Some passages of Scripture are foundational in the strictest sense: without them, everything built on top collapses. Genesis 1:1-25 is such a passage. It is not merely the first chapter of the first book. It is the prelude to the entire Bible — a statement of fundamental realities on which every subsequent action, claim, promise, and hope depends.

As one author puts it, ‘The creation account, as the preamble to the Pentateuch, announces that the God of Israel, the covenant Deliverer of his people, is Creator of all that exists. The opening verse is the theological presupposition of true biblical religion: the Lord of covenant and the God of creation are one and the same.’¹ Lose Genesis 1, and you lose the ground on which the rest of Scripture stands.

Genesis 1 and the God of the Whole Bible

The Old Testament continues to depict God as the eternal, unchangeable, incomparable, Sovereign Creator. Isaiah 40 refers to God’s work of creation and concludes: ‘To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name’ (Isa 40:25-26).²

Idolatry and rebellion are, from this perspective, not merely morally wrong — they are absurd. To worship created things in place of the Creator who made them is stupidity of the highest order. The Scriptures are unafraid to expose humanity’s frailty as creatures, fallenness as rebels, and foolishness as idolaters. Paul makes the same point in Romans 1:20: creation witnesses to God’s ‘invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature.’ This reality exposes idolatrous attitudes as shamefully and wilfully rebellious, and leaves us all without excuse.

Genesis 1 and the Fall

Genesis 1 teaches us that God is the Creator and therefore the rightful owner and Lord of all his creation. It shows us how good and ordered everything is that God has created. Grasping these truths helps us to see why the rebellion of humanity in Genesis 3 is so seismic. If the world belongs to God, human rebellion against God is not simply a moral mistake. It is an act of theft, usurpation, and treason — and Genesis 4-11 documents the spreading devastation of that rebellion: deceit, disobedience, disorder, and death. The images of Genesis 1-2 become a distant dream.

Yet even in Genesis 3, God’s goodness asserts itself in promise (Gen 3:15). And in Genesis 12-17, God reveals his redemptive purposes through his promises to Abraham: to bless his descendants and, through his offspring, to bless the nations of the world. The fall does not cancel the creation. It calls for a new creation.

Genesis 1 and the Person of Jesus Christ

Not only does John’s Gospel begin with a deliberate echo of Genesis 1 — ‘In the beginning was the Word’ (John 1:1) — but both Paul and the author of Hebrews affirm that nothing was made without Christ (1 Cor 8:6; Heb 1:2-3, 10-12). Colossians 1:16-17 is the most explicit: ‘For by him all things were created, in heaven and earth, visible and invisible … all things were created through him and for him … and in him all things hold together.’³

The Creator of Genesis 1 is the Saviour of the New Testament. ‘This very one who created the fleeing constellations, who orders the cell, who sustains every atom, came and died on the cross for your sins. This one will save you. He can bring a genesis to your life. That is what he came to do!’⁴

Genesis 1 and the Promise of New Creation

Finally, in both Testaments, the promise of new creation echoes Genesis 1-2. The eternal future described in passages such as Isaiah 65:17-25, Ezekiel 36-37, and Revelation 21:1-22:4 is not the replacement of God’s original good creation but its renewal and perfection. It is a total transformation that enables sinful, de-created people to enjoy a fresh start in a re-created relationship with God. Genesis 1:1-25 is therefore not only the beginning of the Bible’s story. It is the lens through which the whole story must be read. J. I. Packer wrote that those ‘who look at God through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pigmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pigmy Christians.’⁵ Genesis 1:1-25 corrects the view — and when we see God truly, we see everything else truly too.

1. Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11 [Christian Standard Commentary] (Holman Reference, 2022), 64. ↩︎
2. See also Job 38; Psalms 19, 22, 136; Isaiah 45. ↩︎
3. Other echoes in John 1:1-5 include the terms ‘were made’ and ‘was made’ (John 1:3) and the mention of ‘light,’ ‘darkness,’ and ‘shine’ in John 1:5 (cf. Genesis 1:3-5, 17). See C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary and Theological Commentary (P&R Publishing, 2006), 94. ↩︎
4. R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing [Preach the Word Series] (Crossway, 2004), 30. ↩︎
5. J. I. Packer, Knowing God, Second Edition (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), 8. ↩︎