God

About 12 years ago I engaged in some lengthy dialogue with a fellow graduate student who had abandoned his Christian faith upon reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Below is one of the emails I sent to “Oleg” (not his real name).

Dear “Oleg”

Please allow me to begin by first expressing my profoundest sorrow over the terrible experiences you have been through. I cannot possibly understand the hurt and anguish these things have caused you. I can only say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and that I hope that in spite of it all, you are able to clearly distinguish between the wickedness of the persons that took advantage of you and the goodness of the God they so poorly represented in your case. My heart truly ached within me when I read your email. I know these words of mine may not mean that much, and certainly they can’t erase your personal history or the present feelings that history may yet arouse within you, but please know that I truly and deeply hurt for you because of this. 

I also want to apologize for taking so long to send a response to your last two emails. Despite the passage of so much time, I still, regrettably, have no elaborate treatise to offer you in defense of my position. I have no knock-down argument to give to you. And truthfully, my suspicion is that given the rather lofty standard of evidence you have raised for justifiable belief in God (namely, a theophany), there is not much I can say that you will likely find especially compelling. Nevertheless, I will try. 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Volumes upon volumes can and have been written about this one verse and its incalculable implications for, well, everything. But while we can get caught up in all the philosophical and theological ruminations following from the realities presented to us by these seven words (in the original Hebrew), we must not forget one of the most, if not the most important lesson: Genesis 1:1 provides the foundation of our worship. It provides the reason for our worship. It reveals the Person we are to worship, exclusively. It provides the basis of our duty to worship. What is it that Genesis 1:1 teaches us about worship that is so profound? Simply this: God is God and we exist because and for Him. It really is that simple.

The Scriptures abound with references to this prerogative of the Creator, “for whom and by whom all things exist” (Heb. 2:10). Two truths stand out, one familiar, the other less so. God as Creator is the reason “all things” exist: “You created all things and by your will they existed and were created” (Rev. 4:11). Or this: “All things were made through him (Jesus), and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). All things were made through him. Nothing has been made that was not made by him. God as Creator brought all things into existence. “Before” God created (there was no “before” the beginning as time itself was created; but while we cannot accurately use the word “before” in the sense of chronology, we can in terms of logical priority), there was the triune God and there was nothing else. God exists from all eternity. Everything else had a beginning – at one “time” it did not exist.

But there’s another truth in that Hebrews 2:10 passage that must be grasped. Not only is God as Creator the one “by whom all things exist,” He is the one “for whom all things exist.” God created all things with a purpose, and that purpose is ultimately found in the will of the Creator to magnify His glory through all creation. Through the prophet Isaiah, the God of creation said this: “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isa 43:7). That is it in a nutshell: everything was created by God and for God.

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Thus wrote Moses in Psalm 90:1-2. The main point is obvious: there is an ontological distinction (distinction in being) between God and the world He created. Whereas “the mountains were brought forth” and the earth “was formed,” God simply is. 

God is God from all eternity, whether we look to “eternity past” or look forward to “eternity future.” For God, there is no “past” or “future.” God has no yesterdays or tomorrows. God never says, “Way back when I was about nine billion years old….” God just is. This is not only the teaching of Psalm 90:1-2, Psalm 102:25-27; Micah 5:2; Hebrews 1:12, and many other Scriptures, it is also the obvious implication of the very first verse of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1-11 provides the foundations of some highly significant doctrines, events, and redemptive-historical themes which are further developed and resolved throughout the rest of the Bible. For instance, in Genesis 1-11 we learn of the foundations for cosmic history, earth history, human history, human institutions (e.g., marriage and government), and redemptive history culminating in the revelation of Jesus the Messiah. Regarding redemptive history, the early chapters of Genesis reveal the conflict introduced into the world, and specifically the divine/human relationship, through Adam and Eve’s sin. But in addition to the revelation of the original human sin and the first judgment pronounced upon the human race (Genesis 3:1-19), we also see the first ever gospel presentation as God promised, in prototypical form, a coming messiah who would crush the head of the adversarial serpent (Gen. 3:15). This sin-judgment-redemption theme is played out throughout the Scripture, and the conflict which sin introduced in the third chapter of the Bible is brought to complete resolution by the second the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 21.