What Is Creation?

A Voice in The Desert Podcast

What Is Creation?

Where did the universe come from? And what is its purpose? Should we think of the creation as good or as evil? In this chapter we seek to understand how God created the universe, what kind of universe he created, and how we should think of the creation today.

The Created Creation

God created the universe out of nothing; nothing but God existed before the universe was created. All things—what Genesis 1:1 calls “the heavens and the earth”—were created by God. John 1:3 affirms this: “All things were made through him.” And in Colossians 1:16 we read, “By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” And as we saw in the previous chapter, all the members of the Trinity were involved in this process.

God spoke all of creation into existence—from land and waters to plants and animals (Gen. 1:3–25)—that is, all of creation except for man. Both man and woman were created by God’s very hands and received life from God’s very breath (Gen. 2:7, 22). This intimate, special creation is one sign of the special place God designed human beings to have within his creation. In addition, human beings are the only ones that God made “in his own image” (Gen. 1:27). To be in God’s image means to be like God and to represent God. As God’s image, man is the pinnacle of all creation, more like God than any other creature, and the only one appointed to rule over the rest of creation as God’s representative (Gen. 1:28–31).