God’s Good Creation: Part One

Adam overlooks the Garden of Eden By. J.E. Ridinger Wellcome

   In modern Christian thought, opinions about creation run the gambit from zealous earth lovers to apathetic nature destroyers. This trend is not a recent development. Various philosophies and theological deviations have resulted in distorted views on creation. The goal of this blog post isn’t to engage all those philosophies. Our goal will be to look at scripture to determine what God says about His creation and its future. The knowledge that comes from this study should have implications on how you view environmental efforts and your stewardship of resources, but those implications will not be covered in this post. Let the reader apply God’s word appropriately to his individual context.

The Beginning

  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1 ESV 

   When discussing creation, it is important to go back to the beginning. A Christian must believe that God Himself created all things. This is the clear testimony of scripture in numerous places. The fact that God created all things demands more than mental assent. Our world’s origin demands that we recognize God’s sovereignty and Lordship over creation. He made these things, and they belong to Him. Consider Psalm 24:1-2(ESV):

    “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.”

   The earth and everything in it is said to belong to the Lord. He has ownership of them. This clearly implies the authority and the right to do with them as He pleases. Let us be clear about the reason for this ownership. Verse two above states that all things are the Lord’s, for he has founded them and established them. God’s title of Creator leads to a direct correlation to His title as Lord. He made you and the earth; therefore, He has authority over you and the earth. 

   In our topic of studying God’s creation, it is important that we remember the Creator/Creature distinction established above. Creation does not exist of its own accord or by its own power. It is under the sovereign and providential hand of God. In the same light, the world and all that is in it are not in some type of dualistic opposition to God. He is “over” His creation by means of His founding and establishing it. Creation’s being is fundamentally dependent on God’s being. If it were possible for God’s being to end, creation would likewise cease to exist; however, God existed prior to creation and is independent from creation. These ideas are important as we consider creation in its pre-fall, post-fall, inaugurated-kingdom, and consummated kingdom states.

The Pre-Fall World

   “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” Genesis 1:31 ESV 

   When God created the entire cosmos, everything was declared very good by the Creator Himself. Everything was free from sin, death, and corruption. Sometimes we like to say that God created everything perfect in the beginning; however, I don’t believe that the language of “perfection” is the best fit. Perfect implies that there are no improvements or changes that can be made. God is perfect. He cannot become “more good” than He is now or always has been. Creation, on the other hand, was made without sin and was declared “very good”, but not “perfect”. I say this because God had a particular goal in mind for creation that would require further development. 

   “And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. … The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Genesis 2:8,15 ESV 

Within the entire creation, God set apart a small piece of land to plant a garden called Eden. This is where God placed Adam and commanded him to work the garden and keep it. These two words were a charge to cultivate that garden and guard it against potential intruders (foreshadow the serpent). There was something special about this garden, and it was significant that God placed Adam here in this specially planted area of the earth. 

   The garden of Eden takes on more significance if we understand the ancient world of Moses and the Israelites when the book of Genesis was written. Gardens and mountaintops were common places of worship among the ancient civilizations. This was common knowledge to the Israelites. So now that we know this information, what new insights can we come to understand about Eden?

   The first thing we notice is that Eden was the place where God met with Adam and Eve and walked with them. After their sin, Adam and Eve attempted to hide from God, and they heard Him walking through the garden in the cool of the day. This leads us to believe that God walked with them on a regular basis. Eden was the place of God’s dwelling on earth. 

   The second thing we notice is that Eden is on a high place. In verses 10-14 of the garden’s creation account, Moses included a description of a river flowing out of Eden to water the garden and then dividing it into four rivers. In this description, we can see that the garden is situated in a way that this river splits up and runs downhill in four different sub-rivers. This would further support the recognition of the garden being a special dwelling place or temple of God. 

   So God created the entirety of the universe and declared it to be very good. Then he planted a special garden that would serve as His temple for Adam and Eve to serve him and guard against potential threats. This is a good start, but it seems very localized. What does the garden have to do with the rest of creation? This answer is found in God’s command to Adam, which makes sense in light of what we know about the garden.

  “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:27-28 ESV 

   God created Adam in His own image. This is a term that has received many different interpretations. Most often, people think that bearing the image of God means having intelligence or a soul or emotions or any number of qualities that make humans distinct. In seeking to find that particular quality, we often forget what an image is in scripture. Images were frequently set up by pagans as pictures or representatives of their false gods. In ancient Egypt (where the Israelites led by Moses were enslaved), Pharaoh himself was considered the image of the gods or Ra in particular. Pharaoh’s purpose was to act as that god’s representative to rule in his place on earth. 

   Adam was made in the image of God for the purposes of representing God’s rule and reign on earth. This is not to say that God is incapable of ruling the earth, but that God’s sovereign plan involves Him receiving glory by ruling through his image-bearers on earth. He planted these image-bearers in a special garden temple to worship him by serving and guarding as His representatives. 

   The responsibility did not end with the garden. God commanded His image-bearers to be fruitful and multiply. The result would be the filling of the earth with image-bearers who would then subdue that earth. When we connect all of these dots, we see the full picture of God’s intention for His good creation: These image-bearing representatives of God were to multiply and cultivate the garden temple so that the entire world would be subdued and filled with the glorious presence of God. The creation was very good, but it wasn’t yet filled with the glory of God. This is God’s telos for creation, the end goal. 

Part 1 Conclusion

   In our study of the creation pre-fall, we have come to understand that God’s creation cannot be separated from God’s image-bearers. Their beginnings and their end-goals are tied together. This runs completely against the modern narrative of the “scientific” community. Our modern materialistic worldview sees mankind as a late development on the scene of nature which has been developing for billions of years. They view mankind as an evolutionary blip on the timeline which will pass away like the dinosaurs.

   This view of creation is also antithetical to many Christian ideas that the material world is inherently bad. Normally this comes from confusing worldliness (sins of people in the world) with the earth itself. God called creation very good, and this includes our bodies as well. In our next post, we will see how sin has affected creation, but we should never adopt a platonic/gnostic view of the earth and our bodies. This type of false view has led many Christians to hate the earth and see salvation as a liberation from the earth and their bodies. We will address this more in the future. 

   If we want to be faithful to God’s word, then we will recognize that God made the world for the express purpose of filling it with His image-bearers and, therefore, His glory. As we continue to understand God’s good creation throughout the other parts of redemptive history, allow your worldview to be shaped by God’s word rather than by empty philosophies. In the next post, we will look at the creation post-fall.