Two Ways News is a weekly collaboration between Phillip Jensen and Peter Jensen – a newsletter and podcast on a topic to encourage gospel thinking for today (subscribe at twoways.news).
In this episode, Peter and Phillip explore the place of Christ in creation as they discuss the Word by which God created all, became flesh in the person of Jesus and the world was created not only through God’s Son but also for him.
The previous episode is Creator King and Country.
CHRIST AND CREATION
Phillip Jensen: Welcome to Two Ways News, as we share once more in the discussion of creation. We are going through Genesis, but we haven’t gotten very far. The first five words are as far as we’ve gotten into Genesis.
Peter Jensen: We have the whole Bible caught in those words.
Phillip: You even said the Gospel caught this.
Peter: Of course it’s not the Gospel as such, but it is integral to the Gospel, it’s essential to the Gospel, and it’s Gospel, perhaps I should have said instead of the Gospel, I should have said it is Gospel. It is such good news that we’re living in a world in which there is someone, not no one; in which there is purpose and meaning; in which our humanity is explained to us; in which you don’t have to fight against 50 different spirits having a go at you all the time. The ultimate truth is that he’s in charge. I consider that to be good news.
Phillip: It’s good because of where we sit, thinking about what goodness is. But it could have been something other than good news. It’s great news; God is God, he is the creator of all things. What is God like as the creator? What does God want for his creation? Is the creation he’s created good? There is a purpose. But what is the meaning? What is the purpose? It’s the rest of the Bible that reveals that to us as we get to know more about this creator.
Peter: I think the most important bit of Genesis 1 is actually in chapter 2. It’s the seventh day in which God ceased his creation and looked and saw that all was good, very good. He’s telling us in the very first chapter that we’re all heading towards a wonderful denouement. God is resting, ceasing from his labors, ceasing not in the sense of having a snooze, but ceasing in the sense of, right, I’ve done this; it is very good. It is now filled with the possibilities for the future.
Genesis 1:2
The earth was without form and void darkness was over the face of the deep the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
The world, as it first started, was void and formless, but God did not leave this initial creation as void and formless. He, by his Spirit, was intimately concerned over that which he was creating. The meaning of the purpose is seen in the seventh day. What is the endpoint of this creation? What is the meaning that we get from creation? Yes, it’s integral to the gospel, but the gospel is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, what does the Lord Jesus Christ have to do with creation?
The Spirit of God hovers over the whole scene. The very presence of God himself is there. He’s not the sort of creator who just manufactures something and throws it away. Now you’ve asked about the Lord Jesus Christ because the Bible interprets the Bible. It also needs to be seen in the context of the whole. When we go down to the other end of the Bible, down to where the purpose is unfolding itself, we come across this one, Jesus Christ. And we discover that it isn’t that he appears at the end of history, so to speak, but that he was integral to the whole creation itself. As John’s Gospel tells us in John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and nothing was made.
It takes up Genesis 1, where God speaks things into existence and says the Spirit was there. The Word was there, and then the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us full of grace and truth. The Word has a name and a face and a history.
Phillip: In fact, there was nothing made that has been made, that wasn’t made through him. So he is part of the universal Creator of the universe. I mean, this then gives us both intellectual problems, possibly, but greater complexity to the knowledge of the Creator.
Peter: Integral to the story is the knowledge that this God who creates out of nothing is not one of us. He’s not just merely a sort of a bigger picture of ourselves. Now we’re discovering that this one God remains one. And yet, to use the language that we’ve come to understand, there are three persons in this one God. We are dealing with Trinity. He is one God in three persons, each truly God, each partaking of that one divine nature, equal and yet also committed to different things, in the sense that the Word and the Spirit have their own part to play in all this.
Phillip: Profoundly more complicated than we are, for a couple of reasons. First, he is different in the meaning of the word holy. It means different, but his holiness is of a character of sinlessness, which is so radically different from us. But he is like us, or rather we are like him because he created us in his image. So, there is some connectedness, there’s some likeness, and there’s some imaging of God in humans.
God has placed us in the world, in the same relationship that he has to the world. That is, he has dominion over the world, and he creates humans to have that dominion over the world.
Peter: That’s what the Bible says.
Phillip: Yes, in Genesis chapter one, by image bearing. And we may have to come to that, but you see, it means that God becomes not a cat, not a fish, not a dog. God becomes a human. From the beginning, he has created humans in his image. It speaks to our communication with God and to the use of the word itself. It speaks to who is going to rule his world. There’s that wonderful passage in Colossians 1:15-17.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether throne or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him.
Humans are created in the image of God, but it turns out the one who is truly the image of God is God the Son. But God the Son has become a man in the person of Jesus Christ. Last week, we mentioned that the world has purpose and meaning. God is doing it for a reason; God is doing it for a purpose. God created the universe through and with his Son for his Son as his inheritance. He placed man in dominion over the world in Genesis 1, so we see the true man for whom it’s all been created, come in the person of Jesus, who is God the Son. In the beginning, God created, but in the beginning God’s Son was already there. God’s Son was with God in the beginning, creating all things. And God created all things for his Son, which means you’ve been created for him. I’ve been created for Jesus.
Peter: When you say he was there with him, what you mean is that he is God. Some of the old heresies say he was there, but he’s a subsidiary to the Father in the sense that he is a created being. But that is not the picture we have in Genesis 1, or in Colossians, or in John’s Gospel.
Phillip: John actually explicitly rules that out. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are very big on John 1:1, but they never pay attention to John 1:3, because there was nothing that was created that wasn’t created by him. He didn’t create himself. He was always there, the creator of all things. And he himself was not created as a second god, as a demiurge or something like that.
Peter: God the Son is eternal and not merely begotten but eternally begotten. It is a description of the relationship between father and son within the one God, the Godhead, the three in one. The whole creation is made so that the image bearer would rule over it. It was made for him, through him, by him. You are now talking about Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who came and was a carpenter in an out-of-the-way place. He lived amongst us, spoke our language, and made friends. He had to eat, drink and sleep. We could actually kill him. In the New Testament, he is always God. He is amongst us as true God, but he’s also true man. This is eternal. He continues on as one of us. Acts 17:31
He will judge the world in righteousness by a man who he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
Beyond his resurrection, beyond his ascension, Jesus Christ retains his humanity and his deity. That makes him the proper ruler of the universe.
Phillip: In Daniel 7, you get the great picture of the judgment of God, and the books are all opened, and the judgment is about to happen, and then suddenly, there appears this anonymous character called the Son of Man. In Daniel, the “Son of Man” is given authority over all nations, but his identity remains unclear. Jesus later uses this title for himself, particularly at the end of his trial in Mark 14, where he links it to his divine authority. To understand Jesus’ work of salvation, one must believe both in his divinity and his full humanity. Jesus’ humanity is continuous, not temporary, making him the Savior of mankind.
Peter: He is one of us and remains one of us. Ruling over us until the end, where he hands the kingdom over to his father and so forth. There’s another passage that makes the same point. Hebrews 1:1-3
Long ago at many times and in many ways. God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in his last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by his word of power.
The whole universe is dependent on him for its very life. God is involved in every molecule of the world. And now we see it is in and through his Son who sustains all things by his word of power. He is the image bearer of God, the exact imprint of his nature, who upholds the universe by the word of his power. We often can focus so much on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that we forget about the ascension and the present rule of Jesus. And we have things to learn about and to rejoice in and to conform to in our knowledge of the present rule of the Lord Jesus Christ, the word of God who was in the beginning with God and was God. And that’s who we’re talking about. What a gospel!
Phillip: We are right to talk about our Saviour, but you really can’t talk about our Saviour without talking about our Lord. Unless Jesus is Lord, it is not the salvation that the New Testament is talking about.
Peter: But you can talk about him as Lord and still not have that bigger picture.
Phillip: Jesus is the Lord, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the ruler of all. That is who he is. Because in that Colossians passage, twice it talks about in him, the fullness of God dwelt bodily. Was Mary the mother of God? Unfortunately, it’s become a devotion to Mary to call her the mother of God. It is accurate that the woman Mary, whose baby was Jesus, was at that point the mother of God. For Jesus was fully God and at the time of being born, fully human. He didn’t cease to be God to become human in order to return to be God. He took humanity on as God and was completely human and completely God, and continues to be completely God and human, because we believe in the resurrection of the flesh.
Peter: We also have the doctrine of the church. Christ died for me, Galatians chapter 2, but he dies for his church, Ephesians chapter 5. Any picture we have of the future that is not corporate, which is not congregational, is not a true picture. He has died for his people, his saints, the ones he is saving and bringing to himself.
Phillip: But it is personal though, isn’t it?
Peter: Absolutely he died for me. Both are true.
Sometimes eschatology, the doctrine of the last things, is pushed to one side as though it’s unimportant, whereas it infuses the whole thing from Genesis 1 onwards.
Phillip: Remember Revelation 4:11
Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed.
Which Prime Minister of Australia would we ever give glory, honour and power? But God is worthy to receive. Why? Because he created all things. As the events occur in Revelation 5, we find the next song. Revelation 5:9
Worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals. Because you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on earth.
We now have all the nations, all the angels, all the myriads of thousands upon thousands, then saying this new great song in Revelation 5:12.
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing.
The glory comes to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. It is Jesus, the Lamb who died for us, the man who died in our place, to whom all praise and honour due to God is given. Because this man was God, is now with his Father and now reigns forever over the creation that was made for him. From God we understand there’s meaning and purpose and morality, but it’s in Jesus Christ that we get the revelation of God’s meaning and purpose and morality for us. And that all goes to his praise, his glory and his honour.
