What does it mean that God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1)?

v.1This indeed constitutes its characteristic and permanent value. It is not only a full and sure source of instruction in consonance with its moral and yet higher designs to God's glory; it is the sole standard of the truth, by which we are bound to test all else which professes to be divine. Let us ever search afresh in faith, and ever grow into a deepening knowledge of the revealed mind of God.

The philosophies, as well as the religions, of antiquity were wholly ignorant of creation. Of God, of the "beginning," they knew nothing. Dreams of evolution were the earliest folly, and, among the Ionic school, Anaximander and Anaximenes followed Thales, each differing, all blind. Anaxagoras let in with mere matter the idea of mind, but no creator. It is useless to name others; even Plato and Aristotle, rivals too, had no real light. They, more or less openly, all held eternal matter at bottom; and though the philosophers boasted, as they still do, of their knowledge and logic, they failed to see that they could not prove it, or even that it is to mere mind unthinkable. To the believer it is the simple yet deep truth, that a beginning was given to everything that exists; if God says it, he perceives that nothing else can be true. For it is impossible to admit an effect without a cause; but reasoning can never rise at best beyond. There must be a First Cause; it can never say, There is. This God alone can and does affirm: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." God brought the whole ordered system into being. The form, nature, and aim, are not here explained: such a detail had no proper place here. That He created all is a primary and momentous truth.

But there is not a word in scripture to warrant the strange and hasty assumption that the universe was brought into being in the six days of Gen. 1:3-31, so often referred to throughout the Bible. Construe the six days as men will, it is out of the power of any on just principles of interpretation to deny that the first day begins with light, and that th e first two verses are marked off in their nature, as well as by their expression, from the work of the six days. Nothing indeed but prepossession can account for the mistake, which the record itself corrects. "In the beginning" has its own proper significance, and is in no way connected with "the days," save as the revealed start of divine creation, and in due time (however probably immense the interval) leading to that measure of time only when the constitution of things was made for Adam, for the race.

v.1The antiquity of the earth may be as great as the shifting schemes of the most enthusiastic geologist ever conceived: there is absolutely neither here nor in any other part of scripture the least intimation that opposes vast ages before man was created, or that affirms man to be nearly contemporary with the original creation. It is ignorance of scripture to say that Moses assigns an epoch to the earth's first formation, such as fathers or commentators (not without worthier remarks) have imagined and made current in Christendom. The philosophers who have spent their time in the study of geology and kindred sciences will act wisely in reading with unwonted care the beginning of Gen. 1. They will thence learn that they have been precipitate in the conclusion that the inspired writing is at all committed to the blunders of its interpreters, theological or scientific. However vast the periods they claim, even for the strata nearest the surface, scripture is the sole record which, while revealing God as the Creator of all things, leaves room for all that has been wrought before the Adamic earth. "The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary: there is no searching of his understanding" (Isa. 40:28). While geology waits for its Newton, subjection to scripture meanwhile would be untold gain to its devotees as to all other men.

v.1There was an epoch then in the infinite course of eternity when God created the universe. This is here stated with the utmost accuracy — " in the beginning." It is in view of man, primarily indeed of Israel, that the Pentateuch was written, the Second man and Last Adam being the, as yet, hidden object (and the church one with Him) of God's counsels. Angels are not spoken of, though we know from another ancient book of inspiration that they expressed their joy when earth's foundations were made to sink (Job 38:6-7). "In the beginning," accordingly, is severed from all the measures of time with which a man's existence is conversant. How admirably previous duration, unlimited by ordinary notation, suits the immense changes of which geology takes cognizance, needs no further remark here.

Thus we find that the creation of the heavens and earth is dismissed in one verse, which, however, establishes the stupendous fact that God is God, and Creator of the whole universe. Endless cosmogonies of heathenism have wallowed in a mire of their own ignorance, folly and superstition, and given us grotesque, repulsive, and foolish thoughts. God simply presents Himself in the midst of His immense creation, and declares that He is the Author of it all. The very omission of all detail brings out the sublimity of the scene. Here we stand, with our attention riveted, not upon His marvelous works in heaven and earth, but rather upon Him who has brought them all into being.

The earth's first notable event was surely its birth. We do not refer to the wonderful six days' work, which was more than anything a recovery from a state of ruin, but of God's creative act at the beginning, whenever that may have been. In imagining matter to be eternal, the ancients only proclaimed themselves fools, while professing to be wise. God alone is eternal. It is true that man, now that he has been created, has no end, but GOD has neither beginning nor end. The book of God opens with the divine account of the origin of all things. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." How, when, and why is not stated; the one object of the verse is to tell us WHO created. It is of the first importance for man to understand that not only himself, but his little world and all that is therein, and also that vast system of which his world forms a part, was brought into being by the act of God. This puts both God and man in their true place. Job doubtless felt very small when his Maker challenged him thus: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4). Unbelief brushes all this aside with scorn, preferring the theories of its own darkness, but "by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb. 11:3).

v.1That God exists and that He originated all things is assumed and stated. Unbelieving men may demand that proofs of His existence be produced, but nowhere in Scripture does God condescend to furnish such proofs. Were He to do so they would not be intelligible to the feeble minds of puny men. Moreover they are no more really needed than proofs that the sun exists and shines. That fact could only be doubted by a man who had neither sight nor feeling, and it is just because unbelieving men have neither sight nor feeling of a spiritual sort, that they doubt, or even deny, the existence of God.

The heavenly bodies above us and the earth beneath our feet are realities too plain to be missed, even by the most unthinking and degraded of men. What are they? Whence came they? Have they always existed? The first verse supplies the answer. They are not eternal, but had a beginning. Both heavens and earth came into being by the creative act of the eternal God. Three times in the chapter do we read, "God created," and five times another verb is used, meaning to make. To make is to fashion out of existing matter, whereas when we read of God creating, then "through faith we understand … that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb 11:3).

v.1But another thing confronts us in this first verse, though not apparent in our English Bibles. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim, a plural word, where the verb, created, is in the singular. This is the more remarkable in that Hebrew nouns can assume a dual form, meaning exactly two. Hence the plural form must mean three, or more. Reading this in the light of the New Testament, we at once see the Trinity in Unity. That great revelation of the Godhead is not explicitly stated, but the words, given by inspiration of God, are so framed as to be wholly consistent with it, when it is stated.

v.1To sum up: verse 1 gives us the original creative act of God by which the whole material and visible universe came into being, long before such things as "days and years" (verse 14), were known. Its epoch may have been inconceivably remote, but that His work was perfect in its season, we firmly believe. In the New Testament, as we know this creative act is attributed to the Word and the Son, for creation was left in His hands, as also was redemption, and as judgment will be.

v.1"God" in our version answers to the Hebrew Elohim, which, however, has the peculiarity of a plural substantive with a singular verb. Christianity alone in its own time cleared up the enigma, which still remains impenetrably dark to the Jews, as well to other men, who know not in Christ "the true Light."

Again, there ought to be no doubt among scholars that the word "created" in our tongue corresponds better than any other with the original. With us, as with Israel, the word admits of application to signal callings into existence out of actual material, as in Gen. 1:21, 27, but only with a special ground and emphasis. And never is it used of any other maker than God. But if the aim were to speak of creation in the ultimate, highest, and strictest sense, the Hebrews, like ourselves, had no other word so appropriated. Here the context is decisive. "God created the heavens and the earth," where nothing of the kind existed previously. They were created out of nothing as men speak, perhaps loosely, but not unintelligibly. The heathen might worship, as all did, the heavens, or even the earth; the Jew sinned against the written word if he was ensnared of Satan after their dark example. The first words of God's law told him that those were but creatures; Israel was to hear if others were deaf, and bound to own, serve, and worship the one God, the Creator. The chosen people was quite as ready as any other to worship the creature, as all their history to the Babylonish captivity proves; but there can be no doubt what the Bible supposed, declared, and claimed from its very first verse — God created the universe.

v.1Further, it is not matter created, crude matter to be afterwards fashioned into the shapely and beautiful universe of the heavens and the earth. It is not chaos first, as Greek and Latin poets feigned, in accordance with heathen tradition never wholly right, though often mixing up what was not wrong. It is not a nebula, as La Place conceived, a mere modification of the same rationalism, however refined it be. Lord Rosse, by his observations with his great reflector, has fairly disposed of this unbelieving hypothesis. For he has proved that many nebulae, considered even by the Herschels irresolvable objects, actually consist of agglomerations of stars. Surely, therefore, the only just presumption is that all nebulae are nothing more, and only need more powerful means to make manifest their true nature. God only has given the truth plainly, briefly, and after a way transparently divine in its simple and unparalleled majesty. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." How is it, ye savants, that this great truth is found here only in its pristine splendour, towering above your Hesiods and Homers, your Ovids and Virgils, your Egyptian and Mexican remains, your Hindu and Chinese fables? How is it that to our day the Lyell and Darwin, to say nothing of profaner men, are stumbling in the dark over a morass of hypotheses (to say the least), unproved and dubious? It is because God's word is not believed as He wrote it; and this, because men like not the true God Who judges sin and saves only through His Son the Lord Jesus. So of old when men knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. It is the more guilty now, because, the Son of God being come and having accomplished redemption, the darkness quite passes away and the true light already shines. Alas! anything is welcome but a living God, and least of all the whole universe created by and through and for His Son Who is before all things and by Whom all things consist. "By faith we understand (or apprehend) that the worlds have been framed by God's word, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which appear" (Heb. 11:3).

v.1Creation then in ver. 1 is the great primary fact of revelation. It is all the stronger, because the Hebrew text ("In [the] beginning") has no article, any more than the Greek in John 1:1. It is therefore undefined. Compare Prov. 8:23. From the context, however, it is plain that the fourth Gospel rises beyond the first book of Moses; for it goes back to divine and eternal being (not ἐγένετο, but ἦν), and not merely divine origination, which in fact appears later (in John 1:3), and this in a form all-embracing and exclusive. "All things were made (came into being) through him, and without him was not anything made which has been made."

v.ch.1This then is God's account of His creation, and in detail of the Adamic earth. No wise man will wonder that we are conducted silently over the vast and successive platforms of dead plants and animals, to say nothing of the debris of rocks, under water and heat. Here we have a system of life rising up, not by any necessity, but by divine power, wisdom, and goodness, to beings constituted chief of creation and made in His image after His likeness, before sin brought in death and every woe on the guilty and all subject to them: a system where our feeble eyes cannot fail, save blinded by wilful evil, to see it everywhere, above, around, below, filled with contrivances that disclose the omniscient designs and the inexhaustible benevolence of the omnipotent Designer, yet in no case absolutely, but with a view to moral government, the effects of which afford a handle of objection to those who refuse that divine word which reveals good then and still higher purposes of grace in Christ for all who believe. Even in the lowest point of view, well may we at this place exclaim with the psalmist, "These wait all upon thee, that thou mayest give [them] their meat in due season: [that] thou givest them, they gather. Thou openest thine hand; they are filled with good" (Ps.104:27-28).