Ordinary Means · A Genesis Study · No. 3
Genesis 1 is one of the most concentrated chapters in all of Scripture. In thirty-one verses it establishes the doctrine of God, the doctrine of creation, the goodness of the created world, the dignity of humanity, marriage, and the rhythm of work and rest. We open it now. And the first thing to see is how God creates.
Before the first act, Genesis tells us where the Spirit is: the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The verb pictures an eagle brooding over its young — protective, poised, about to act. This is no deistic God who wound up the universe and walked away. He is personally present at the very beginning, His Spirit brooding over the unformed deep, on the verge of speaking. And then He speaks:
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
— Genesis 1:3
That is the pattern, and it holds for thirty-one verses: And God said… and it was so. Ten times God speaks; ten times what He says leaps into being. God creates by speaking. And this matters more than it first appears, because the other creation stories of the ancient world pictured the world made by gods at war — one god butchering the body of a defeated rival, a god giving birth to lesser gods, struggle and violence and sex. Genesis has none of it. God does not contend with anyone. God does not labor or strain. He speaks, and the universe springs into existence at His word.
Now read with risen eyes, and watch the New Testament tell you something staggering about that Word:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
— John 1:1, 3
The Word by which everything was created is a Person. The Word who said Let there be light is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. The agent of creation in Genesis 1 is the very One who walked the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. So Christ is not merely predicted in Genesis 1 — He is active in it. The Let there be is His voice; the creation that springs up is His work. We cannot read this chapter honestly without finding ourselves reading about the Triune God: the Father who initiates, the Word — the Son — who speaks creation into being, and the Spirit who hovers and gives life. (Luther insisted on exactly this in his lectures on Genesis: the Trinity is not imposed on the chapter by later tradition. It is there, for the eye trained by the New Testament to see.)
Step back from the individual days and the chapter shows its architecture. The first three days form the realms — light and dark, sky and sea, land. The next three days fill them — sun and moon for the day and night, birds and fish for sky and sea, animals and humanity for the land. Forming, then filling; days one and four, two and five, three and six, paired like the two halves of an arch. Creation is not a chaotic accident. It is the work of a Designer who set up the spaces and filled them with their proper inhabitants. The God of Genesis 1 builds.
And running through it all, seven times, like a heartbeat, comes a refrain: And God saw that it was good — and at the last, behold, it was very good. Creation, as God made it, is good. The material world is good. The body is good. Food and sleep and work and rest are good. Marriage is good. The earth and sky and stars are good — all of it good, because God made it so. (Against the Gnostics who called matter a mistake, against every asceticism that treats the body as the enemy, against the modern story that the cosmos is meaningless chance — Genesis 1 simply stands and says: good.) And it lands at last in the warmest words of Luther's Small Catechism: I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members… and still preserves them. This body, this breath, this day, this bread — every bit of it the gift of a Giver.
So the God of Genesis 1 is the God who speaks — and His Word is Christ. Open the first chapter of the Bible and you are already reading about the Son through whom all things were made, and the goodness He spoke into being.
Next time, the camera comes in close. God who spoke the galaxies into being kneels in the dirt to form a man, and builds a woman from his side: bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Read Genesis 2 before then.
Triune God — Father, Word, and Spirit — who created all things by Your speaking and called them good: we thank You that the Word who said "Let there be light" is the same Word made flesh for us. Teach us to receive Your creation as the gift it is, this body and breath and day, and never to despise what You have made good. And as You once spoke light into darkness, speak Your gospel into our dark hearts, that we may see. Amen.