Slightly, God created the world as a result of it’s the nature of a fountain to overflow. Creation is the superabundance of divine goodness, magnificence, mercy, love, knowledge, energy, sovereignty, self-sufficiency, self-existence, justice, holiness, faithfulness, and freedom.
Edwards places the matter splendidly. We should always decelerate and browse him fastidiously:
As there may be an infinite fullness of all doable good in God—a fullness of each perfection, of all excellency and sweetness, and of infinite happiness—and as this fullness is able to communication, or emanation advert further, so it appears a factor amiable and invaluable in itself that this infinite fountain of excellent ought to ship forth ample streams. . . . Thus it seems affordable to suppose that it was God’s final finish that there is likely to be an excellent and ample emanation of his infinite fulness of excellent advert further; and that the disposition to speak himself, or diffuse his personal fulness, was what moved him to create the world.2
To place the matter a lot much less elegantly, we are able to say the creation was God’s choice to go public along with his glory. From the microscopic stage to the cosmic stage, we’ve cause to present God reward. Simply contemplate that by some scientific estimates there are extra stars within the universe than there are grains of sand on earth. The Milky Method has 150 billion to 200 billion stars, and our galaxy is just one of tons of of billions of galaxies. Relying on which estimate you observe, there are greater than 100 billion trillion stars. Consider the primary adopted by twenty-three zeroes. That’s about what number of stars there are within the universe. The quantity defies human comprehension. And Psalm 147:4 says, “He determines the variety of the celebs; he provides to all of them their names.”
All good theology begins with the start. There isn’t a Christianity with out the doctrine of creation. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to obtain glory and honor and energy, for you created all issues, and by your will they existed and had been created” (Rev. 4:11).
Notes:
- Calvin, John. Calvin’s Commentaries 22 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1974, 1:78
- Edwards, Jonathan, Moral Writings. Edited by Paul Ramsey and John E. Smith. Vol. 8,
This text is tailored from Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology by Kevin DeYoung.
