Jason Forbes
Disability Advocate
In Genesis 1 we are told that God created the heavens and the earth, which is the Bible’s way of saying that God created everything (v. 1). There is nothing that exists that God didn’t create (1 Cor 8:6). This creative nature of God is emphasised in the first verse as the Hebrew could be translated as:
In the beginning God created,
in the beginning God created the heavens,
and in the beginning God created the earth.
The Bible wants us to understand and to have it first and foremost in our minds that God is a creator. That is where we are to begin our thinking about God. God creates! God is a creative being.
So, what does it mean for God to be creative? What sort of a creator is he? God is a redemptive creator, and he creates order from disorder. We see this in what the Bible brings to our attention next – that the earth was formless and empty (Gen 1:2). The way the author writes this point encourages the reader to bear this in mind as they read the rest of the chapter. To capture the poetic force of the Hebrew, we may understand the depiction of the earth as “unformed and unfilled”.
In other words, the domain that humanity was to inhabit was disordered. Like a condemned building, the earth wasn’t fit for occupation. The earth was unsustainable. This is the counterpoint to the rest of the drama in Genesis 1. The unformed and unfilled state of the earth is the disorder that is about to be ordered.
So, for the rest of the drama of Genesis 1, God forms the earth, and then he fills it. God spends the first three days forming the earth. Day 1, God creates light and separates it out from darkness (vv. 3–5). Day 2, God separates the heavens out from the waters (vv. 6–8). On day 3, God separates out the dry land from the waters (vv. 9–10).
Still on day 3 (a lot was done on this day), God fills the land he separated out from the waters with plants – life that can reproduce and fill the land even further (vv. 11–12). Day 4, God fills the heavens with lights – the sun, stars, and moon (vv. 14–18). Day 5, God fills the seas with fish that can reproduce and fill the sea even further, and the heavens, again, with birds that can reproduce and fill the heavens even further (vv. 20–23). Day 6, God fills the land with animals and humanity that can also reproduce and fill the land even further (vv. 24–25).
What was disordered is now ordered. What was unsustainable is now sustainable. What was unfit for human occupation is now fit for human occupation. Where the was no life there is now life, beauty, and pleasure. While we may get hung up on questions about the origins of the earth and life, Genesis 1 is not a scientific statement. The primary concern of Genesis 1 is to provide a theological statement to say God is a creative God who creates order from disorder. This is a great truth that is picked up by the Old Testament prophets and writers to provide profound hope.
