Genesis 1:1–25

God Our Sovereign Creator

by Mark O'Donoghue

1. ASSUMPTIONS WE MAY BRING TO GENESIS 1:1-25

2. IDENTIFYING THE MAIN STRUCTURE OF GENESIS 1:1-25

3. UNDERSTANDING GENESIS 1:1-25 IN THE CONTEXT OF THE WHOLE BIBLE

  • Genesis 1 is foundational to understanding the God of the Bible
  • Genesis 1 is vital to understanding the fall of humanity
  • Genesis 1 informs the New Testament portrait of Jesus Christ
  • Genesis 1 is crucial for understanding the promise of the new creation

4. IDENTIFYING THE DOCTRINAL ISSUES AND IMPLICATIONS IN GENESIS 1:1-25

  • God alone is eternally Triune
  • God alone is Creator
  • God alone is Sovereign

5. CONCLUSION

6. FOR FURTHER READING

1. ASSUMPTIONS WE MAY BRING TO GENESIS 1:1-25

Having moved permanently to Tahiti in 1895, the French artist, Paul Gauguin, painted his monumental work, D’ou Venons Nous/ Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous, which translates into English as: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? However, the sad truth is that Gauguin did not have answers in any language to his questions. He was plagued by poor mental health and, shortly after completing this work, attempted suicide1Letters of Paul Gauguin to Georges Daniel De Monfreid, trans. Ruth Pielkovo (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1922), 59-102. Although he was not using ‘God’ words, from within his multicultural worldview Gauguin was still asking ‘God’ kind of questions – is there anything or anyone out there who can tell me the beginning and the end? Who can make sense of life for me? How should we view our existence?

Secular culture tends to see reality as merely material and so can be fatally pessimistic. In 1903, the philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that man’s ‘origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms.’ He saw nothing beyond the grave but ‘extinction in the vast death of the solar system.’ Therefore he concluded, ‘only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.’2Bertrand Russell, ‘A Free Man’s Worship,’ in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), 46-57.

The logical conclusion of a world without God is a world without lasting meaning. And yet, Bertrand Russell’s daughter observed that ‘his whole life was a search for God … [I]n the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God. And he never found anything else to put in it.’3Katharine Tait, My Father, Bertrand Russell (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 189.

In many cultures that continue to affirm the existence of a spiritual reality above the material world there is both a strong desire to live our lives in accord with that spiritual reality, yet also a feeling of distance and fear as to what that reality is and how to live by it. 

For example, African traditional religion is generally characterised by two main elements. First, by a spiritual structure of higher and lesser divinities, mediating ancestors, and witch doctors, holy men, or sangomas4‘Highly respected healer among the Zulu people of South Africa, who diagnoses, prescribes, and often performs the rituals to heal a person physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually’ (Britannica.com at https://www.britannica.com/science/sangoma [accessed 4 July 2024]).  who advise on the sacrifices necessary to appease the ancestors and other spirits and bring a good outcome. Second, the importance of community consensus across different ethnic groups or tribes in determining who are the worthy ancestor spirits that are working in a mediatorial way in this spiritual chain.  Amid terrors and fears which emanate from traditional beliefs in spiritual powers, African Christians may wonder if Jesus, who is not a member of their community, and not as such approved by the community as an ancestor-mediator, is sufficient to address their spiritual insecurities.5For example, in Yoruba culture in Nigeria, ancestors known as Egungun are highly revered and honoured by the community through annual festivals, where the ancestors are believed to return to offer blessings and guidance. The worthiness of an ancestor is often determined by their contributions to the family and society, as well as their adherence to religious practices. Similarly, in Zulu culture in South Africa, ancestors, referred to as Amadlozi or Abaphansi, are integral to spiritual life. The community recognizes ancestors who have lived virtuous lives and contributed significantly to the family and clan. Rituals involving the slaughtering of cattle, offerings of beer, and other traditional ceremonies are conducted to honour and communicate with the ancestors. Cf. Kwame Bediako, ‘Jesus in African Culture: A Ghanaian perspective,’ in his Jesus in Africa: The Christian Gospel in African History and Experience (Regnum Afrika, 2004), 20-33. See also M.T. Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency (Indiana University Press, 1992), 45-67, 108-135; and Harriet Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine: An Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought and Practice (Academic Press, 1977), 29-31, 65-73, 91-99.

Whether it is a hardened atheist like Russell or an angst-ridden artist like Gauguin or in specifically religious contexts, we appear irresistibly drawn to spiritual questions that are personal and experiential in nature. And it is God, the Creator of our material and spiritual world, who confronts us in Genesis 1 and throughout this first book of the Bible.

2. IDENTIFYING THE MAIN STRUCTURE OF GENESIS 1:1-25

Genesis 1 is carefully structured as a piece of literature. Two main steps may be observed. First, in verses 1 and 2 – In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters’ – the movement is from heaven to earth, from God to the reality he creates from nothing. Verse 2 opens with a bleak image: ‘the earth was without form and void,’ an expression of emptiness and desolation. This emphasises the fact that without God’s action, the earth had no shape, no substance, and no inhabitants. It reinforces the comprehensive and dramatic nature of God’s sovereignty in the act of creation. The intended direction and Divine nature of this heaven to earth movement is repeated again and again in Genesis 1:1-2:3. God spoke, God saw, God separated, and God called. God created everything out of nothing. God is the dominant actor. Yet, the text makes it clear that this action is not at a distance; it his direct and personal work. At the end of verse 2, it is in Hebrew ruah, literally the ‘breath’ of God (translated as ‘Spirit’) hovering over this void. And immediately, God’s breath carries his Word – ‘God said’ – and then repeatedly and throughout the following days of creation (10 times in 1:3-31).  

The second step to notice in Genesis 1 is that God forms the universe in the first three days and then fills the universe in the next three days. And, as can be seen in the table below, there is a striking parallel between days one and four, days two and five, and days three and six.6The rise of modern science has raised again for us the question of the meaning of ‘day.’ Pre-modern theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas also questioned whether we were meant to read the six days here as six literal twenty-four-hour periods of time and have been joined by nineteenth and twentieth century defenders of orthodoxy, B.B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen and others (cf. R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing (Crossway, 2004), 23-24). Gordon Wenham notes, ‘There can be little doubt here “day” has its basic sense of a 24-hour period. The mention of morning and evening, the enumeration of the days, and the divine rest on the seventh show that a week of divine activity is being described here. Elsewhere, of course, “in the day of” and similar phrases can simply mean ‘when’ (e.g., 2:4; 5:1, etc.). Ps 90:4 indeed says that a thousand years are as a day in God’s sight. But it is perilous to try to correlate scientific theory and biblical revelation by appeal to such texts’ (Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Thomas Nelson, 1987, 19). Wenham observes (39-40) that chronological sequence in our modern sense and scientific explanation are not the author’s purpose. The key point Genesis 1 is making is that God, in person, directly by his word, created everything, and in an ordered way that is good. This goodness flows from the goodness of God himself, who is the source of all being and meaning in the universe. Cf. Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11 (Holman Reference, 2021), 89.

Forming what was without formFilling what was void
Day 1, vv. 3-5Light and darkDay 4, vv. 14-19Lights of day and night
Day 2, vv. 6-8Sea and skyDay 5, vv. 20-23Creatures of water and air
Day 3, vv. 9-13Fertile earthDay 6, vv. 24-31Creatures of the land

Over those six days, then, far from being without form and void, God formed the world and filled it. For example, God created light and dark on the first day and then on the fourth day, God created the sun and the moon as lights for the day and the night. So, we see in verse 16 – ‘And God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night…’ – God created the sun and the moon and then, in a great throw-away line, ‘… and the stars’! It is estimated that there are up to one septillion stars in the universe – that is a 1 followed by 24 zeros! Our galaxy, the Milky Way, alone contains more than 100 billions stars, including the sun.7NASA Star Basics, accessed on 30 April 2024, https://science.nasa.gov/universe/stars/#:~:text=Astronomers%20estimate%20that%20the%20universe,-studied%20star,%20the%20Sun. And God created them all. Nothing in material creation is outside of God’s good purposes for us.8In a future GT Exposition, we will examine Gen 1:26-2:3 and marvel at the creation of man and woman, the crown of God’s creation. Humanity uniquely bear God’s image. We are made to know God and enjoy a relationship with Him, living in life-giving dependence on God even as we rule over creation on his behalf. And after each day, God saw that what he had created was good – in other words, it was fit for purpose, the job was done. Mission accomplished. God had created the heavens and the earth, and he had done it directly, in person, without working down a mediating chain of other spiritual beings.

3. UNDERSTANDING GENESIS 1:1-25 IN THE CONTEXT OF THE WHOLE BIBLE

Having established God as the Sovereign Creator in Genesis 1, it is unsurprising that the rest of the Bible’s plotline builds on this foundational truth. Three of the principal ways in which it does so are set out below. Each passage of Scripture mentioned below is worth studying in more detail. 

Genesis 1 is Foundational to Understanding the God of the Bible 

The Old Testament continues to depict God as the eternal, unchangeable, incomparable, and Sovereign Creator. As Mathews puts it, ‘The creation account, as the preamble to the Pentateuch [the first five books of the Bible], 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.’9Mathews, Genesis 1-11, 64. See Psalms 74:12-17; 77:13-20; 89:5-13; Isaiah 42:5-6; Jeremiah 10:12-16.

Isaiah 40, for example, refers to God’s work of creation again and again and concludes: ‘To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.’10Isaiah 40:25-26; cf. Job 38; Psalms 19, 22, 136; Isaiah 45 (see R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing (Crossway, 2004), 20-21).

The Old Testament also continues to underline that the only right response to God, the King of creation, is to acknowledge his rule and worship him (for example, Psa 95:3-7). As such, idolatry and rebellion are stupid and scandalous, and the Scriptures are unafraid to expose humanity’s frailty as creatures, fallenness as rebels, and foolishness as idolaters who worship created things and forget, rather than fear, our Creator.11See, for example, Job 38:4-18ff.; Psalms 33:6-22; 90:1-6; 102:25-28; Isaiah 40:9-28; 44:9-20; and Jeremiah 10:12-16. And this is no less clear in the New Testament. For example, the Apostle Paul reminds his readers in Romans 1:20 that creation witnesses to God’s ‘invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature.’ It is this reality that exposes idolatrous attitudes and actions by all of us as shamefully and wilfully rebellious and leaves us all without excuse before God on his day of judgement (see Romans 1:18-3:20 for context). 

Genesis 1 is Vital to Understanding the Fall of Humanity

Genesis 1 teaches us that God is the Creator of all and, therefore, the rightful owner and Lord of all his creation. It also shows us how good and ordered everything is that God has created. Grasping these truths helps the reader to see why the rebellion of humanity in Genesis 3 is so seismic. Note also how such rebellion leads to growing deceit, disobedience, disorder, and death in Genesis 4-11, until the wonderful images of Genesis 1-2 seem to be a distant dream. However, also note how God reveals his redemptive purposes for his creation through his promises to Abraham in Genesis 12-17, as the Lord determines to bless Abraham’s descendants and, via his offspring, to bless the nations of the world. Although much of Genesis 18-50 reminds us of the growing chaos and curses of Genesis 3-11, we are also reminded of God’s powerful promises for his people, to bless them and through them to bless all the nations of the world. The foundational shape of that blessing has been demonstrated in Genesis 1 and 2: for rebellious humanity to return to living in loving fellowship and dependence on God, and therefore with each other.

Genesis 1 Informs the New Testament Portrait of Jesus Christ 

Not only does John’s prologue to his Gospel tell us that nothing was made without Christ (John 1:1-5), but both the Apostle Paul and the author of Hebrews also uphold such a view (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Hebrews 1:2-3, 10-12).12Other echoes in John 1:1-5 in addition to the phrase ‘in the beginning’ are 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. Arguably, both Paul and the author of Hebrews go even further, not only affirming that Jesus is Divine and the agent or means of creation but also underlining that he sustains it. Nowhere is this New Testament emphasis on this aspect of Christ’s person and work clearer than in Colossians 1:16-17, where Paul says of Jesus, ‘For by him all things were created, in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him … and in him all things hold together.’ Therefore, it is unsurprising to see the twenty-four elders in Revelation 4:11, fall down and cast their crowns before the enthroned Christ, ‘saying, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”’ This serves to assure Christians that the Creator of the world is also the Saviour of the world: ‘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!’13Kent Hughes, Genesis, 30; cf. Collins, Genesis 1-4, 96.

Genesis 1 is Crucial for Understanding the Promise of the New Creation

In the Old and New Testaments, we read of the promise of a new creation and, ultimately, of a new heaven and a new earth. The Bible’s portrait of the eternal future echoes the creation of Genesis 1-2, which catastrophically succumbed to rebellion, idolatry, sin, and death. A total transformation is required to enable sinful de-created people to enjoy a fresh start in a re-created relationship with God in a new creation (for example, Isaiah 65:17-25; 66:15-24; and Ezekiel 36-37). Not only does Christ’s incarnation reveal Jesus to be the supreme Word through whom God created the world (see above), but the New Testament teaches that it is through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and return, that God’s promised new creation will be both inaugurated and, in time, brought to completion (for example, see Acts 17:22-34; 2 Corinthians 5:16-19; Revelation 4-5 and 21:1-22:4). 

4. IDENTIFYING THE DOCTRINAL ISSUES AND IMPLICATIONS IN GENESIS 1:1-25

God Alone is Eternally Triune 

The chapter’s opening expression, ‘In the beginning, God’ tells us that, before anything else existed, God was and always had been. Unlike everything else, God was before creation. God is eternal. God was not made. And while everything else depends on God, he himself depends on nothing. God is self-existent and independent. 

Contrary to many religions, Genesis 1 also indicates that there is a true and personal differentiation in the eternal God. So, verse 2, God’s breath (Spirit) hovered over the water and, verse 26, ‘let us make man in our image’ suggests that there is both Word and self-reflection in God. As the Bible’s plotline unfolds, it teaches us that the breath of God is his eternal Spirit and the Word of God is his eternal Son. To us poor self-blinded sinners, Jesus reveals that the one and only eternal God has a name – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – one God in three Persons has always existed for eternity. And the clarity of the eternal Triune God’s self-disclosure also means that God is not hidden, mystical, impersonal, or unknowable. 

The reality that God is clearly and eternally Triune has several implications. For example, Genesis 1 reveals that God’s eternal Triune being is not a distant monad (a single supreme reality or source from which all things emanate), as taught by ancient Neoplatonism or contemporary Buddhism and some forms of Hinduism. Monism insists that pure divinity must be understood as a simple, undifferentiated substance which we cannot know. It argues that the word or thought of God is divine, but only in a secondary sense. For ‘God’ and his ‘word’ or his ‘self-thought’ are two things, and pure divinity must be a simple ‘one.’ In monism then, the divinity of God’s thought must be conceived of as ‘divine,’ but at a step down from pure divinity, only in a secondary sense. Monism thus means that in all the different revelations of divinity we see in the world, whether Hindu or Christian or other, we do not know the real “God,” God in himself. But Genesis and the rest of Scripture teach that the eternal, real God has from his eternal Triune being created a universe which fosters and supports relationships, with God and with each other. Hindus respect Jesus as an enlightened one and will listen with respect to his Scriptures. Yet as we, and they, listen to Jesus, we can be lovingly led to the heart of God: ‘All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matt 11:27-28).

Furthermore, the eternity of God also means that materialism is mistaken because it claims that only matter has existed for eternity. Carl Sagan, the cosmologist, opened his TV series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, with this grand assertion: ‘The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.’14Available at https://youtu.be/AUFlLBX9Bq0?feature=shared [accessed 18 April 2024]. That is the message of materialism. It says that there is no God, no spiritual realm. It argues that matter is all that matters! So, the Nobel Laureate, Francis Crick asserts: ‘“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.”’15Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (Simon & Schuster, 1994), 3; emphasis added. Of course, the key words are “no more than.” Scientists who believe in Jesus Christ also believe our thoughts have something to do with electrons moving around inside our brain, but Crick wants us to believe that we are reducible to that fact. He would argue that therefore we have no purpose, no reason, no soul; we are merely electronic interactions. And if philosophical materialism shapes how people see the world, then it cannot but impact the way that they live. As the Apostle Paul points out in Romans 1, when we fly in face of all the evidence about God in the world around us, we end up living for created things rather than living for our Creator. But the Bible tells us that it is our Sovereign Creator who has existed for eternity, and not matter.

God Alone is Creator

God’s eternal nature is underscored by a second glorious truth Genesis 1 tells us: God alone is Creator. As we saw earlier, the Bible tells us from the outset that God created everything, out of nothing, and by his Word. It is, therefore, unsurprising that we see early Christians addressing God as the Sovereign Creator of ‘the heavens and the earth and of the sea and everything in them’ (Acts 4:24), and observe the apostles preaching about a God who, having ‘made the world and everything in it,’ is ‘Lord of heaven and earth’ (Acts 17:24). Genesis 1 reveals the almighty power of God in bringing all the universe into being through his will as expressed in his Word. It also underlines God’s good character since creation is so beautifully good and perfectly ordered. This should lead us, as part of his creation, to adoration, honour, praise, and thanksgiving in equal measure.16D. Broughton Knox, Selected Works, Volume 1: The Doctrine of God (Matthias Media, 2000), 176-177.

The exclusive Creatorship of God has several implications. For example, it exposes the problem with polytheism and the error of accidentalism. 

(1) Against the pressure of polytheism to see spirits or divinities, either good or evil, determining how the world around us works and how it impacts us, we can instead see that God is the one Creator of all. God has himself directly created the world and he has done so in person. And our incomparable God is eternally good and eternally sovereign in securing the future of that creation. To that end, we see God’s role and claim as the one, the only Creator, exercised against sin, death, and the devil in the death and resurrection and present heavenly rule of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the incarnate Word of God, by whom the Father created and upholds the universe. We do not have to appease spirits or evil as it tempts us to acknowledge its false claim of power, but just say ‘no’ to them (James 4:7. Cf. 1:12-15). A ‘Christian’ demonology is a contradiction in terms. Paul tells us to ‘remain innocent of evil’ (Rom. 16:19). Creation is good because God made it that way, and in and through his Son, God continues to sustain and direct it to its perfect end.

(2) The truth that it is God who has created the universe exposes the error of accidentalism. This is the view of those, like Bertrand Russell, who believe that everything in the world is the result of no Creator, no guiding hand, but rather the result of pure chance. A big bang? Just chance, they claim. Natural selection? Random accident, they argue. Richard Dawkins, a prophet of natural selection, argues that natural selection, ‘has no vision, nor foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.’17Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (Longman, 1986), 5. And yet even Charles Darwin himself once wrote in a letter to William Graham on 3 July 1881, ‘Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance.’18Darwin Correspondence Project, ‘Letter no. 13230,’ available at https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-13230.xml [accessed 18 April 2024].

Isaac Newton, considered one of the greatest and most influential scientists in history, was also in fact a convinced believer in God, and once built a model of the solar system to help him with his studies. The story is told of how an atheist friend came to visit him one day, admired the model and asked Newton who made it. Newton could not resist replying that nobody had made it and it had appeared by accident. When his friend objected and pointed to the evident craftsmanship of the model, Newton explained the purpose of his answer. If he could not convince his friend that this replica of the solar system had occurred by accident, how could his friend believe that the real solar system, with its far greater complexity and design, could have appeared by chance?19Kent Hughes, Genesis, 32.

Contemporary scientists who believe in Christ have demonstrated some of the more obvious flaws with accidentalism. For example, John Lennox has shown that, although Dawkins and others argue that scientific belief and religious faith are different because the former is based on evidence and the latter lacks any evidence, many of their claims are actually much more like statements of faith.20John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Lion Hudson, 2007). See also John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target (Lion Hudson, 2011), 37-50. For a more popular analysis of the ‘New Atheists,’ see David Robertson, The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths (Christian Focus, 2007). I am indebted to conversations with Revd Dr Andrew Sach about the relationship between Science and Christianity. Science, fundamentally, is a way of discovering things about the world. So, scientists observe the world, formulate a hypothesis to explain what they observe, and then, by experiments, seek to falsify that hypothesis and to refine it accordingly. There is nothing, per se, in the means of enquiry known as science that necessitates an atheistic worldview or that argues against Christian belief. Nor is there any data that has been discovered by the scientific method that argues against the claims of Jesus Christ. 

The real conflict that exists, then, is not between science and Christianity but between different philosophies, different worldviews or, dare one say, between different ‘faith’ positions. There are certain aspects of accidentalism that are not the results of a scientific method but are, in fact, beliefs that are brought to the table that are part of their atheistic worldview. A truly scientific approach would instead look at the evidence for the fine tuning of the universe, for example, and ask whether it supports accidentalism or a view of God as the Creator. 

Recently, confronted with the mass of data for design in the universe, it has been fashionable for those who believe everything was made by chance to pivot to a belief in a multiverse, which argues that if there are an infinite number of universes then it is likely that one would have the conditions necessary for life to exist. However, of course, that view is not something that is an observable, repeatable, or verifiable theory! It may be interesting, but it is not something that can accurately be called a scientific theory. Again, it is something that sounds more like a faith position, whose adherents choose to believe in it because they do not want to exercise their faith in a Creator God.    

The fundamental choice is not between creation and evolution but between creation and chance or accident. And the Bible insists that God made everything. Perhaps the real reason we struggle to accept that God alone is Creator is found in Genesis 1’s third glorious truth about God.

God Alone is Sovereign

God’s awesome power is evident throughout Genesis 1. ‘God is depicted as autonomous Master who has by his uncontested word commanded all things into existence and ordered their design and purpose.’21Mathews, Genesis 1-11, 65 God simply speaks and the whole universe comes into being. So, verse 3 is literally: ‘And God said: ‘Let light be … and light was.’ The cosmos created in just four Hebrew words! And each of the six days starts with, ‘And God said: Let there be,’ and whatever God says, happens. It is very compelling.  

God’s sovereignty leaves no vacancies for tribal gods or territorial gods or for the current form of secular individualism, sovereignty of the modern self which determines its own identity, and before which all external reality must bow or be cancelled. Genesis 1 tells us that the true and living God created everything from nothing by speaking and that he alone is the Lord of all and King of creation. 

Grasp those glorious truths and we won’t be surprised to see Jesus Christ control nature in the Gospel accounts as only God can do – able to feed 5,000 people and to still a storm with a word. It is said that you can tell how powerful someone is by the impact of their words. A newly qualified teacher may try to get calm in the classroom but his appeals for quiet can easily fall on deaf ears. However, when the Headteacher walks in and says: ‘QUIET!’, all is calm. You may know someone like that. Well, when God speaks, when Jesus speaks, it is so.

As with the truths that God alone is eternally Triune and God alone is Creator, the sovereignty of God in creation also has significant implications. It reveals the hubris of humanism. That is the view that says there is no God and that we are at the centre of the universe. To a humanist, God is simply the product of our minds and imaginations and so we are the masters of our fate. Here is the poet Charles Swinburne: ‘Glory to man in the highest for man is the master of things.’22Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘Hymn of Man,’ in Songs Before Sunrise (Heinemann, 1917), 93-104. After all we have seen in Genesis 1, it is awful arrogance, isn’t it? And its consequences are almost immeasurably painful and evil, and unstoppable. As Jonathan Glover made clear in his book, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, to our shame, the last century surpassed all others in torture, displacement, and slaughter.23Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Pimlico, 2001). There has been none like it. When God is dead, all things are permissible.

It is indeed ironic that, as our society seeks to deny God in his goodness as the cause and rationality of all true being, and to assert its own self-made morality and, in particular, a view of self-grounded identity, we discover that it is not content and happy as it does so. On the contrary, we discover astonishing levels of anxiety,24‘It is wholly unsurprising that studies show an increase in anxiety, depression and mental illness in young people today. Rather than being a demonstration of “snowflake”-ism it is a wholly understandable reaction to a world whose complexities have squared in their lifetimes’ (Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019, 177)). a high suicide rate,25‘The total age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased 35.2% from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2018, before declining to 13.9 per 100,000 in 2019.’ In 2019, ‘Suicide was the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10 and 34, and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 35 and 44.’ National Institute of Mental Health, ‘Suicide,’ https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide [accessed 18 April 2024]. and a remarkable inability to forgive.26Murray cites several well-known cases, amongst them the journalists of the New York Times, Quinn Norton and Sarah Jeong. These cases illustrate both the inescapable polarization and the necessary, perpetual enmity characteristic of contemporary culture. In contrast, Murray argues that forgiveness is necessary, although its cultural return may be difficult. ‘As one of the consequences of the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically, that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered. Today we do seem to live in a world where actions can have consequences we could never have imagined, where guilt and shame are more at hand than ever, and where we have no means whatsoever of redemption’ (Murray, The Madness of Crowds, 177).

By contrast, the Bible teaches us that God alone is the eternally Triune Creator, and so God alone is the Sovereign Ruler, not only transcendent above all he has made but legitimately and effectively ruling over it too. We are not masters of the universe; God is because he made it all. The fullness of the revelation of Jesus Christ the only Son of the Father is built on the Creator’s eternal goodness and sovereignty. In that context we can deal with our spiritual insecurities, of whatever type, whether arising in the context of contemporary secular culture or traditional religion. Through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit, the Almighty Father addresses and redresses our spiritual insecurities.

5. CONCLUSION

Genesis 1 tells us that, unlike Paul Gaugin, we can know where we came from because we have been created by God. That God is the Sovereign Creator of the whole universe is the basic fact that gives life meaning and purpose, and the foundation on which our life must be built. This is the fundamental truth that both the structure and content of Genesis 1:1-25 presents to the reader, as we marvel at God forming what was without form before filling what was void, and doing so personally and perfectly. And it is on this basis that the rest of Scripture presents its portrait of the unique Lord of all, exposes the scandal of human rebellion, deepens our understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ, and whets our appetite for the promised new creation.

The author of Knowing God writes in his foreword about those ‘who look at God, so to speak, through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pigmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pigmy Christians.’27J. I. Packer, Knowing God. Second Edition (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), 8. Genesis 1:1-25 is a powerful antidote to such small-minded Christianity. In contrast to many misleading worldviews, such as materialism, polytheism, accidentalism, and humanism, it introduces us to God as our eternal Triune Sovereign Creator, and drives us to adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and praise.  Unlike those who seek to delete God, and others who seek to downgrade or downplay God, Genesis 1:1-25 tells us that God is real, personal, has existed for eternity, created all we see including ourselves, and is utterly without equal. The staggering truth that God is our Sovereign Creator should lead us to love God more deeply and long to live in God’s world in God’s way and for God’s glory.

6. FOR FURTHER READING

David J. Atkinson, The Message of Genesis 1-11: The Dawn of Creation. Revised Edition [The Bible Speaks Today] (IVP, 2021).

Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (IVP, 1984).

C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (P&R Publishing, 2006).

R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing [Preach the Word Series] (Crossway, 2004), 15-39.

Derek Kidner, Genesis [Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries] (IVP, 1967), 47-62.

Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11 [Christian Standard Commentary] (Holman Reference, 2022), 61-117.

  • 1
    Letters of Paul Gauguin to Georges Daniel De Monfreid, trans. Ruth Pielkovo (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1922), 59-102.
  • 2
    Bertrand Russell, ‘A Free Man’s Worship,’ in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), 46-57.
  • 3
    Katharine Tait, My Father, Bertrand Russell (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 189.
  • 4
    ‘Highly respected healer among the Zulu people of South Africa, who diagnoses, prescribes, and often performs the rituals to heal a person physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually’ (Britannica.com at https://www.britannica.com/science/sangoma [accessed 4 July 2024]). 
  • 5
    For example, in Yoruba culture in Nigeria, ancestors known as Egungun are highly revered and honoured by the community through annual festivals, where the ancestors are believed to return to offer blessings and guidance. The worthiness of an ancestor is often determined by their contributions to the family and society, as well as their adherence to religious practices. Similarly, in Zulu culture in South Africa, ancestors, referred to as Amadlozi or Abaphansi, are integral to spiritual life. The community recognizes ancestors who have lived virtuous lives and contributed significantly to the family and clan. Rituals involving the slaughtering of cattle, offerings of beer, and other traditional ceremonies are conducted to honour and communicate with the ancestors. Cf. Kwame Bediako, ‘Jesus in African Culture: A Ghanaian perspective,’ in his Jesus in Africa: The Christian Gospel in African History and Experience (Regnum Afrika, 2004), 20-33. See also M.T. Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency (Indiana University Press, 1992), 45-67, 108-135; and Harriet Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine: An Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought and Practice (Academic Press, 1977), 29-31, 65-73, 91-99.
  • 6
    The rise of modern science has raised again for us the question of the meaning of ‘day.’ Pre-modern theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas also questioned whether we were meant to read the six days here as six literal twenty-four-hour periods of time and have been joined by nineteenth and twentieth century defenders of orthodoxy, B.B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen and others (cf. R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing (Crossway, 2004), 23-24). Gordon Wenham notes, ‘There can be little doubt here “day” has its basic sense of a 24-hour period. The mention of morning and evening, the enumeration of the days, and the divine rest on the seventh show that a week of divine activity is being described here. Elsewhere, of course, “in the day of” and similar phrases can simply mean ‘when’ (e.g., 2:4; 5:1, etc.). Ps 90:4 indeed says that a thousand years are as a day in God’s sight. But it is perilous to try to correlate scientific theory and biblical revelation by appeal to such texts’ (Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Thomas Nelson, 1987, 19). Wenham observes (39-40) that chronological sequence in our modern sense and scientific explanation are not the author’s purpose. The key point Genesis 1 is making is that God, in person, directly by his word, created everything, and in an ordered way that is good. This goodness flows from the goodness of God himself, who is the source of all being and meaning in the universe. Cf. Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11 (Holman Reference, 2021), 89.
  • 7
    NASA Star Basics, accessed on 30 April 2024, https://science.nasa.gov/universe/stars/#:~:text=Astronomers%20estimate%20that%20the%20universe,-studied%20star,%20the%20Sun.
  • 8
    In a future GT Exposition, we will examine Gen 1:26-2:3 and marvel at the creation of man and woman, the crown of God’s creation. Humanity uniquely bear God’s image. We are made to know God and enjoy a relationship with Him, living in life-giving dependence on God even as we rule over creation on his behalf.
  • 9
    Mathews, Genesis 1-11, 64. See Psalms 74:12-17; 77:13-20; 89:5-13; Isaiah 42:5-6; Jeremiah 10:12-16.
  • 10
    Isaiah 40:25-26; cf. Job 38; Psalms 19, 22, 136; Isaiah 45 (see R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing (Crossway, 2004), 20-21).
  • 11
    See, for example, Job 38:4-18ff.; Psalms 33:6-22; 90:1-6; 102:25-28; Isaiah 40:9-28; 44:9-20; and Jeremiah 10:12-16.
  • 12
    Other echoes in John 1:1-5 in addition to the phrase ‘in the beginning’ are 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.
  • 13
    Kent Hughes, Genesis, 30; cf. Collins, Genesis 1-4, 96.
  • 14
    Available at https://youtu.be/AUFlLBX9Bq0?feature=shared [accessed 18 April 2024].
  • 15
    Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (Simon & Schuster, 1994), 3; emphasis added.
  • 16
    D. Broughton Knox, Selected Works, Volume 1: The Doctrine of God (Matthias Media, 2000), 176-177.
  • 17
    Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (Longman, 1986), 5.
  • 18
    Darwin Correspondence Project, ‘Letter no. 13230,’ available at https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-13230.xml [accessed 18 April 2024].
  • 19
    Kent Hughes, Genesis, 32.
  • 20
    John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Lion Hudson, 2007). See also John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target (Lion Hudson, 2011), 37-50. For a more popular analysis of the ‘New Atheists,’ see David Robertson, The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths (Christian Focus, 2007). I am indebted to conversations with Revd Dr Andrew Sach about the relationship between Science and Christianity.
  • 21
    Mathews, Genesis 1-11, 65
  • 22
    Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘Hymn of Man,’ in Songs Before Sunrise (Heinemann, 1917), 93-104.
  • 23
    Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Pimlico, 2001).
  • 24
    ‘It is wholly unsurprising that studies show an increase in anxiety, depression and mental illness in young people today. Rather than being a demonstration of “snowflake”-ism it is a wholly understandable reaction to a world whose complexities have squared in their lifetimes’ (Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019, 177)).
  • 25
    ‘The total age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased 35.2% from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2018, before declining to 13.9 per 100,000 in 2019.’ In 2019, ‘Suicide was the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10 and 34, and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 35 and 44.’ National Institute of Mental Health, ‘Suicide,’ https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide [accessed 18 April 2024].
  • 26
    Murray cites several well-known cases, amongst them the journalists of the New York Times, Quinn Norton and Sarah Jeong. These cases illustrate both the inescapable polarization and the necessary, perpetual enmity characteristic of contemporary culture. In contrast, Murray argues that forgiveness is necessary, although its cultural return may be difficult. ‘As one of the consequences of the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically, that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered. Today we do seem to live in a world where actions can have consequences we could never have imagined, where guilt and shame are more at hand than ever, and where we have no means whatsoever of redemption’ (Murray, The Madness of Crowds, 177).
  • 27
    J. I. Packer, Knowing God. Second Edition (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), 8.

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