Open the Bible and the first thing you hit is a creation account. Given where it sits, and how much weight it carries, it matters what we think it’s for.

For a couple of centuries now those opening pages have mostly shown up in arguments about science — how old, how long, how literal. There’s a place for those questions. But they aren’t the main event, because the text’s own focus lies somewhere else.

Genesis expresses God’s nature and character before it does anything else.

Genesis Is Answering a Different Question

The opening chapters are largely concerned to present the origins of the world in theological context. The main focus and function of the Genesis account is to express the character of God’s act of creation — setting out the nature and position of all created things in relation to the being of God, and more specifically in relation to the purposes of God.

Genesis 1 concentrates on two things. First, God being absolutely powerful, good, wise, purposeful, communicative, and relational. Second, creation being derivatively magnificent, wonderful, purposeful, designed and directed toward a goal of untold potential and value.

Notice that both halves are about relation. The text isn’t primarily interested in mechanism. It’s interested in who God is, and what everything else is in relation to him.

Not an Accident, Not Eternal — a Home

The single most fundamental assertion in the Genesis account gets echoed all over Scripture: there exists a ‘Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them’ (Acts 4:24). The Lord God Almighty brought ‘all things’ into existence through the freedom of his will (Rev 4:11).

The cosmos and the vast range of creatures within it are the direct, exclusive, immediate creation of the one true God. So to the big questions — ‘What is this world? Where did it come from? Where is it going to? Why?’¹Peter Cotterell, This is Christianity. Revised Edition (OMF, 1997), 5. — the Bible’s answer is that God created it.

Two things follow straight away, and each rules out a popular alternative. The universe is not accidental. Neither is the world eternal. Instead, the cosmos is uniquely created, established, ordered, and intended to be a home for humanity.

Human origins are reckoned solely due to God’s decision that they be.

Human origins — in fact the origins of the entire universe — are reckoned solely due to God’s decision that they be. God is their absolute cause. ‘What is seen was not made out of things that are visible’ (Heb 11:3). It’s purely and completely the product of divinely willed decision and action, plus nothing.

And that includes humanity as a whole, and each of us as particular individuals. People are ‘God’s offspring’ (Acts 17:29).

That’s why you matter. Human worth isn’t something we generate, assert, or earn. God the Creator, ‘Lord of heaven and earth,’ is the one in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:24, 28). He is the basis and ground of our worth.

Fingerprints Everywhere

These thoughts tell us more than that God caused our existence and is therefore the principle of our being.²Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2.6; in Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles: Book Two: Creation, trans. with an Introduction and Notes by James F. Anderson (Image Books, 1956), 36. They also signal the Creator’s incomparable qualities — breath-taking majesty, stupendous intelligence, boundless grandeur, remarkable goodness and power (Job 38-41; Isa 40:12-26).³‘God’s truth is known in several ways through the things which are made. Indeed, from the perpetuity of creatures, the Creator is understood to be eternal; from the greatness of creatures, all-powerful; from their order and disposition, wise; from his governance over them, good’ (Peter Lombard, The Sentences, 1.3.1.6; trans. Guilio Silano (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2007), 20).

Upon all ‘his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory, so clear and so prominent.’⁴Calvin, Institutes, 1.5.1; 52. The world isn’t a neutral object lying around. It carries the signature of the one who made it.

Somebody Owns This Place

Here’s a thought that doesn’t come up much. The work of creation discloses ownership. The world belongs to the one who built it. Reality is a realm over which the LORD holds sole possession.

‘The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein’ (Psa 24:1). ‘God Most High’ is ‘Possessor of heaven and earth’ (Gen 14:9, 22). And there’s the force of the LORD’s own claim: ‘Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine’ (Job 41:11).

In other words, the entire universe and everything in it is God’s property. There’s no neutral ground anywhere, no square metre held on some other title. Whatever we possess, we possess as tenants in a world that’s owned.

Almighty — and a Father

The One who creates and owns is also the One who governs. The Creator’s rule over the world is that of a single, unchallenged, infinite, utterly transcendent King.

But here’s the qualification that changes everything. This King and LORD is — eternally and simultaneously — an Almighty Father (2 Cor 6:18).⁵Cf. ‘Have we all not one Father? Has not one God created us?’ (Mal 2:10).

Qualities of boundless ability and energy, knowledge, wisdom, supremacy and authority are the exclusive source of life in heaven and earth. Yet the Almighty Father’s authority is a loving authority — a perfectly good authority that takes personal responsibility.

Put those together and you have something no earthly power manages. Immeasurable goodness, matchless power, superlative understanding, and ultimate responsibility, combined perfectly and eternally, forever. Power without goodness is tyranny. Goodness without power is helplessness. Both without responsibility is indifference. Only here do all four hold together.

So the unconditional claim God lays on all things, precisely because it’s a Father’s claim, is moved by ‘steadfast love’ (Gen 24:12; Exo 34:6; Psa 136). The Father’s ‘lovingkindness’ ensures that everything — without exception — is determined and managed for the good of his creatures.

Which makes him the one to whom is due profoundest thanks, exclusive allegiance, ultimate honour, and total worship (Psa 136:1-9).

He Spoke, and It Was There

One last thing, and it’s easy to skim past. God spoke the universe into existence. The text repeats it for obvious emphasis: ‘and God said’ (Gen 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29).

That repetition isn’t padding. It establishes at the very outset that the relationship between God and everything else runs through speech. Which means trust in God’s Word — committed confidence in the speaking Creator — is a core reality of all created existence, people included.

If the world came into being by God talking, then listening and trusting is the natural creaturely response.

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• 1
  Peter Cotterell, This is Christianity. Revised Edition (OMF, 1997), 5. ↩︎
• 2
  Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2.6; in Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles: Book Two: Creation, trans. with an Introduction and Notes by James F. Anderson (Image Books, 1956), 36. ↩︎
• 3
  ‘God’s truth is known in several ways through the things which are made. Indeed, from the perpetuity of creatures, the Creator is understood to be eternal; from the greatness of creatures, all-powerful; from their order and disposition, wise; from his governance over them, good’ (Peter Lombard, The Sentences, 1.3.1.6; trans. Guilio Silano (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2007), 20). ↩︎
• 4
  Calvin, Institutes, 1.5.1; 52. ↩︎
• 5
  Cf. ‘Have we all not one Father? Has not one God created us?’ (Mal 2:10). ↩︎