THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION OF GOD

Recently my daughter expressed her frustration in trying to think about the God who has always existed. We all face the same struggle because we live in a world where everything had a beginning. Our minds seem to be comfortable peering forward into an endless eternity to come, but in the other direction we expect to find a starting point somewhere.

What did God do, we wonder, before there was a world? But, is there not more to be enjoyed - infinitely more - in the fellowship of God than in all the worlds He made? After all, what shall we be doing when this world is gone? ‘This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent’, John 17. 3.

If studying atoms and super novas fills us with wonder now, what delight we will find in our ever expanding knowledge of God. ‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments’, Rom. 11. 33. But, praise God, though we know it is too great to grasp, we shall have endless opportunities to try!

John in his writings likes to begin at the beginning:

1. In John chapter 1, he writes of Christ ‘in the beginning’, v. 1. This beginning is obviously before the beginning mentioned in Genesis chapter 1, since John goes on to tell us that the Word made all things. This phrase is another way of saying that there never was a time when He was not.

2. In 1 John chapter 1, he says, ‘That which was from the beginning’, v. 1. Here the thought is linked to the incarnation and the beginning of a new order of things with the manifesting of true life through His coming into the world.

3. In Revelation 1, John introduces us to Christ as the One who is ‘the beginning’, v. 8. It is not that He had a beginning. Rather, whatever purpose or plan God had, it found its beginning in Christ. It is in this sense that He is ‘the beginning of the creation of God’. Whether the first or new creation, Christ initiates and accomplishes the will of God. He first made us from dust as sons of Adam, and then remade us as sons of God.