Chapter 1: In the Beginning

The first four words of the Bible read, “In the beginning God.” This is very significant when considering who God is and who He is not.

There are three main views on the nature of God. First, there is theism, where God has created all things. Second, there is pantheism, where God is in all things, or is all things. Third, there is atheism, where there is no God at all. The Bible is theistic; it says that God created all things out of nothing. We will see this when we read the very first verse of the Bible in a moment.

So what is God’s name? In the Bible, there are two significant names for God. These names suggest much of what we know about God. First is the generic term “God.” You will see this term used many times when the Bible is emphasizing God’s omnipotence.

The other primary name used for God is Jehovah. This is His personal name. Unlike many of today’s names that are given to children where there is little consideration for the name’s meaning, in the ancient world names suggested something about the character of that person. This name means “He is.” At the center of God’s character is His eternality and His existence. He always was. Before time began, He was. When time ends, He will continue to be. He is also everywhere; nothing can contain him. “Being” is central to understanding God. Both the creation and existence of the universe is dependent upon God’s unlimited sovereign power. The Bible states, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 4:11).

One will not often see the name “Jehovah” in the English Biblical text. Most of the time, you will see “LORD” written in all capital letters in its place. Know that in the original text, which is written in another language, Jehovah is the name that is employed.

To have any discussion on Biblical Christianity, one must start in the right place by asking a question: What is God like? We have seen a little already from some of the names of God, but let us look a little closer as to what the Bible says. Many faiths and worldviews, from animistic tribes to major world religions, answer this question differently, so we need to get this one right. However, the Bible provides an answer in its very first verse. Like any other book we would read, we start in the beginning! We see three explicit truths and many implicit truths from this very first verse:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

Explicit Truths

First, there are three explicit truths we can see from this verse:

There was a beginning of creation and time. Everything we see was not always here. God created everything we see and everything we do not see.
In the beginning, God was already there. God did not ever have a beginning; when He created the world, He already was. You and I had beginnings, but God never had a beginning.
God created everything. The phrase “the heaven and the earth” is a figure of speech called a merism. This literary device takes two opposite extremes to signify a whole. The earth is the very closest we can get to us, while heaven is the farthest away in the recesses of the universe. This phrase means that God created the outermost heavens, and the things we see around us on earth, and everything in between. God created everything—without exception.

Implicit Truths

The facts we have just discussed have many implications worth noting. Let us explore some of them, though there could be many more.

God is eternal. God always was and always will be. There was a time when there was nothing else other than God: no plants, no animals, no sun, moon or stars. There was only God. Because of this, we see that God is distinct from His creation. He does not consist of atoms like his creation does, and neither does He have flesh and bones. A being who has neither flesh nor bone, and does not consist of material is called a spirit (John 4:24). He is not restricted by space and time, for He created both. We say that God is eternal, because He has neither beginning nor ending.
God is self-sufficient. Since He is distinct from the created order, God does not need anything to survive. We need food, water, and air to survive. God does not need these things, because He created all of those things, and existed just fine without any of it. His separation from the created order is one way to show that God is holy.
God is all-powerful. Consider the immensity of the universe. Consider how large the greatest star is. God created it all. God is bigger than the universe. Think about all of the power in the nuclear bomb and the rocket; God is more powerful than each of these. Even considering this, He created the minutia of subatomic particles. God’s power is greater than the sum of all of these things, because He made them all. God is greater than His creation; God is infinite and His creation is finite.
God has authority over creation. When we build a house, we are the owner of that house. The same is true of God. Because He created everything, God is the owner of all things. Later on in the Bible, God says that “whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Job 41:11). He is the true king of the universe. Also, because of this, all of the world’s creatures are for God’s pleasure, and are accountable to Him.
God is a super-intellect. When we build things, we often need blueprints or directions to know how to build something. We also need tools as well. It is different with God. God created everything out of nothing. There were no previous materials with which God built the universe. He had no tools. No one had to teach Him how to build the universe from scratch, as we need instruction to develop skills. God had no prior example to follow; His creative and artistic hand developed everything with no help, no instruction, no tools and no materials. Moreover, since He created everything, God knows everything. Throughout history, humankind learned a lot about the universe through observation. God already knew everything, because He created it all. He knows all of history, because He was there for it all.
God is good and perfect. Most people agree that there is a standard of goodness and perfection. We may not all agree as to what makes something good or perfect, but we all have such a concept in our vocabulary. Because everything came from God, He Himself must be the standard of goodness and perfection in the world. He made the universe exactly the way He wanted it to be. If God is the standard of goodness and perfection, His creation must have also been good and perfect. This may not be the case for our world anymore, but the state of the universe at its inception was perfection. Another way to say that God is good and perfect is to say that He is righteous.
God is personal and alive. In the people we meet and in our friends and family, we see that they all have different personalities. Because people have personality, God must also be personal, because personal beings cannot come from the impersonal. The same reasoning applies to life. As living beings, we were born because of our parents, other living beings. Life begets life, and God must be alive because life cannot come from non-life. God is the source of life.
God is a trinity. There is one God, but He exists in three persons. This may not be apparent in the English text, but some things are apparent in the original language. First, the word “God” is a plural noun, but the verb “created” is conjugated in the third person singular. God exists in three persons: the Father, the Son (or the Word), and the Holy Ghost (or the Holy Spirit) (1 John 5:7). This will become more apparent a little later in this chapter of the Bible.
Only God can tell us how the world began. Because He was the only one who was there, God is the only one who can tell us how He created the world (Job 38:4).
God is able to communicate with us. As corollary to the previous point, if this verse claims God’s ability to communicate to us about the origin of the world, we know that He is a God of communication. As a personal being, He can communicate with His creation. We will see this again in Genesis 1:3.

These truths set the true God of the Bible apart from the religions of the world, since He is a personal, all-powerful God that is the creator of all things and the ruler over them all. Because the fundamental attributes of God can be defined in this way, we can see that God deserves honor from all of His creation.

These attributes of God as taught in the Bible affirm the theistic view of God. Since God existed before the universe, space, and time, the Bible denies the pantheistic view of God. To argue the contrary, if God was a part of His creation, then who created Him? He would then have a superior that created Him, and that superior must be the true God.

Since the universe was created by someone, an “uncaused cause,” the Bible also denies the atheistic view of God. To argue the contrary, if there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing? Everything in the created order must have come from somewhere.

With these fundamentals in mind, let us proceed with the rest of Genesis 1.

Next: Chapter 2: God Created the Heaven and the Earth

Previous: Introduction: So Then Faith Cometh by Hearing

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