This is the first installment in our series entitled, God and Nature, which explores the relationship between our Creator and nature: how God uses nature, how we are meant to view nature, and how God chooses to reveal (or hide) himself in nature.
Arguably, the most famous words in the Bible are its first: "In the beginning, God created…" It is good to start at the beginning, but readers sometimes ask how this can be the beginning if God already existed before the beginning. If God predates the beginning, where was God before the beginning began?
When you start asking these kinds of questions, two things become apparent. First, unless one wants to write off the Scriptures as utter nonsense, then it is clear that God is a type of being that is not like created things. God has no beginning, and he has no end, "I am the Alpha and Omega," says the Lord God, "who was and is and is to come" (Rev. 1:8). Or, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Psalm 90:2).
Secondly, to say there is a "beginning" means that before God creates, there is no time. Time is a creation of God. God was not in time living a linear existence, but outside of time. "He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever" (Heb 7:3). Time requires movement and measurement, and before God created the heavens and earth, the universe and all that is in it, there was no time because there were no "things." There was no-thing.
God's choice to create, then, is a choice of love, not occasioned by boredom or inspiration. There is no "time" for God to get bored or inspired. God's creative act is an act of sovereign will, a choice freely made and without compulsion. If we were to speak of God's "motivation" to create, and we must be careful in doing so, we could say that God creates because God wants to be a giving God: "And he said to me, 'It is done!' I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment" (Rev. 21:6). God creates because God is love (1 John 4:8).
All through the creation story (as we see in both Genesis and John 1), the creation comes into being as a recipient of God's Word. This Word is not only literally a word of life but also a word of creative power. As God speaks, he speaks into the nothing and makes it something. This means he makes the nothing a recipient of his Word, a benefactor of his grace.
Creation reflects the power and majesty of God (Romans 1) because it is the space of divine reception. The diversity of the universe, the animal kingdom, and the natural wonders all reflect the artistic and bountiful nothingness that has been transformed into something via the Word. Humans, made from the dust of the earth, are given God's image and likeness. They are recipients of God's gifts and his grace; they share a level of similitude with him. God's creative act in Genesis made "The heavens and the earth," and so in the seven days of creation, God also created all of heaven and the angels (Gen. 2:1-3).
The creation account makes it clear that nature is a space of divine grace and reception. All of the creation is a testimony to God's character as lover, artist, caregiver, power-wielder, creator, and friend. Nature reflects this glory but should not be confused with it. The worship of nature, magic, panentheism, and other idolatries seek to find God in nature as though he animated and subsumed it like color in a snow cone. This is a misunderstanding of God's providential care over his creation. Get the distinction wrong, and you worship the creation instead of the Creator. The distinction is this: God cares for his creation and upholds it (providence), but he is not the same as it.
To be a creature is to be one who has come from nothing by the Word of God.
This doesn't mean God does not have an intimate relationship with creation. In his Incarnation, Jesus Christ is God-enfleshed. In this sense, the Creator comes to be a creature (without ever shedding his divine nature). It is a clash of contrasts that no one thought was appropriate when the Church began confessing it. The incarnation not only secures the way of salvation for sinners, but it also re-appropriates the creation as worthy of redemption for Christ's sake.
Christ's ascension into heaven after his resurrection, and the promise of our own bodily resurrection, as well as the promise of a new heaven and earth, all indicate that God's original creative act was intended as an eternal reality. God loves his people and his creation, and he will continue to be the God who creates to give.
Right now, as you read this, the Son of Man is seated at the right hand of God the Father, Almighty, with a human body. His is a physical body with blood-filled veins, a stomach that takes in food, and scars on his hands and feet. He has a fleshly body just like you, only his is glorified.
When we think of such things and the redemption of all creation through the work of Christ, we are led to worship the Creator. And, perhaps, we begin to see that God's creative act is always an act of loving self-donation. To be a creature is to be one who has come from nothing by the Word of God. And it is that same Word of God, in Christ, that sets sinners free and beckons weary sinners to living waters, partnered yokes, precious promises, and eternal life.
.webp?width=36&height=36&name=1517headshots-141-Edit%20(1).webp){kind=small}
