Absolute Truths from the Beginning (Genesis 1-3)
by Sean Harris | Jan 30, 2023May 1st, 2024 | Blog
- Genesis 1:1 contains the most fundamental and foundational truth for life in the Bible. God created the heavens and the earth and everything therein out of nothing (ex nihilo) (Rom 4:17) by the word of His power, establishing God as the supreme Sovereign over all that exists (1:1-26). The everlasting God is the Creator of the whole earth (Isa 40:28).
- God created only two genders: male and female. Both were made in the image and likeness of God (1:27). Being made in the image of God gives humans value without regard to their contribution to their family or society. Males are the sex that impregnates females. Women are the sex that produces the eggs males fertilize and can give birth. The union of both is needed to procreate. Gender confusion and sexual immorality are a result of the fall of man.
- The first mandate (command) communicated in the Bible, known as the Creation Mandate, is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (1:28). God expects humans to procreate.
- After the Creation Mandate, God gave humans the Cultural Mandate. Humans are to subdue the earth’s natural resources and have dominion over every living thing that moves on the planet (1:28) for the betterment of societies. Adam’s first act of exercising dominion was naming all the animals God created (2:19-20).
- “When God saw everything He had made…it was very good” (1:31). This means everything and every spiritual being, including Satan (before he fell from perfection), and Adam and Eve, were good when initially created.
- In Genesis 1, God established our seven-day week: six days to work and one day to rest, called the Sabbath (2:2).
- The way God created Adam communicates the special relationship between heaven and earth (2:7). God took “dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life,” symbolically communicating a bond between heaven and earth. God created both Adam and Eve on day six of the creation week.
- Work is NOT a result of the fall of man; work is part of being a human. Work gives humans purpose (2:15).
- God said, “it is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” God specifically created the woman to be man’s helper. The first marriage was an opposite-sex marriage (2:18). “Fit for him” describes the biological compatibility for reproduction and the emotional and spiritual bond husbands and wives share and experience.
- God created Eve from Adam and brought Eve to Adam to communicate the specially unique relationship that belongs to married men and women (2:21). Opposite-sex individuals in the covenant of marriage can be naked with one another and not be ashamed. God expects men (and, by implication, women) to leave their families of origin and start new families. God united Adam and his wife in the relationship we call marriage (2:22b & 24).
- The enemy of God and man is the ancient serpent, Satan. Jesus called him a liar and murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). He focuses on getting humans to question the truth of what God said (3:1). He lied to Eve and is culpable for their death because he tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. He is the antagonist in the biblical narrative.
- Sin (although not called sin until Gen 4:7) has consequences; the disobedience of Adam and Eve created the fallen world we live in today (3:16-19). Sin separates man from God’s presence (3:23-24). This was the Fall from innocence.
- Genesis 3:15 contains a promise of hope that the ancient Serpent will someday be defeated by One born of a woman. This promise is known as the proto-evangelium – the first Gospel.
- Physical and spiritual death is a consequence of sin and ordained by God (3:19).
- God clothing Adam and Eve with animal skins was intended to foreshadow the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, the eternal Son of God, to save humans and to clothe believers (Christians) in His righteousness (3:21, Isa 61:10).
