The Creative Decree of God

"Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee."  - Augustine

The natural sense of Genesis 1:1 is that the universe originally owed both its form and substance to the creative dictate of God. Our Bible opens with the statement that everything owes its existence to the will of God. The Bible explanation of the creation is the only one which seriously respects the rights and existence of a God.

Pantheism, or the view that God is everything and everyone and that everyone and everything is God, buries Him in moral filth. The atheistic materialism or disinterest denies Him outright. The other belief that the universe and God are both eternal in effect creates two Gods.

The Bible doctrine of creation not only protects the supremacy, personality, sanctity, and reality of God; but it also shines a bright light on His nature and character. It illustrates the endless resources of God's self-existent life. He did not need to look for or gather what was needed for creation. He called it into being out of nothing.

Take the gift of life, for instance. This is a gift which in itself just boggles the mind. Modern science boasts of its strides in solving the riddle of life. But, it really solves nothing; it merely copies or makes modifications to life using the template that God originated.

God is free to majestically create as He pleases. There was no outward pressure put on Him to do so. In fact, if He didn't make something it was because He chose not to. No created being could add (that's you and I) could add to or lessen the bliss of God.

He didn't need to have us. He would have been perfectly fine. Still, the Divine love determined to call a whole creation into being on which its perfectness and beauty, even its misery and shame, that that same love might lovingly bestow its affection on it.

Do we have all the answers to creation? Of course not, and we may never have. We must always be mindful that we are only the creatures of creation, and not the Creator. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Scripture: Hebrews 11:3; Revelation 4:11; Colossians 1:16; John 1:1-3; Romans 1:20

Prayer: Holy Father, open us up to your Spirit that lives within us, so that we may live fully each day of our lives, amen

May God richly bless you!

Claudette