New Creation and the Storyline of Scripture (eBook)

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A Good World Goes Awry

The Scriptures are clear that the one God, who is himself perfectly good, created a perfectly good universe, and that the crowning achievement of his creative activity was the formation of two perfectly good human beings in his own image. The Scriptures communicate this truth in the opening paragraphs of the first book in the Bible, Genesis 1:1–2:3. Unfortunately, the Scriptures also make clear that the world did not remain the way God created it, and they tell the story of what happened to God’s good world in Genesis 2:4–4:26.

A Good God and His Creation

Genesis 1:1–2:3 is an intricately crafted narrative whose form serves its message, and that message is clear. One transcendent being, God, designed the world, and his design was ordered, balanced, and good.

As students of this narrative have often observed, it is itself meticulously designed to emphasize the number seven. There are seven words in the Hebrew text of the first sentence (1:1). The narrative’s climactic concluding paragraph (2:1–3) features God himself resting on the seventh day, and it expresses this act in thirty-five Hebrew words, a word count that is equal to five times seven.1 Seven, then, is clearly the number that in some way corresponds to God.

Seven, as it turns out, is also the number that corresponds to God’s creative activity, the story of which appears sandwiched between the first sentence and the last paragraph. Seven times, God’s creative word (“Let there be light. . . . Let there be an expanse. . . . Let dry land appear. . . . Let the earth sprout vegetation. . . . Let there be lights. . . . Let the earth bring forth living creatures . . .”) or his provision (“I have given every green plant for food”) is matched with the phrase “And it was so” or, in 1:3, its equivalent (1:3, 6–7, 9, 11, 14–15, 24, 30). This pattern communicates that what God intends actually comes to pass and that both what he intends and what comes to pass in creation correspond to who he is.

Who is he? He is good, as the sevenfold repetition of the phrase “And God saw that it was good” demonstrates, especially in its more emphatic form at the end of the sixth day: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). The goodness of creation reflects the goodness of God.

The goodness of creation also appears in the order and balance of the creation narrative. The six days of creation are neatly ordered in two groups of three, with the first, second, and third day in each group corresponding to each other. God creates light on day one and the heavenly bodies that give light (sun, moon, and stars) on day four (1:3–5, 14–19). He creates sky and sea on day two and the animals that inhabit the sky and sea (birds and fish) on day five (1:6–8, 20–23). He creates land and plants on day three and the creatures that inhabit the land and will eat the plants (animals and human beings) on day six (1:11–13, 24–31).2

There is also a balance between plants on one side and animals and human beings on the other side in the narrative. God gives instructions to be fruitful and multiply only to the animals and human beings, and only to them does he give the plants for food (1:22, 28). Human beings are to eat the plants that yield seed and the fruit of trees, whereas animals on the land and in the sky are to eat “every green plant” (1:29–30). Everything inhabits a peaceful order, and the emphasis on the provision of plants for the food of every living creature hints that there is no violence among the creatures that have “the breath of life” (1:30).3

Within this peaceful order, human beings, both male and female, inhabit the most important place. Before creating them, God summons the other transcendent beings in his presence—or perhaps the other persons in the Trinity—to join him in what he is about to do: “Let us make man,” he says, “in our image, after our likeness” (1:26).4 Human beings alone, in their two genders, are made in God’s image (1:26–27). Moreover, they alone receive from God the authority to rule over all the earth and its animals, a mandate so important that the narrative mentions it twice (1:26, 28). The second mention is its fullest form:

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Only after the final creative act of bringing a man and woman into existence and giving them this critical mandate is God’s work of creation finished. God can then pronounce all his creation not merely “good” but “very good” (1:31).

It is not the sixth day, the day of humanity’s creation, however, that is the most important day. That honor goes to the seventh day. God blesses the seventh day and sets it apart from all the other days because it is a day of rest for him after the work of creation is finished (2:1–3).5 This move implies a second mandate for human beings, and it is closely related to the first mandate. If human beings are created in God’s image, then their raising of human families and their exercise of dominion over the earth correspond naturally to God’s work in six days. God’s rest on the seventh day implies that they, too, should not work constantly because they are designed for regular periods of rest.6

According to Genesis 1:1–2:3, then, God created a world of perfect harmony and peace with human beings as the crowning achievement of his creative work. This world corresponded to God’s own peaceful and gracious character. It was ordered under the watchful care of the man and woman whom God had made in his own image and for whom he had generously provided. God in his goodness gave the man and woman the meaningful role of ruling over the animals, and he supplied the green plants as food for them all. Also in his goodness, God provided his human creation a pattern to follow in doing the work that he had given them. They were to work for six days, and then, on the seventh day, like him, they were to rest.

What Happened to God’s Good Creation?

The next major section of Genesis (2:4–4:26) describes how this perfect world became the world as all humanity experiences it—a place of hostility between humans and animals (3:15), of pain in childbearing (3:16), of difficulty in obtaining food (3:17–19a), and of death (3:19b), anger, violence, and oppression (4:1–26).7 The section begins by returning to the period before God finished his creative work and focusing in greater detail on God’s creation of and provision for human beings (2:4–25). By putting this section of God’s work under the microscope, the narrative supplies the necessary background for its description of human disobedience to God and the suffering that this fateful decision entailed.

The first part of this new section, then, describes God’s creation of the first man and of a beautiful garden within the otherwise uncultivated and largely arid land that he had previously created. God fashions the first man from the “dust” or the “clay” of the earth like a potter might make a pot on the wheel. Then, unlike any other potter, God breathes on his clay man, and he comes to life (2:7).

The rest of this first part of the story is told to emphasize the lavish way that God provided for humanity’s well-being.8 God provides a home for the man in a special enclosed area within the land of Eden. This park or garden contains “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (2:9). A river flowing into the garden supplies plentiful water, and the area in which the garden is located is rich with beautiful metals, aromatic resins, and stones—gold, bdellium, onyx (2:12; cf. Ezek. 28:13). The most important provision for the man, however, is the woman God made from the man’s rib. She is a suitable helper for him (Gen. 2:20) and affords the complement necessary for humanity to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (1:28). Working together, the man and woman will “work . . . and keep” the garden (2:15) and continue to exercise dominion over the animals (1:26, 28), a project Adam started when he named them (2:19–20). The man and the woman are naked but not ashamed. Later, nakedness in the presence of others will be embarrassing, and it will be improper in the presence of God (3:7; Ex. 20:26; 28:42–43), but now, because the man and the woman are in exactly the relationship with God and others that God created them to have, there is no...