Why did God create the world? While speculation about God’s divine purposes is usually fruitless and often dangerous, a sufficient (at least as adequate as anything I’ve researched), albeit non-exhaustive answer is found in the Trinity.

Understanding God as love is best comprehended in the eternal context between the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The three are a community constantly giving love and receiving it in return in perfect harmony. There is no need. There is no want. There is no deficiency.

We understand love because God. Love by nature, gives, it shares, it delights in the other.

The giving aspect answers the question of why God created the world. It was because of love.

God’s love, demonstrated in the relationship between the father, Son and Holy Spirit prompted him to create beings in which to share it with.

God wasn’t lonely; he wasn’t bored; he wasn’t even seeking beings to give him homage.

God did something in complete accord with his perfect nature: he created.

And while God’s ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts our thoughts God reveals what pleases him to reveal about himself. This alone is an act of grace.

Some questions are beyond our ability to comprehend such as why beings created without sin would choose to disobey God. It’s a mystery….but it is reality.

We were strangers and rebels living in opposition to the almighty when the same love that brought forth creation was the cause behind Christ coming to earth to die on a cross and save us from sin.

The same love existent in eternity between the godhead gave of itself in the person of Jesus for an underserving creation.

This should profoundly shape our perspective on God, humanity and creation –and make us eternally grateful.

How does the Son fulfill his role alongside the Father and Holy Spirit in the stage of creation? What is the Holy Spirit’s role in the creation of the universe? And more commonly answered, what is the Father’s role in the creation of the universe? These are all relevant questions for the thinking Christian. How many of us look at Scripture through the lens of God’s redemptive acts and stages?  Whether we have not been taught how, or whether we are stuck in a ‘what does this text mean to me?’ phase, understanding redemptive history and how God, in triune relationship with himself, works for our good and his glory is the big lens we must learn to look through when reading the Bible. So for the purpose of this article, how can we begin to see the mighty Triune God working together to create the seemingly exhaustive, ever-expanding universe

Redemptive history can be broken down into 4 stages: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and New Creation. As we look specifically at the stage of Creation, we understand that the Father is the primary member of the Trinity who creates by speaking the world into existence (Genesis 1:1, Hebrews 11:3, Hebrews 1:2). Genesis 1:1 says, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Then, in Genesis 1:2, we find our first reference to a Trinitarian Creator-God with the mention of the Holy Spirit. We find our second reference to a Trinitarian Creator-God in Genesis 1:26 which states, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness (emphasis added).’” With the unfolding of Scripture through a progression of redemptive history we come to note three things about how the Son specifically interacts with the Father and Holy Spirit within the stage of creation.

1) The Father created the cosmos through Jesus, the Son. John says in John 1:1-3 about the deity of Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” A direct comparison can be made between the wording John uses here and that used in Genesis 1:1 concerning the creation of the world. Instead of “In the beginning God created,” John has “In the beginning was the Word.” This locates Jesus’ existence in eternity past with God and sets the stage for John’s lofty Christology.[1] Other passages that speak of the Father creating the world through the Son are Colossians 1:16 and Hebrews 1:2.

2) Jesus, the Son, is the sustainer and upholder of the entire cosmos. Not only is Jesus the instrument by which the entire cosmos was created, he is also the instrument by which the cosmos is sustained. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews says in Hebrews 1:3 that Jesus “upholds the universe by the word of his power.” The author of Hebrews also says concerning the Son that he is the ”heir of all things”, the instrument the Father used when he created the world, the radiance of the Father’s glory, and the exact representation of the Father’s nature. This glorious and powerful description of the Son’s preeminence is central to a proper understanding of redemptive history. He is the heir; he is the one the world was created through, he is the radiance of the Father’s glory; and he is the exact representation of the Father’s nature. This poetic imagery of Christ upholding the vastness of the universe is also mentioned in Colossians 1:15-20, which is worth quoting in full here:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

Paul’s famous theological treaty of the preeminence of Christ is very rich with creation language. First of all, Paul references that Christ is “the image of the invisible God,” alluding back to Genesis 1:27 where man was created in the image and likeness of God. Paul’s language here is virtually identical to the ’Sonship’ language used elsewhere in Genesis 5:1-4 as Adam’s ‘image-bearing’ likeness to God the Father implies that Adam was God’s son.[2] When Adam’s son was born, Adam was said to be the “father of (a son) in his own likeness and according to his own image.”[3] The ‘image’ language Paul uses here implies that Jesus is God’s son, as Adam was God’s son. But Paul goes further in saying that this ‘son’ is the “firstborn of all creation”. This reference in the second line of Colossians 1:15 to Christ as the “firstborn of all creation” further highlights the idea that he was an Adamic figure and ‘son’ of God.[4] G.K. Beale says this concerning this Adamic comparison, “By a similar application, Christ is the last Adam, who is the “firstborn,” not only of all humanity in the new creation but also of ‘all [things in the old] creation.’”[5] In verse 16-17, Paul gives another reference to Christ being the instrument the world was created through, but Paul goes further in stating that not only were all things created through him but also “all things were created…for him” and “in Him all things hold together.”

3) Jesus, the Son, is the Creator of the entire cosmos. Paul acknowledges in Colossians 1 that Christ is the sovereign creator of the entire world, giving uniqueness to his ‘oneness’ with the Father. Paul seems to be stating two things here that are of equal importance: 1) Jesus, the son, is the perfect and divine Creator of all things, who is separate from and sovereign over all that he has created, and 2) Christ perfectly embodies the ruling position that Adam and his flawed human successors should have held.[6]

As we dive into Scripture and begin to view Scripture through a redemptive historical lens, we begin to learn the beautiful intricacies of the world we live in. In our minds and in our understanding of scripture, may Christ reign over us not only as our Warrior-King but also as the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

[1]Beale, G.K., and D.A. Carson Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing, 2007), 421.

[2]Ibid., 851.

[3]Ibid.

[4]Ibid., 853.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Ibid., 854.

“The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when he yearns for the physical presence of other Christians. Man was created a body, the Son of God appeared on earth in the body, he was raised in the body, in the sacrament the believer receives the Lord Christ in the body, and the resurrection of the dead will bring about the perfected fellowship of God’s spiritual-physical creatures. The believer therefore lauds the Creator, the Redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of a brother. The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other’s benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians!

It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.”[1]

Tyler Smith discusses the difference between God’s love for humanity in general and God’s specific love for the elect as it was accomplished in and applied by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.  Whether you’re a Calvinist or not, you will enjoy this article! [...]

Having discussed the source from which God’s love flows—that is God’s essential attribute of love as it is and has been expressed perpetually and eternally, apart from and independent of the created order, within His intratrinitarian Persons (See my first installment to this series)—we can now consider the expressions of the outworking of God’s other-orientation in His self-giving. The first aspect of God’s self-giving love, to which we will now devote our attention, is the providential love of God for all creation.

God “did not, on making the world, leave it to itself, or commit it into other hands; but it is an object of His constant care, and His hand is concerned in all its movements.”[i] God is not deistic; He is, in fact, interested and concerned with what He has created. Creation is not worthless; it is, on the contrary, of special significance to God.

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The world today seems to believe in no attribute of God’s essential nature other than His love, or at least what it assumes to be His love. Any concept of God that includes His holiness, justice, sovereignty, or wrath is excluded and is deemed incompatible with this contemporary God of love. God’s love is becoming sanitized, democratized, and sentimentalized with increasing overtones of syncretism and pluralism.[1] In short, the world and much of Christianity has lost a biblical understanding of this precious doctrine.

What is the nature of God’s love? This article stands as the first installment to a series of forthcoming articles in which I hope to answer this question. A.W. Tozer has rightly said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”[2] It must, therefore, be our ambition to make the Scripture the base for what informs our mind concerning the nature of the God we worship. In this series, I will argue that God is essentially love (1 John 4:8, 16) and that this love is best understood through the study of the scriptural testimony of God’s intratrinitarian love for His Persons, God’s love for everything that He has created, God’s general love for His unique creature, the human, and His special love for His chosen people, the elect. We must first devote our attention to the study of God’s intratrinitarian love for His Persons.

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Throughout redemptive history, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have worked and will continue to work in accordance with each other to accomplish the Father’s designed plan.  From Creation to New Creation, all three members work in unity and harmony for this plan to progress.  In our present day, we are currently between the stage of Redemption and New Creation; we await the second coming of Christ to usher in this final stage of New Creation.  To understand this stage we must look into the future to see what the Bible says about Christ and his New Creation work.  As we look into the redemptive stage of New Creation, there are three things that are necessary to understand concerning  the second coming of Jesus:

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The role of Jesus during his incarnational ministry is seen perfectly in his life, death, and resurrection, but with a careful reading of Scripture there are many implications that can be made of how this work fits into the bigger picture of what God is doing throughout history.  With a proper understanding that the Jesus of the Bible already is Creator of the entire cosmos, what is his role within the stage of redemption?  There are five statements to be made concerning the Son’s role within the Trinity during the salvation-historical stage of redemption.

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How does the Son fulfill his role along side the Father and Holy Spirit in the stage of creation?  First of all, we understand that the Father is the primary member of the Trinity who creates and speaks the world into existence (Genesis 1:1, Hebrews 11:3, Hebrews 1:2).  Genesis 1:1 says, “God created the Heavens and the Earth.”  Although, beginning in Genesis 1:2, we find our first reference to a Trinitarian Creator-God with a reference to the Holy Spirit; we find our second reference to a Trinitarian God in Genesis 1:26 stating, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness (emphasis added)’”.  With the unfolding of Scripture through a progression of redemptive history we come to note three things about the role of the Son within the stage of creation:

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