Attributes of God Revealed in the Creation Account in Genesis
What characteristics do you see in God as the creation account unfolds?
Attributes of God revealed in the Creation Account in Genesis
God pre-exists all material things: “In the beginning, God created…”
The universe did not exist; it had a beginning. “The heaven” refers to sky, outer space and beyond. “The earth” refers to the world.
The universe consists of all time, space, matter, and natural energy. All of these elements had a beginning; they did not and are unable to, exist eternally. They necessarily “came into being” at some point in past history.
God is necessarily personal. God necessarily thinks, feels, desires, knows, has abilities, values, plans, purposes, foresight, understanding, etc.
God is necessarily external to (outside of) the universe.
Therefore, God does not require “space”, “time”, matter, or natural energy in order to exist or function.
God is powerful: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”
Because God created all elements of material reality, including establishment of all natural laws and processes, God is separate from the reality itself and independent of natural laws and processes. God neither occupied these places nor has any need for them. God is unbound by natural laws and processes; They can choose to operate within those boundaries or without them.
God spoke, and what God spoke “came to be”. Therefore, God has only to will something and it shall be.
If when God speaks, all reality must conform, God is by definition “all powerful”.
As the sole Creator, God knows all that can be known concerning the universe. What is undiscoverable to the human mind, was created by the God Which spoke it into existence. No mysteries exist to God.
Having established the principles and powers of the universe, they are subject to God, and not the other way around. God can restrain, limit, or suspend the action of any such principle or power at God’s will.
When God does restrain, limit, or suspend the natural processes of the material world, this is called a “miracle”.
As sole Creator, God is above all of creation. God is by definition, sovereign. God has both right (authority + jurisdiction) and power over all that God has made.
As Creator, God knows what is best for all of creation.
God created angels (Gen 2:1), animals, and human beings.
Only human beings were created “in the image of God.” (1:26-27) Since God has no flesh, that image was not physical.
God created beauty (2:9) and benefit throughout the creation.
God created provision for all creatures, without need for any creature to do harm to or impinge upon the needs of any other creature. (1:29-30)
God provided for the human beings to live forever. (2:9; 3:22)
God ensured that the human male understood his responsibility before the Lord to not partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (see notes below) God clearly told Adam the consequence of taking from that tree. (“In the day that you shall eat of it, dying you shall die.”) God did not leave the human male without understanding of the risk, or warning against the action that would bring disaster to him.
God created all things “good” and “very good”. At the end of God’s creative sequence, no wicked or harmful reality existed within that creation.
As bearing the image of the triune God, humans possessed what they required to understand and choose to do what was right.
God maintained close relations with the created image-bearers. They were not alone in the newly-created world.
As having been created by God, and having direct communication with God, the humans had the sole Resource required to protect them from the single source of harm in their environment.
Adam’s world was exclusively “good” and “very good”. Until Adam chose to disobey God, Adam had knowledge exclusively of good.
God did not leave His image-bearer without the knowledge of the great risk inherent in taking hold of “the knowledge of evil.”
God executed the exact judgement upon Adam that God had warned Adam would occur if Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. God had spoken the warning, and God executed as He had spoken, showing that what God said is what God does. He is both truthful and consistent.
God demonstrated also that God tolerates no evil. Evil corrupts the creation. God’s intention for creation is to exist eternally in perfect wholeness and goodness. Any evil within it is a violation of God’s holiness – meaning separation from all that is “other than” God and godliness. In God’s realm, only that which is right is permitted. The introduction of anything other than what is right, brings decay of the health of the whole, which is intolerable to a God Which is entirely separate from all that is other than right.
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