What with graduation, finishing my bachelors degrees, and then moving; I have not been able to blog for several months, but at long last here it is my latest post.
I have always enjoyed the story of Creation and the more I learn, the greater the story becomes for me. During my baccalaureate career I had to take a biology class with a professor who quickly became my friend, Dr. Spaun. He has a passion for teaching that is hard to find in many classes. The more we talked about the wonders of the human body and how well it is designed, the more the story of Creation comes alive for me; especially when we compare creation to re-creation. In II Corinthians 5:17, it says that if any man is in Christ he is a new creature, or some translations say a new creation. What a wonderful verse—one that many times is used for evangelism and used to explain that we can be free from, not only the debt of sin, but also the bondage of it. To really understand the depth of this verse and what it means we have to go back to the beginning and get a good understanding of where man’s place in Creation was.
In Genesis, the first couple chapters, we have outlined for us in Hebrew prose the creation of the world. There is so much here that I could spend days talking about all of the different aspects of Creation, but I want to focus on the words used to describe the creation process. There are three words in the Hebrew Language that are used in Genesis chapters one and two. Transliterated (which simply means phonetically changing the Hebrew words into English) these words are bara, asa and yatsar. Bara is the word that gives us the concept of ex nihilio, which is a Latin term meaning to create something from nothing. For example, in the beginning God created (bara) the heavens and the earth. To further explain the concept many scholars believe that when it says God created (bara) the heavens and the earth, He only really created mass, and the rest of the Creation story is Him, our Heavenly Father, refining the mass He created (bara) in verse one. This makes sense when you read the rest of the passage.
The second word asa can be used interchangeably with bara, but in the first two chapters of Genesis it is used to show further refinement of what was created (bara) out of nothing (ex nihilio). So, when Moses writes that the Lord God separated the light from the darkness, the heavens from the earth, and the land from the sea, He is refining (asa) what He had already created (bara) ex nihilio. Now, while the concept has been there, the actual word asa is not used until Genesis 1:25, where Moses writes, “And God made (asa) the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds.” When we see this word we see at least two things: first, that God spent more time in making (asa) the animals then He did the plants or any part of creation up to this point. He spoke light into existence and made (asa) the animals after their own kind. Here is where it starts to get good in my opinion. When it comes to man, God said “let us make (asa) man in our image” (Gen 1:26), and in verse 27, “God created (bara) man in His own image, in the image of God He created (bara) him; male and female He created them.” Moses uses both words bara and asa to explain the making of man, this becomes even more significant in chapter two.
The story of Creation is so significant that it is repeated. The first chapter gives us a detailed overview of all of Creation. The second chapter gives us an overview of Creation with the focus on the pinnacle of God’s Creation: Man. In the same way that a master artist works more diligently and more carefully on what he wants to be his masterpiece—what he wants to be remembered for more than anything else he has painted, or sculpted, or drawn—God wanted man to be His signature piece, His masterpiece. We know this from several things: God gave man dominion over everything that He had created; God created man last as the crowning achievement, His signature if you will. Lastly, God created man in His image, as well as breathed the breath of life into man; these are two things that He only did with man. We start to see this fully in Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed (yatsar) man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” There are two words here that hold significance for us. The first one is formed (yatsar), which is the third word in the passage used for creation. Yatsar is significant because, just like in chapter one, bara and asa are used to describe the creation of man; yatsar is only used in the creation narrative when referring to man’s creation. Yatsar has the understanding of creation of a work of art in the same way that a master potter takes great patience, skill and time to make a beautiful vase; the word being used to describe the creation of man would have given the Israelites the understanding that God, Who could have spoken mankind into existence in an instant, Who who could have just thought us into time and space without a second glance or thought, took time. The Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, of mass and everything composed of it; Who set in place the planets, solar system, and universe in all its glory simply with a couple of words; took time. He took time to form man from the dust of the ground in much the same way a master sculptor would sculpt a statue out of clay. He took the time to form Adam’s hands and feet, eyes and ears, each part of the human body and its functions working in unison in a biological symphony that makes the works of the greatest human composers look as simple as a nursery rhyme. Think for a second and meditate on what that means; ruminate on just how fearfully, and wonderfully made we are, and remember that we are fallen. We live after the curse of sin. Adam was created perfect without the flaw or marring of the sin curse. Take time to think about it, because our Heavenly Father took time when He made us.
There is more here than I could dare go into, in a blog post, of just how well we are made, so just one last point before we move on. We were made with eternity in mind. We—not just our bodies because they don’t last forever anymore because of the sin curse, but who we really are—our spirit was designed to last forever. This may bring to mind the question of why: why would God make us to last for eternity and not do the same for all of Creation. Because all of Creation was made for us to have an environment in which we could be with our Father. Our Heavenly Father deeply desires a relationship with us. This is seen dramatically in the story of Creation but it is seen even more dramatically in our re-creation. Let’s move on to the New Testament.
In the first chapter of John it says, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (ESV)” Think about that for a minute: the “Word” in this passage is Christ. John in his gospel is introducing the Christ as the creative action in the beginning of everything. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. John puts Christ as present and active in Creation with God and equal to God. So we have God the Father speaking Creation into existence through Christ. My point is this: Christ was the creative force in our coming to be along with all of existence. John continues in verse three, “All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” So nothing was created (bara), nothing was made (asa), and nothing was formed (yatsar) without being made by Jesus Christ Pre-incarnate. This becomes even more significant when we start looking at the original language in this passage.
In John 1:1 it says, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” In Greek “Word” is Logos. Logos essentially is, in this context, the reasoned and spoken Word of God. So when it says that Christ is the Word, it means that Christ is all of the reason and wisdom of God as well as the spoken force behind the creative act of God, and is summed up in the person of Christ. That means that God, in the person of Christ, made everything from the chaos that is inferred in Genesis 1:2, “2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (ESV) God spoke mass into existence, but that mass had no shape or meaning, no purpose and so God through Christ gave it meaning and purpose and then created us in Adam and Eve and commanded us to preserve that purpose and meaning; but they fell and all of us with them. So Christ came to earth later to recreate that purpose and meaning and recreated the stewards to maintain that purpose and meaning in the training of the disciples initially and eventually of the church. Essentially this is what Christ was telling His disciples when He told them in Matthew 16:19-20, “Go forth and make disciples.” He was saying “Go forth and allow Me, through the Holy Spirit, to use you to restore mankind as the stewards of all of Creation.” He does this by first restoring us in relationship to the Father and then making us a light to the world. This is what John is implying in John 1:4-5 (ESV): “4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Just to recap briefly: When in Genesis 2:7 it says that “7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (ESV), it was Christ who personally took the time, just like a potter, to form and shape Adam’s body from the dust of the ground and later Eve from Adam’s side. This makes me wonder what was going through Christ’s mind in John 9 when He bent down spit on the ground and made clay and anointed the man’s eyes that had been blind from birth. I can imagine Him thinking here, “My child, I am sorry that you were born incomplete because of the sin curse but you must realize that all of mankind has been born incomplete in some way because of that same curse; so take joy, My child, in knowing that because of how you were born blind you and many will be made to see and come to know me for who I am.” I can also imagine Christ thinking, “I am using spit to make clay to heal your eyes and later I am going to use my own blood to make a new clay to heal everyone that will call on My Name and I will do it all for the glory of my Father.”
John 1:4, 5 says that, “4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”(ESV). Remember way back in the garden in Genesis 3:1 when the serpent asked Eve, “did God actually say?” And later the serpent’s statement in verse four, “You will not surely die”; but we did—both instantly and progressively, the second Adam and Eve ate they were separated from God spiritually and relationally. It was at that very point that death entered the world and we all began to die through Adam and Eve as they began to age and grow old. It wouldn’t be until much, much later when Christ arrives on the scene in John 1 that we would begin to be reintroduced to life and light in a permanent and relational way. It was this pivotal point in John 1 that all of the Old Testament pointed to. It was the very thing that every prophet and Judge in Israel’s past had foretold: the coming of this life and light in the person of Jesus Christ. This was the beginning of our re-creation.
In the gospels everything that Christ did, He did to show His disciples and us who He was, to show that He was the Messiah that had been foretold. All of His time and effort was spent in reforming those twelve chosen men so that they could be used by the Father to reform the world, to reform the hearts and minds of all those that would believe. Every miracle, every parable, every sermon, and every prayer was to fulfill one singular passion that the Son of God shared with the Father and the Spirit: the recreation of man back into a right relationship with them, with God. So God the Son spent roughly three years in a process of re-creation, of yatsar, forming the hearts and minds of the disciples, training them to become His emissaries in the world after He left. And then, after He died and rose again, as He was getting ready to send them out into the world, just like He breathed the breath of life into Adam in Genesis 2:7, in John 20:21-22, “21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. (ESV)” That’s right. He breathed the breath of new life to them; the beginning of the recreation that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5:17. Later, at Pentecost, they received the Holy Spirit with power, and they were enabled to preach and teach and begin to finish the work of recreating the world one heart at a time as Jesus had begun. I am awestruck when I look at Creation in this way. It is an amazing fact to me that the almighty Creator and Sustainer of the universe Who could have created me with less than a wave of His hand, less than a thought, and Who, quite frankly, could, with even less of a thought, undo me and all of existence if He chose to, took time. He took time to make us and even more time to remake us. And even in remaking us, He won’t force us to be remade. He will only do it if we believe and ask Him to; and if we do ask Him to, He will and He will take time.
It puts my journey of life with Him back into perspective. The fact that He would take time with me to go through everything I go through because of circumstance or my own stubbornness. He not only takes time to be with us, He wants to go through it with us, He wants to guide us through it; not over, or around, but through so that we can build our faith and perseverance. Check out the first chapter of James in this light. It may just change how you view life. It did for me.
How is the Lord Jesus Christ working the recreation in your life; has He begun a work in you?
Philippians 1:6 says that if He has begun a work in you He will finish it, but are you letting Him?
I have always enjoyed the story of Creation and the more I learn, the greater the story becomes for me. During my baccalaureate career I had to take a biology class with a professor who quickly became my friend, Dr. Spaun. He has a passion for teaching that is hard to find in many classes. The more we talked about the wonders of the human body and how well it is designed, the more the story of Creation comes alive for me; especially when we compare creation to re-creation. In II Corinthians 5:17, it says that if any man is in Christ he is a new creature, or some translations say a new creation. What a wonderful verse—one that many times is used for evangelism and used to explain that we can be free from, not only the debt of sin, but also the bondage of it. To really understand the depth of this verse and what it means we have to go back to the beginning and get a good understanding of where man’s place in Creation was.
In Genesis, the first couple chapters, we have outlined for us in Hebrew prose the creation of the world. There is so much here that I could spend days talking about all of the different aspects of Creation, but I want to focus on the words used to describe the creation process. There are three words in the Hebrew Language that are used in Genesis chapters one and two. Transliterated (which simply means phonetically changing the Hebrew words into English) these words are bara, asa and yatsar. Bara is the word that gives us the concept of ex nihilio, which is a Latin term meaning to create something from nothing. For example, in the beginning God created (bara) the heavens and the earth. To further explain the concept many scholars believe that when it says God created (bara) the heavens and the earth, He only really created mass, and the rest of the Creation story is Him, our Heavenly Father, refining the mass He created (bara) in verse one. This makes sense when you read the rest of the passage.
The second word asa can be used interchangeably with bara, but in the first two chapters of Genesis it is used to show further refinement of what was created (bara) out of nothing (ex nihilio). So, when Moses writes that the Lord God separated the light from the darkness, the heavens from the earth, and the land from the sea, He is refining (asa) what He had already created (bara) ex nihilio. Now, while the concept has been there, the actual word asa is not used until Genesis 1:25, where Moses writes, “And God made (asa) the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds.” When we see this word we see at least two things: first, that God spent more time in making (asa) the animals then He did the plants or any part of creation up to this point. He spoke light into existence and made (asa) the animals after their own kind. Here is where it starts to get good in my opinion. When it comes to man, God said “let us make (asa) man in our image” (Gen 1:26), and in verse 27, “God created (bara) man in His own image, in the image of God He created (bara) him; male and female He created them.” Moses uses both words bara and asa to explain the making of man, this becomes even more significant in chapter two.
The story of Creation is so significant that it is repeated. The first chapter gives us a detailed overview of all of Creation. The second chapter gives us an overview of Creation with the focus on the pinnacle of God’s Creation: Man. In the same way that a master artist works more diligently and more carefully on what he wants to be his masterpiece—what he wants to be remembered for more than anything else he has painted, or sculpted, or drawn—God wanted man to be His signature piece, His masterpiece. We know this from several things: God gave man dominion over everything that He had created; God created man last as the crowning achievement, His signature if you will. Lastly, God created man in His image, as well as breathed the breath of life into man; these are two things that He only did with man. We start to see this fully in Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed (yatsar) man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” There are two words here that hold significance for us. The first one is formed (yatsar), which is the third word in the passage used for creation. Yatsar is significant because, just like in chapter one, bara and asa are used to describe the creation of man; yatsar is only used in the creation narrative when referring to man’s creation. Yatsar has the understanding of creation of a work of art in the same way that a master potter takes great patience, skill and time to make a beautiful vase; the word being used to describe the creation of man would have given the Israelites the understanding that God, Who could have spoken mankind into existence in an instant, Who who could have just thought us into time and space without a second glance or thought, took time. The Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, of mass and everything composed of it; Who set in place the planets, solar system, and universe in all its glory simply with a couple of words; took time. He took time to form man from the dust of the ground in much the same way a master sculptor would sculpt a statue out of clay. He took the time to form Adam’s hands and feet, eyes and ears, each part of the human body and its functions working in unison in a biological symphony that makes the works of the greatest human composers look as simple as a nursery rhyme. Think for a second and meditate on what that means; ruminate on just how fearfully, and wonderfully made we are, and remember that we are fallen. We live after the curse of sin. Adam was created perfect without the flaw or marring of the sin curse. Take time to think about it, because our Heavenly Father took time when He made us.
There is more here than I could dare go into, in a blog post, of just how well we are made, so just one last point before we move on. We were made with eternity in mind. We—not just our bodies because they don’t last forever anymore because of the sin curse, but who we really are—our spirit was designed to last forever. This may bring to mind the question of why: why would God make us to last for eternity and not do the same for all of Creation. Because all of Creation was made for us to have an environment in which we could be with our Father. Our Heavenly Father deeply desires a relationship with us. This is seen dramatically in the story of Creation but it is seen even more dramatically in our re-creation. Let’s move on to the New Testament.
In the first chapter of John it says, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (ESV)” Think about that for a minute: the “Word” in this passage is Christ. John in his gospel is introducing the Christ as the creative action in the beginning of everything. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. John puts Christ as present and active in Creation with God and equal to God. So we have God the Father speaking Creation into existence through Christ. My point is this: Christ was the creative force in our coming to be along with all of existence. John continues in verse three, “All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” So nothing was created (bara), nothing was made (asa), and nothing was formed (yatsar) without being made by Jesus Christ Pre-incarnate. This becomes even more significant when we start looking at the original language in this passage.
In John 1:1 it says, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” In Greek “Word” is Logos. Logos essentially is, in this context, the reasoned and spoken Word of God. So when it says that Christ is the Word, it means that Christ is all of the reason and wisdom of God as well as the spoken force behind the creative act of God, and is summed up in the person of Christ. That means that God, in the person of Christ, made everything from the chaos that is inferred in Genesis 1:2, “2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (ESV) God spoke mass into existence, but that mass had no shape or meaning, no purpose and so God through Christ gave it meaning and purpose and then created us in Adam and Eve and commanded us to preserve that purpose and meaning; but they fell and all of us with them. So Christ came to earth later to recreate that purpose and meaning and recreated the stewards to maintain that purpose and meaning in the training of the disciples initially and eventually of the church. Essentially this is what Christ was telling His disciples when He told them in Matthew 16:19-20, “Go forth and make disciples.” He was saying “Go forth and allow Me, through the Holy Spirit, to use you to restore mankind as the stewards of all of Creation.” He does this by first restoring us in relationship to the Father and then making us a light to the world. This is what John is implying in John 1:4-5 (ESV): “4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Just to recap briefly: When in Genesis 2:7 it says that “7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (ESV), it was Christ who personally took the time, just like a potter, to form and shape Adam’s body from the dust of the ground and later Eve from Adam’s side. This makes me wonder what was going through Christ’s mind in John 9 when He bent down spit on the ground and made clay and anointed the man’s eyes that had been blind from birth. I can imagine Him thinking here, “My child, I am sorry that you were born incomplete because of the sin curse but you must realize that all of mankind has been born incomplete in some way because of that same curse; so take joy, My child, in knowing that because of how you were born blind you and many will be made to see and come to know me for who I am.” I can also imagine Christ thinking, “I am using spit to make clay to heal your eyes and later I am going to use my own blood to make a new clay to heal everyone that will call on My Name and I will do it all for the glory of my Father.”
John 1:4, 5 says that, “4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”(ESV). Remember way back in the garden in Genesis 3:1 when the serpent asked Eve, “did God actually say?” And later the serpent’s statement in verse four, “You will not surely die”; but we did—both instantly and progressively, the second Adam and Eve ate they were separated from God spiritually and relationally. It was at that very point that death entered the world and we all began to die through Adam and Eve as they began to age and grow old. It wouldn’t be until much, much later when Christ arrives on the scene in John 1 that we would begin to be reintroduced to life and light in a permanent and relational way. It was this pivotal point in John 1 that all of the Old Testament pointed to. It was the very thing that every prophet and Judge in Israel’s past had foretold: the coming of this life and light in the person of Jesus Christ. This was the beginning of our re-creation.
In the gospels everything that Christ did, He did to show His disciples and us who He was, to show that He was the Messiah that had been foretold. All of His time and effort was spent in reforming those twelve chosen men so that they could be used by the Father to reform the world, to reform the hearts and minds of all those that would believe. Every miracle, every parable, every sermon, and every prayer was to fulfill one singular passion that the Son of God shared with the Father and the Spirit: the recreation of man back into a right relationship with them, with God. So God the Son spent roughly three years in a process of re-creation, of yatsar, forming the hearts and minds of the disciples, training them to become His emissaries in the world after He left. And then, after He died and rose again, as He was getting ready to send them out into the world, just like He breathed the breath of life into Adam in Genesis 2:7, in John 20:21-22, “21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. (ESV)” That’s right. He breathed the breath of new life to them; the beginning of the recreation that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5:17. Later, at Pentecost, they received the Holy Spirit with power, and they were enabled to preach and teach and begin to finish the work of recreating the world one heart at a time as Jesus had begun. I am awestruck when I look at Creation in this way. It is an amazing fact to me that the almighty Creator and Sustainer of the universe Who could have created me with less than a wave of His hand, less than a thought, and Who, quite frankly, could, with even less of a thought, undo me and all of existence if He chose to, took time. He took time to make us and even more time to remake us. And even in remaking us, He won’t force us to be remade. He will only do it if we believe and ask Him to; and if we do ask Him to, He will and He will take time.
It puts my journey of life with Him back into perspective. The fact that He would take time with me to go through everything I go through because of circumstance or my own stubbornness. He not only takes time to be with us, He wants to go through it with us, He wants to guide us through it; not over, or around, but through so that we can build our faith and perseverance. Check out the first chapter of James in this light. It may just change how you view life. It did for me.
How is the Lord Jesus Christ working the recreation in your life; has He begun a work in you?
Philippians 1:6 says that if He has begun a work in you He will finish it, but are you letting Him?
