The Doctrine of Revelation: The Story of Scripture (Part 2)

It’s a Theocentric Universe! That’s one of the major themes of the book of Genesis. All things in the universe were created by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16). The Bible opens with the account of God’s creating the universe and everything in it. It makes little difference to me at this moment as to whether that was a little seven-day creation, or a poetic description of God’s creating through evolutionary processes across the years. And, it doesn’t seem to me that Genesis is really all that concerned with that question either. It does, however, insist that it exists because of and for God Almighty.

It may seem strange to some that in writing with an intent to focus attention on Jesus we would turn to Genesis 1, but He is to be found here. The Creation accounts reveal to us an important point: God works in a plurality of power. We often refer to God as creating, but what we should note is that God himself speaks to at least another creator. God himself says:

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

Who here is God speaking to? Some suggest the angels, but nowhere else in Scripture do we get an indication that angels have the power to create. This would be a definite anomaly to Hebrew theology. Others suggest this is a common usage of the ancient “Royal We” expression, where rulers would refer to themselves in plural forms. But the apostle John gives us a better interpretation, one that explains the multiple references to God in Scripture more clearly: John tells us, speaking of Jesus, that “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:2-3). You see from Scripture we have this picture of Jesus being actively involved in the work of Creation.

Jesus is a Creator! He was present in the beginning, before the world began, and He was actively involved in bringing life. What’s important to note here, of course, is not simply that Jesus was present in the original creation, but that His role moves forward in New Creation or Re-Creation too. Jesus gives original life, and best of all, He gives new life (John 10:28; 17:2). The story of Jesus starts at the very beginning of the Bible…and it only gets better!