Before you read this post, I encourage you to re-read Genesis 1.
Too Familiar?
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
The opening sentence of the Bible is one of the most well-known sentences in the world. The words are instantly recognizable. Many who know nothing about the Bible know this sentence. The opening words of the Bible are familiar, and perhaps too familiar. It’s easy to think we know exactly what this chapter is saying and we hardly take in the words as we read it.
It’s also a chapter that carries a lot of baggage. A cornerstone of modern science is to argue that creation was nothing at all like what this chapter says, so we read Genesis 1 with the words of those constant attacks simmering in the background. Even within the church we fight over whether to understand that the world is something like 6000-10,000 years old (what is often called Young Earth Creationism), or whether we accept the timelines proposed by secular science (a universe approaching 10 billion years old.)
Try as we might, we cannot and we do not come to this chapter without a pretty strong battery of preconceptions already driving our ideas of what the text must be teaching.
The Message of Genesis 1
This is the beginning. It’s the beginning of the Bible, the beginning of the world, the beginning of time, the beginning of everything. All of history begins here. Ultimately our story begins here too.
Beyond all the debates, the key message of Genesis 1 is authority. There is one creator in this world, and He is God. Without doubt, He is in charge. As you read the Bible you see that naming something is an exercise of authority. As people come into relationship we God, sometimes we see God gives a new name. Most famously Abram becomes Abraham (Gen 17:5) and Jacob becomes Israel (Gen 32:28). Similarly when Israel goes into exile, their captors give them new names (Dan 1:7). Giving a name is an exercise of authority. It’s interesting then as we read Genesis 1 and we see God naming everything. He names the light and darkness (Gen 1:5). He names Heaven (Gen 1:8) and Earth (Gen 1:10). God is showing His authority.
The crowning moment in creation is the invention of man (Gen 1:26-27). And notice that as soon as man is created, God starts giving them instructions (Gen 1:28-30). He is in charge. He has all of the authority. But He does something special with humanity: he lets us have some authority too. Notice in v26 and v28, we are given dominion. He created man and woman to exercise authority in his behalf in this creation. Part of what it means for us to be created in God’s image is that we can actually have authority in a way that no animal on earth can even approximate.
Why this chapter is a battlefield
Throughout this chapter, creation is described as good and very good. God created the world innocent. But without a doubt, as He created the world He wanted to establish that He is the one in charge.
I don’t doubt that modern scientists are genuinely searching for truth in the natural world, but many simply declare that God had no part in it. But what is the impact of that? If God did not create the world, then how can anybody claim that we owe Him anything? If God did not create the world, then there is no reason to think we need to obey the Bible. If God is not our creator, He is in no position to be our judge.
But of course if God did create, then all of those are reversed. We owe Him everything. We must obey His word, because in the end He is our judge. As the one who made us, it is entirely His right to expect us to live as He insists. It is when we realize the gap between our Creator’s commands and the reality of our lived experience that we can finally see how desperate we are for grace. It’s only because we follow a God who has all authority that we can even begin to make sense of the cross.
