“Before Abraham was, I AM.”77
“Now I tell you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He [I AM].”78
It is no wonder the prophets declared that the Messiah would be the Root (the beginning) and the Branch (the end) at the same time,79 the Root and the Offspring of David.80
For this reason, Paul saw God’s purpose as both unfolding before his eyes and as already completed before the world began: “[Those] whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”81
This is a remarkable statement. In God’s reality, we are already glorified. As creatures caught in space and time, our glorification hasn’t caught up to us yet. But it has already been accomplished.82
It’s not that God shot the movie in His head before He put it on film. It’s that the movie exists inside of Him and He’s at the beginning, the middle, and the end all at the same time. In other words, the Lord is not playing it by ear. He is not improvising and making it up as He goes along. No matter how chaotic things may seem, God has already worked the chaos into His plan and has turned it into good.83 In fact, Jesus’ own death was not an afterthought. Death was His destiny before the foundation of the world. Before lambs were ever created, a Lamb was slain. He is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”84 This reminds us of the “everlasting covenant” of which Hebrews 13:20 speaks.85
But that’s not all. Consider what else God did before creation:
• He decided His eternal counsel and purpose before it actually happened.86
• He chose us before the foundation of the world, calling us with a holy calling before the world began.87
• He wrote our names in the Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundation of the world.88
• Before the first angel came off of the finger of God, and before He uttered the words “Let there be . . .”89 He gave us the promise of eternal life and a great inheritance in the Son.90
• The very things He would utter while He was on earth were kept secret before the world began.91
All of this is good news, even amazing news. Your salvation was established, completed, and sealed before creation itself. Your Lord wrapped it up, won it, and came out victorious before anything ever went wrong. Before creation, Jesus Christ foreknew you, chose you, predestined you, elected you, selected you, and inherited you to be His.92
Consider what limits your Lord went to in accomplishing His eternal purpose. Herein do we find the epic greatness and enormity of Jesus Christ. As we put it in Jesus Manifesto,93 He is so much more than Lord and Savior.
The truth is, the new creation began in eternity before the old creation was made. All of this was a secret—a mystery hidden in God. But in the fullness of time, Jesus Christ appeared, and the mystery began to be unraveled. A central dimension of Paul’s service was “to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things.”94
What is at the beginning? Christ. What is at the end? Christ. Both ends of the bottle of time are capped off by Jesus. He is the beginning, and at the same time He is the end. He envelops creation; He envelops time. In Him, everything occurs and is summed up.
THE ETERNAL CROSS
A Lamb was slain on the cross from the creation of the world.95 That eternal cross reached before creation and extended after creation. It broke into the visible creation in AD 30 on a hill called Calvary, but it existed before the ticking of time. By that cross, Jesus the Christ reconciled a fallen universe to Himself.96 After His death, His body was laid in an empty tomb for three days. And on the third day, God raised Him from the dead.97 And the only things that came out of the other side of that cross and that empty tomb were Christ Himself and everything that was in Christ before the foundation of the world.
Everything else died and was destroyed.
Through the eternal cross, Jesus Christ finished all things before He created all things.
What did He finish? He finished the old creation and the Fall. He finished sin. He finished a fallen world system. He finished the enmity of the Law. He finished satan. He finished the flesh. He put you to death and finished you completely. The person you were in Adam was terminated, swallowed up in death. And then He finished His greatest enemy, the child of sin itself, death. If that isn’t enough, He did something else beyond the rest: He raised you up in resurrection life and glorified you.
All of this flows from the mystery embedded in eternity past, a mystery that Paul of Tarsus declared to be his “gospel”:
Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.98
God has never had any plans outside of His Son. As the ancient creed says, “Before all worlds” Christ is begotten, not created.99 Jesus Christ was before all things. He created all things. He holds everything together. He will have preeminence in everything,100 for everything will be summed up in Him.101 Christ is the firstborn of all creation and the firstborn from the dead, that He might have the first place in all things.102 No wonder Thomas said to the resurrected Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”103
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Divine fullness is only going to be reached by a progressive and ever-increasing revelation of Christ and His significance.
—T. AUSTIN-SPARKS104
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THE PREEXISTENT LOGOS
We will close this chapter with a few thoughts about the Logos, mentioned in John’s gospel. The Greek word logos has a long history of meaning in the Greek and Jewish worlds. Beginning with Heraclitus in the sixth century BC, the word logos meant the principle that gave the universe order, meaning, structure, and harmony. Aristotle used the term to mean reasoned discourse. Other Greek philosophers believed logos to be the divine, active reason that animated the created universe. The word has been translated into “word,” “speech,” “reason,” “principle,” “language,” “logic,” and “story.” The Jewish philosopher Philo believed the logos to be the bond of everything that held all created things together. He taught that the logos acted on behalf of God and was His instrument in creating the universe.
With all of this as a backdrop, John came along and announced that the Logos was God, the Logos was with God, and the Logos created all things.105 But the mind-blowing statement with which John followed this up is, the Logos took on human flesh and became a man dwelling among us!106
The Logos is Jesus of Nazareth. He is the speaking Word—God enfleshed.
The Logos is also associated with God’s wisdom. Proverbs 8:22–31 depicts a divine wisdom speaking in the first person as being in existence in eternity, before creation. Jeremiah says that God established the earth by His wisdom and His power.107 The psalmist wrote that “by the word [Greek, logos] of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”108 Paul taught that Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God.109 This wisdom, or self-expression, ordered and harmonized the universe.110
Consequently, the Logos brought together Hebrew ideas of creation and Greek ideas of a universal harmony. It is the Creator’s self-expression that harmonized the universe. What John brought in his gospel was not a new idea, but a new fact: this divine self-expression that harmonizes the universe is an actual human being. And neither Hebrew nor Greek could grasp that.
We agree with Lutheran theologian Robert Jensen that Christ as the Logos should be seen not just as God’s revelation of Himself to us but as God’s own self-knowledge.111 And as we borrow from Augustine and the Eastern fathers, God knows who He is through being Father to the Son. Thus Jesus is God�
��s own knowledge of Himself. Therefore, everything that makes up divine revelation in the First Testament is part of that self-knowledge.
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God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God. He has already lived all our tomorrows as He has lived all our yesterdays.
—A.W. TOZER112
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When that self-knowledge becomes incarnate in the flesh of the man Jesus, then the entire content of the First Testament revelation is included in the incarnate Son. In God, the duality between movement and eternity is overcome. God is both eternal and eternally moving. Theirs is a consistent kenosis (self-emptying) of each member of the Trinity into the others. The constant total surrender of Father, Son, and Spirit to one another is the life of God. This eternal, divine life is an eternal movement. From another perspective, Jesus is the space and time in which humanity gets caught up into the movement of God. Thus God’s movement becomes a movement of the divine and the human in Jesus. Jesus, therefore, is the movement of the incarnation. In short, Jesus is God’s self-understanding enfleshed. God knows Himself to be what He is when He sees the Son.
In Colossians 1:15, Paul called Jesus “the firstborn over all creation.” This indicates two things: First, Christ existed before creation. He was there before anything came into existence. Second, Jesus has primacy over creation, being the heir to all created things.113 As Hebrews puts it, Christ was “appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.”114 Jesus is both the source and the sustainer of creation.115
A separate volume could be written on the preincarnate Christ. In this chapter, we simply wanted to give you a glimpse of the biblical witness on the matter. Let’s now shift gears and look at how the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 also narrates the Jesus story.
CHAPTER 2
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Christ in Creation:
The Macro Version
The whole Bible is about God’s mission,
with Christ as the central character.
—MICHAEL HORTON 1
THE BIBLE IS CENTERED ON A GREAT NARRATIVE. JESUS TAUGHT us that He is present at the very beginning of that narrative all the way through to its climactic end. Consequently, if you read Scripture in a way that doesn’t point to Christ, you don’t have Christianity; you have a religion.
Jesus Christ is God’s language. When God wants to communicate, He does so through His Son. In Genesis, God spoke through types, shadows, stories, and events that embody Christ and His work. In Exodus, He revealed Christ through Israel’s exodus and the tabernacle of Moses. In Leviticus, He revealed Christ through various ceremonies, sacrifices, and rituals. In Numbers, He revealed Christ through each station of Israel’s wilderness journey. In Deuteronomy, He revealed Christ through commandments and testimonies. In the prophetic and historical books, He revealed Christ through prophetic declarations, predictions, and the actions of prophets and kings. In the Writings, He revealed Christ through songs, poems, and proverbs.
God’s language hasn’t changed. It has just become more refined.
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.2
In the past, God spoke about His Son. Today, He speaks straight through Jesus’ lips.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.3 The treasure in God’s heart is Christ. Therefore, Christ is what God speaks. For this reason, John called Jesus the Logos, the very utterance and Word of God.4
CREATION DECLARES THE STORY OF JESUS
An entire book could be written expounding Jesus Christ from Genesis 1 and 2. These two chapters together are the key that unlocks the entire Bible. The themes that appear in these chapters can be traced throughout the rest of the Scriptures until their dramatic climax, when they reappear in their fullness in Revelation 21 and 22.5 In this chapter and in chapter 3, we will simply highlight some of the main features of Genesis 1 and 2 as they relate to the Jesus story.
Before we can grasp the spiritual significance of the creation account in the First Testament, we must turn to the writers of the Second Testament.
In Colossians 1:16, Paul declared that everything in the visible creation was created by Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. John stated the same, saying, “All things were made through Him.”6 The universe was framed by God’s Word, who is Christ—the visible was created by the invisible.7 This being so, all of creation reflects Jesus in some way. Just as an artist puts something of Himself into His artwork, the Lord did the same when He crafted the heavens and the earth.
Creation testifies to the glory of God, which is in the face of Jesus Christ.8 This sheds fresh light on Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”9
When Paul wrote of the “eternal power and divine nature” of God in Romans 1:20, He was speaking of Christ.10 For it is in Jesus that “the fullness of the Godhead” resides bodily.11 Consequently, when God created the world, He embedded into the physical universe pictures of His greatest passion, Jesus, His own Son. In like manner, the psalmist wrote:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.12
Day after day, the heavens and the earth testify of Christ. Jesus is the “image” of God and “the brightness of His glory.”13 In the words of the psalmist, Christ is the knowledge of God, the sun, the Bridegroom, and the champion of the universe.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV), Paul wrote that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Note the word “creation” here. This throws us back to the first seven days. The creation of the heavens and the earth is a shadow of the re-creation of the human spirit in Jesus Christ. The first creation is a picture of the second (spiritual) creation in Christ—a foreshadowing of the “new creation” of 2 Corinthians 5:17.
John’s gospel makes this point loud and clear. He began his gospel just like Genesis, with the words “In the beginning.” In John 1 and 2, we are presented with the new creation in the midst of the old creation. For this reason, the gospel of John is the new Genesis.14
The language of John 1 and 2 reminds us of the seven days of creation. The phrase “the next day” is used repeatedly. Also one day John the Baptist answered the priests and the Levites, saying that he was “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”15 In Genesis 1:2, we are told that the earth was formless and void, like a wilderness. Strikingly, the Hebrew word for “without form” is translated “wilderness” in other places in the First Testament.
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The truth of the faith can be preserved only by doing a theology of Jesus Christ, and by redoing it over and over again.
—KARL RAHNER17
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On another day Jesus was baptized and the Spirit descended upon Him “like a dove.”16 In Genesis 1:2, the Spirit descended with wings, “hovering” over the waters of creation. And on and on it goes.
With these thoughts in mind, let’s turn our attention to the seven days of creation, with an eye to discovering the Lord Jesus and His marvelous work of re-creating us into God’s image.
Day One: His Birth
Genesis 1:2 opens with the state of the earth: “And the
earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Here we see a picture of unregenerate humanity. It perfectly describes women and men without God. Fallen humankind is a wasteland—full of darkness, emptiness, devoid of God’s light and life. Isaiah described the wicked as “like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.”18 It is only when the Spirit of God broods upon a fallen person that he or she encounters life.
So on day one of creation, God declared, “Let there be light.”19 This is the mantra of regeneration. Here we have new birth—the Word of God that brings the impartation of God’s life.20
When Jesus was born, the Light of the World made its entrance onto this planet. And the light penetrated the darkness.21 Following the literary format of Genesis 1, John told us that in Christ “was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”22 According to John, Jesus Christ is “the true Light.”23
How does the new birth take place? By God’s Spirit and by God’s Word.24 This is pictured beautifully on the first day of creation, when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,25 and God commanded light to dispel the darkness by His Word.26
Paul drew an analogy connecting the day God said, “Let there be light,” with our new birth: “God who commanded light to shine out of darkness . . . has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”27
Through God’s speaking, His Word, we are awakened spiritually and our spiritual eyes are opened. As a result, we are delivered from the dominion of darkness, translated into the kingdom of light, and we can see the things of the Spirit.28
The principle of regeneration and new birth repeated itself in Noah’s day, after the floodwaters covered the old creation. According to Peter, the old world perished under water in the Flood.29 And eight souls were saved in the ark. For Peter, this was an allusion to the salvation that baptism represents.30
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