He Who “in the beginning” created the universe is also the source of spiritual life, of a divine nature as in 2 Peter 1. Every creature above or beneath is the fruit of His will and power, He sovereign and good, they dependent and subject responsibly if not in fact; for self-will, sin, entered both heaven and earth. As of old, so now, all blessing is in the Son, in Whom life was and is. The Spirit of God took His part then as He does to-day according to the scriptures. From above is every good giving and every perfect gift, from Him with Whom can be no variation nor shadow of turning. Hence, as sin completed brings forth death, He was pleased to bring forth believers by word of truth that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. There is for a fallen creature no holiness possible, no walk acceptable to God, save through faith in virtue of life above the creature; and this is now set in the clearest light of God's word. “He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God, the life he hath not.” Our Lord here below had presented the matter so fully that mistake is inexcusable. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life” (John 5:2424Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24), R. V.).
This is grace, which the sinner needs to save him; the believer knows it in Christ. But, even as to nature, how the Bible opens as becomes a revelation from God! There is no discussion, no reasoning to prove the being of God, no unfolding of His attributes. He acts in power, and speaks with authority, as the true God. He is good, does good, and pronounces on good, as One that has pleasure in it. If from the world's creation His invisible things, His everlasting power and divinity, are clearly seen, being apprehended through the things that are made, how much more does revelation make known? Science is here blank ignorance; it knows not and never can know anything of originations. Its field is the investigation of phenomena, and it rises by generalization to the fixed laws which govern what exists in nature. No doubt it may advance, to a fuller degree and a more exact distribution, by a better knowledge. But from the beginning there was a reality in God's creation to be investigated; and man, whatever his hostile will to hide and lose himself in second causes, cannot escape the conviction that there must be a first cause, God the Creator. He it is Who made known His ways to Moses, His doings to the sons of Israel. He it is Who later revealed Himself in Jesus, His Son, His Only-begotten, in Whom is life eternal for the believer, without Whom abides the wrath of God for him that disbelieves. To reject the grace of God in Christ is to remain in unremoved guilt and death, with a fearful expectation of judgment to come.
Only the fool has said in his heart, No God; he is fool morally and in the worst sense. Reasoning, if sound, may argue that so this or that must be; revelation says that so it is. Nothing is so simple, satisfactory, and deep as the truth. This alone in grace meets man's ignorance and his need: the truth answers both, now and forever. Believers are entitled to say, We know, and this on God's testimony, as sure as it is clear, forming the consciousness of the new man by Gods Spirit.
God, and God only, has self-being. He is the “I am,” and so speaks of Himself. He is the Most High, the Almighty, and the Eternal, and thus made His name known in due time; and He alone can rightly say “I will.” So said the Son when incarnate here below; which could not be, if He were not one with the Father, as truly God, and therefore as competent by the sacrifice of Himself to save righteously, as to create.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Here we are not told of all the beings created at the first, for elsewhere we read of the angels of His might. Nor have we particulars first of the states, and then of the denizens, of the earth, before man was created under the new conditions of the six days followed by the sabbath. Previously to this, and it may be (according to men's research) traversing vast periods, far beyond the time-measures which concur with the human race, we have two revealed facts: creative energy originating the universe (Gen. 1:11In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)); a subsequent state of utter confusion, into which (not the heavens, but) the earth was thrown (Gen. 1:22And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)), before that reconstitution which made it the suited sphere for the moral dealings of God with mankind, and the display of His own grace in Christ. Then Adam's transgression wrought ruin to himself, the race, and the earth; but God will have His eventual triumph over evil power, as well as weakness, through His own Son, the Word made flesh. For He was the perfect pattern of obedience, in life and death the overcomer of Satan, the accomplisher of redemption already by His blood, about to come again to effect redemption by power, not only for those that are His for heaven and earth, but for all the creation itself, enthralled even yet by reason of the first man's fall, to be delivered for glory by the Second. The Holy Spirit will not restore all, whatever His blessed work in that day; it is an honor reserved for Him Who suffered on the cross: Jesus is Heir of all things.
Petty unbelief mocks at the littleness of the earth compared with the immense and countless system disclosed by adequate telescopes. Yet here, not in some distant star physically far transcending our sun, God thought fit to make and try man, and, as the needed measure with the fallen race, to wash away his corruption and violence in the waters of the deluge. Here He called out Abram and his seed to a land they shall yet truly and forever enjoy. Here He tested Israel by the law, and gave them priests, prophets, and kings till there was no remedy. Here, as sin had entered by the first man, He sent His Son, a man Christ Jesus, to vanquish in every way the enemy of God and man, and to deliver by His death and resurrection such of Satan's victims as believe. Here therefore was displayed God's moral glory in the humiliation, obedience, and cross of the Son of Man. Here consequently shall His glory be manifested, in Christ and all that are His above and below, to the blessing of the universe, when Jehovah reigns and the earth rejoices, set free from thralldom to Satan and his blinded instruments. No doubt the glory above is higher than what the earth shall enjoy, and those who suffered with Christ on earth shall be glorified with Him on high. In the Father's house, where He is now, they will have their deepest bliss in His love; but they are also to reign with Him over the earth in that day.
Nor is it for believers to heed the debasing dream of the evolutionist, as credulous of a mere materialist craze as heedless of the only sure and safe, holy and majestic, account of creation, which God gave through His inspired servant Moses. In the Bible alone, in Christianity at last revealed, we have the key to the unique place of man. It was in view of His own Son, in due time to partake of blood and flesh, in order to glorify Him in that nature which had so long played Him false; in it to defeat the great foe; in it to expiate sins; in it to intercede now as Priest; in it by-and-by to reign (as we who believe shall reign with Him) till all things be subjected, when He shall deliver up the kingdom, that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) may be all in all throughout eternity. It is the revealed truth which alone vindicates, alone puts in their place, both God and man, the earth and all things.
See then, my reader, that as you have heard the word of truth, you believe it; for it is the gospel of salvation to all that receive the Savior on God's word. If he that disregarded Moses' law died without mercy on the word of two or three witnesses, of how much worse punishment shall he be judged worthy that trod underfoot the Son and counted the blood of the covenant a common thing?