“In the beginning, God” – The first four words of the Bible take us
back to the point where we can go no further, back to the eternity of
God.
What do we find when we are taken back – into the heart of the eternal God?
We find love. We discover that “God is love.”
Creation is love because God is love. Before God made us, He loved us.
The
love which we find in the opening chapters of Genesis is the love that
is proclaimed throughout God’s Word – from Genesis to Revelation.
It’s the great love of God for us. It’s the love that never ends. It’s the love that goes on and on.
* How do we get to know God the Creator? How do we come to know that His heart is full of love for us?
In Genesis 1, three words are repeated over and over again: “And God said”.
These words emphasize the creative power of the Word of God.
God
created through His Word. He proclaims His love to us through Jesus
Christ, the living Word of God. He declares His love for us in the
Scriptures, the written Word of God. We come to a true knowledge of god
as our loving Creator when we come, in faith, to Jesus Christ, our
Saviour. As the Scriptures proclaim the Saviour to us, we learn that we
need to be re-created in Christ, if we are to discover the purpose of
God’s love when He created us in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27). In
Jesus Christ, we learn that “God so loved the world” (John 3:16).
Through Christ, we read Genesis with new eyes, the renewed eyes of “a
new creation in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Through this new creation
in Christ, we come to a real understanding of what it means to say,
“Lord God, You created me. You are my Creator.”
* When we see
creation from the standpoint of Jesus Christ, it is no longer merely a
matter of ‘long, long ago.’ When we see God, our Creator, through the
eyes of Jesus, our Saviour, we no longer have the feeling of something
‘far, far away’, something which is so distant and remote from our
lives that it does not really concern us very much at all. In Jesus
Christ, God, our Creator, has come to us. In Jesus Christ, God, our
Creator, has declared his love to us. When you read the story of the
Garden of Eden, let your thoughts move beyond that garden to another
garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed to His Father,
“Not My will, but Yours be done (Luke 22:42). As you come, in faith, to
the Christ of Calvary, you will see creation from the vantage-point of
the cross. You will read what God’s Word says about creation with the
eyes of one who has become a new creation in Christ. You will read of
God, breathing the breath of life into man (Genesis 2:7), and you will
rejoice in the gift of God – the Holy Spirit: God’s gift to every
believer in the lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:14). When you read of
God’s command to man to do His will, you will, by the power and
presence of the Holy Spirit, make it your delight to do the will of
God. This is what it means to be re-created in the image of God. It is a
life of learning to pray, with Jesus, “Not my will but yours be done.”
To believe in God as our Creator is to obey Him as our Lord. Faith in
God, the creator, is a living faith, when we know that Jesus is “God
with us” and acknowledge Him as Lord.
We make our confession of faith – “Jesus is Lord”, and we give thanks that “creation’s voice proclaims” that He is Lord.
Comments
Post a Comment