What does it mean that God is the Creator?

The Word had only to speak, and everything sprang into existence. The thought was in His mind, and the word—the creatorial word—brought everything into existence. We stand amazed in contemplation of such wonders that surpass our powers to understand. Thus creation is to us the first expression of the activity of THE ETERNAL WORD.

All the activities of God are by His Word. As to creation, “He spake, and it was done” (Ps. 33:9); “The worlds were framed by the Word of God” (Heb. 11:3); and, “Upholding all things by the Word of His power” (Heb. 1:3). By that Word, the creation subsists, and without it, it would have no existence. Hence He who is the living Word is ever said to be the Creator, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3, 10; Col. 1:16-17).

Then we find His creation glory stated afterwards. "All things were made by him." There is nothing which more stamps God to be God than giving existence to that which had none, causing to exist by His own will and power. Now all things exist by the Word: and so emphatically true is this that the Spirit has added, "and without him was not anything made that was made."

But, as I have said, it is not by Him, but in Him that all things were created. It was in His own intrinsic power He brought the universe into existence. There is no created thing that does not owe its creation to Him. Whether they be things in heaven, or things on earth; whether they be visible, or invisible, He created them all, and He created them both by Himself, and for Himself; and in His power everything subsists. He holds everything together by the Word of His power.

Next comes the attributing of creation to the Word. This must be the work of God, if anything was; and here again the words are precision itself — "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Other words far less nervous are used elsewhere: unbelief might cavil and construe them into forming or fashioning. Here the Holy Ghost employs the most explicit language, that all things began to be, or received being, through the Word, to the exclusion of one single thing that ever did receive being apart from Him; language which leaves the fullest room for Uncreate Beings, as we have already seen, subsisting eternally and distinctly, yet equally God. Thus the statement is positive that the Word is the source of all things which have received being (γενόμενα); that there is no creature which did not thus derive its being from Him. There cannot, therefore, be a more rigid, absolute shutting out of any creature from origination, save by the Word.

It is true that in other parts of Scripture we hear God, as such, spoken of as Creator. We hear of His making the worlds by the Son. But there is and can be no contradiction in Scripture. The truth is, that whatever was made was made according to the Father's sovereign will; but the Son, the Word of God, was the person who put forth the power, and never without the energy of the Holy Ghost, I may add, as the Bible carefully teaches us. Now this is of immense importance for that which the Holy Ghost has in view in the gospel of John, because the object is to attest the nature and light of God in the person of the Christ; and therefore we have here not merely what the Lord Jesus was as born of a woman, born under the law, which has its appropriate place in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but what He was and is as God. On the other hand, the gospel of Mark omits every thing of the kind. A genealogy such as Matthew's and Luke's, we have seen, would be totally out of place there; and the reason is manifest. The subject of Mark is the testimony of Jesus as having taken, though a Son, the place of a servant in the earth. Now, in a servant, no matter from what noble lineage he comes, there is no genealogy requisite. What is wanted in a servant is, that the work should be done well, no matter about the genealogy. Thus, even if it were the Son of God Himself, so perfectly did He condescend to the condition of a servant, and so mindful was the Spirit of it, that, accordingly, the genealogy which was demanded in Matthew, which is of such signal beauty and value in Luke, is necessarily excluded from the gospel of Mark. For higher reasons it could have no place in John. In Mark it is because of the lowly place of subjection which the Lord was pleased to take; it is excluded from John, on the contrary, because there He is presented as being above all genealogy. He is the source of other people's genealogy — yea, of the genesis of all things. We may say therefore boldly, that in the gospel of John such a descent could not be inserted in consistency with its character. If it admit any genealogy, it must be what is set forth in the preface of John — the very verses which are occupying us — which exhibit the divine nature and eternal personality of His being. He was the Word, and He was God; and, if we may anticipate, let us add, the Son, the only begotten Son of the Father. This, if any thing, is His genealogy here. The ground is evident; because everywhere in John He is God. No doubt the Word became flesh, as we may see more of presently, even in this inspired introduction; and we have the reality of His becoming man insisted on. Still, manhood was a place that He entered. Godhead was the glory that He possessed from everlasting — His own eternal nature of being. It was not conferred upon Him. There is not, nor can be, any such thing as a derived subordinate Godhead; though men may be said to be gods, as commissioned of God, and representing Him in government. He was God before creation began, before all time. He was God independently of any circumstances. Thus, as we have seen, for the Word the apostle John claims eternal existence, distinct personality, and divine nature; and withal asserts the eternal distinctness of that person. (Verses 1, 2)

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).

We read, however, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” It is clear from this first verse in the Bible that God existed before the creation that He is transcendent, that is to say, as to God’s being He is supreme, beyond all limitations, distinct from all that creation which has proceeded from Him.

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).

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.

So too with the narrative of the six days' work which follows after the statement of the original creation. There is a manifest purpose throughout all this six days' narrative, which is to lead our thoughts on to the great object which God had in view in preparing this earth for the abode of man. All that He pronounces "good" is the prelude to that final declaration that "God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good." Thus, all nature as we know it upon earth, and the sun, moon and stars in heaven, are seen in their relation to man. Evidently, God had a purpose in His creation which reached a climax in that final act. We anticipate a moment the final purpose of God, as accomplished in the book of Revelation. There, at its close, He looks upon "new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" and there we see again, as the eternal climax of all His thought, the Man and His wife. "The tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them." God is seen there in the eternal repose of a creation which can never be disturbed by sin, in the midst of the work of His hands and of His heart, and there we find Christ as the Centre and the Crown, the embodiment and fulfilment of all His purposes. But this is what is foreshadowed to us in the brief account we have in the first chapter of Genesis. Everything else is omitted. Much that might engage our powers, that would call forth wonder and delight, is left for reverent, patient study, a study which is ever rewarded; and we are shut up to the one great object which God had in giving us the revelation of those six days' work.

In our human nature is a thirst to know about origins. God has given us this nature and God supplies the answer to our desire simply and decisively in the first statement of His own revelation to mankind. He goes no further back than to the beginning of the history of the created heavens and earth. Anyone who has faith understands this, "that the worlds were formed by the word of God" (Heb.11:3). some may question and reason as to how God could create so tremendous a universe, but faith simply believes what the word of God says, "He spoke, and it was done, He commanded, and it stood fast" (Ps.33:9).