Each week on Thursdays we highlight a trustworthy discipleship resource that can help you in your mission to make disciples. This week’s post is from Gospel Foundations Volume 1: The God Who Creates (Genesis), Session 1 God Creates. Fill out the form at the end of this post by Friday, September 7th at 11:59pm to enter for a chance to win this free resource!
How Creation Points to Jesus
In the beginning…
These three words serve as a launching pad. They set the stage for the story of everything that comes next. They serve as the foundation for all we know, experience, love, and understand. And yet, these three words lose their meaning without the next word we find in Scripture:
In the beginning, God…
God was there at the beginning of the storyline of Scripture—and so was the Son of God, which the New Testament makes explicit:
He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:15-17
Why did God create? Was it because He was lonely? Because there was something deficient in Himself? To fulfill some need that He had? Far from any of these reasons. God created not because He was lacking but because He was overflowing—spilling over with the perfect fellowship between the three Persons of the Trinity from the very beginning.
It’s not uncommon for people to misunderstand the nature of the Trinity—one God in three Persons—to mean that at creation, God was the Father, then in Bethlehem, God became the Son, and then in the Book of Acts, God became the Holy Spirit. This is not true and is actually an ancient heresy called modalism. Contrary to this, the Bible teaches that God has always and eternally existed in these three distinct Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Even more, the Bible teaches us that God created everything through the Son and for the Son.
These New Testament verses from the Book of Colossians work in concert with the account of creation from Genesis to show us this truth. This passage of Scripture teaches that Christ was “before all things,” which indicates that He is eternal. Christ is not created; He is the eternal Creator. Whenever the beginning took place, He was already there making everything become a reality. In John 8:58, while debating with the Jewish leaders, Jesus made it clear that He was preexistent and divine: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Christ not only created all things but He also maintains the entire cosmos. He sustains the order in the universe. He holds it all together. Doesn’t this give you hope? If He holds the universe together, surely He can hold our lives together as Christians!
Whenever we are tempted to give up hope, to feel like we can barely “hold it together,” like the world is spinning out of control, we ought to remember that God is God and we are not. Jesus holds everything together by the power of who He is!
Jesus is the perfect image of the invisible God, the only One who rules wisely over creation, perfectly relates to God and others, and through His work, earns our everlasting rest. By the Son, for the Son, and through the Son, all things exist and hold together.
It is through Jesus that all things were created; it is through Jesus that all things hold together; and it is for the glory of Jesus that everything exists. The most basic implication this truth has for us is that we, like everything else in creation, exist through and for Jesus. It would be a drastic mistake for us, then, to read the story of the Bible as if we were the main character in Scripture. We are not. We are supporting players, and we only find true meaning and purpose when we align our lives with God for the glory of Jesus rather than trying to find how He fits into ours.
When we read the Bible, then, we should not be asking primarily how this passage or text relates to me and my story. Instead, we must read Scripture as the revelation of God that we might know Him and His Son. Consequently, our question shifts from asking what these verses say about me and my life to what this passage says about God and His story, and then how we fit into that overall narrative.
Jesus is the main character in Scripture. He is the center of the story. Everything revolves around Him. He is the perfect image of the invisible God, the only One who rules wisely over creation, perfectly relates to God and others, and through His work, earns our everlasting rest. By the Son, for the Son, and through the Son, all things exist and hold together.
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