The first thing we need to know about everything is “God.”
Read Genesis 1:1
The first book of the Bible tells us with its first words that “In the beginning, God created.” This introduces us to two important truths about God. First, the God who was there at the beginning is eternal. God predates the creation of both space and time.
When we say that God is eternal, we are not simply saying that he is everlasting, that his life is stretched out over infinite number of years. His eternal nature means that he transcends time, that he knows everything at once, that he is maximally alive.
John 1:1 takes us to Jesus as “The Word” who was also there at the beginning. This means that he too is eternal, so that “The Word was with God and the Word was God.”
Secondly, God is the creator. The reference to “heaven and earth” speaks of the totality of creation, planets and space. Early Christian commentators also emphasised that this includes the creation of the spiritual real. Angels too are created.
Back in John 1:3 we are told about Christ.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
The distinction between created and uncreated/creator is binary. There’s no intermediate state between them. This is another pointer to Christ’s deity. If you were to draw a line down a page and list all the created things, it would include you and me, stars and planets, the oceans, angels and archangels. On the other side of the page, you would list the uncreated things, the creator and there would be one entry “God.” If Jesus is on that side of the page then he is God.
This also means that the demons and even Satan belong on the “created” side of the page. They may be powerful and scary but their power is limited, they are finite, they are not real rivals for God. We do not need to fear them.
Knowing that we have an eternal creator God is the cause of great trust and hope for us. We know that God is sovereign, we also know that he is good. This means that if he is eternal, then not only is he without beginning but he is also without end. This applies to all of his attributes, God is eternally just, gracious, kind, holy. God is eternally love.
We can live in his creation with confidence because it is designed, ordered, purposeful. We can enjoy this world, we can enjoy God in this world.
Faithroots 