In the beginning God
By Martin Morrison
“Nothing is more beautiful than Genesis, nothing more useful”, wrote Martin Luther.
We are going to spend a considerable period of time in Genesis 1 – 3, which arguably constitutes the most important chapters of the Bible. In these early chapters, the great doctrines of the Bible are established: God as creator; the power of God’s word; male and female made in the image of God; the equality and complementarity of the sexes; the goodness of creation; the dignity of work and rest; the definition of marriage; how sin and death entered our world; God’s plan to rescue us from his judgement.
Who is God? This is the most important question that you will ever ask. It is not merely a question for intellectuals or philosophers, while the rest of us carry on with our normal lives. This question will affect the rest of your life. The answer to this question will affect your purpose, your reason for living, your morals, your values, your relationships, your destiny. This is the single most important question you will ever ask. Everything hangs on this question. Everything hangs on the answer.
As a Christian and a pastor, I believe that the Bible is God’s word written. And so, I will be unpacking what the Bible says about God. I do not need to remind you, that there are many in the western world, who do not agree with my belief in God. In world terms, they are in the minority, but they are hugely influential. For instance, Karen Armstrong argues that God is the product of man’s creative imagination, “God may well be our most interesting idea”. Ian Banks argues, “We made God not the other way round. Religion is one way to explain the universe, but eventually science comes along and explains it all”.
Albert Mohler summarizes the new atheists and their thinking as follows, ”They see atheism as the only plausible worldview for our times, and they see belief in God as downright dangerous. They see science as the only true knowledge. They argue that belief in God is organized ignorance, that leads to violence and that atheism is freedom. They argue that belief in God was part of pre-history, the infancy of humanity. But now as humanity has come of age, belief in God is no longer necessary”.
Ludovic Kennedy wrote a book called, All in the Mind. He said he chose the title to prove that the God worshipped by many is entirely a creature of our own imagination, it is all in the mind! In the book, he says, “The quest for God may be likened to a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat who isn’t there”. Delightful, but perfectly untrue!
We can learn at least five things about God, here in Genesis 1. Today, suffice to look at the first of those five things.
God simply is. It is striking that the Bible does not begin with a long list of arguments to prove the existence of God. It starts with, “In the beginning God”, Genesis 1:1. God simply is. Genesis assumes the existence of God. Fundamental to the Christian faith is the self-existence of God. God has no beginning and no end. God has always existed. God is the uncaused cause. There never was a time when God did not exist.
Our finite minds find that a little difficult to understand. But we are a little bit like an ant crawling over the latest iPhone 11 Pro Max. Does the ant have any idea what pixel resolution is? Does it know what 512GB is? Does it understand A13 Bionic chip? Though God has certainly revealed many things about himself in the Bible, we are not all that dissimilar to that ant. You see God is beyond our proofs, our definitions, our categories, he simply is.
Matthew Barrett asks the question, what was God doing before he created the world? Perhaps he was lonely. And being lonely, he needed to fill that empty hole in his heart. So, he decided to create the world – that way he could have fellowship with others. Now that the world is here, God is not so lonely anymore. Because of us, he feels fulfilled and whole.
This answer is not uncommon. It can be heard in many churches today by well meaning Christians. However, they are totally wrong. Brace yourself. God does not need you. He doesn’t need you, he doesn’t need me, and he doesn’t need anyone or anything in this world. In fact, he doesn’t need the world at all. Period.
God is not a needy God. It’s not as if he was bored, twiddling his thumbs, desperately lonely prior to creating the world. God is not dependent on the world for his existence, nor is he dependent on the world for his happiness and self-fulfilment. Instead, he possesses life in and of himself. More precisely, he is the fullness of life in and of himself. “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself”, John 5:26. The theological or Latin word is, aseity. Meaning that God is self-existent and self-sufficient. He therefore cannot in any sense be caused by another.
That is one of the most fundamental differences between the creator and the creature. We are creatures, and therefore we are born into the world totally dependent in every way. Our existence is derived from our mother and father. We are finite, we are dependent both on God and others.
Not so with God the creator. Unlike everything else in the world, he is not derived from anything or anyone else. He is underived. The unmoved mover. It is not that he created himself. No, he is the uncreated one. No one brought him into being. He has no beginning. He is uncaused, and his existence is grounded in himself alone. God is not deficient in any shape or form. He is not dependent on anyone or anything. Aseity defines God as a perfect being.
“In the beginning God”, Genesis 1:1. God simply is. And you thought an iPhone 11 Pro Max was complex!
No wonder the angels cried out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory”, Isaiah 6:3.
No wonder the wise men, “…fell down and worshiped him”, Matthew 2:11. Perhaps, that’s what you and I need to do right now.