A Radical View of Creation, Pt. 1

(I first want to say that these kinds of ideas - as with many things that I have posted here - do not necessarily represent my solid and final conviction concerning these matters. These are simply ideas that I'm still mulling though, while searching Scripture for evidences. Feel free to disagree... and please comment if you disagree! I'm young, and the last one who would presume that I have found anything even resembling the only right answers!)


Yesterday, I discussed the idea that the institution of marriage was established by God for the purpose of glorifying Himself on this earth. I want to continue this train of thought now, and discuss a similar view of the role of the entirety of Creation itself.

In his book "The Pleasures of God", John Piper explains that God had no need to create this earth or any of its inhabitants, including mankind. There was nothing missing in God's "life" that caused Him to long for something else. It's not as if God was pining away for friends, and decided to make some playmates to hang out with Him. This same point has also been stressed by C.S. Lewis: "God, who needs nothing, loves in to existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them."

I might disagree with Lewis a slight bit here, however, or at least see a need to qualify his statement. What I read in his words is that God's ultimate purpose in the act of Creation was to give us something. If this were the case, then it would mean that the focus of the totality of Creation - from the beginning of time to the end of this world as we know it - is us. I don't think this is true. I believe the foundational center of all of Creation is God's own glory manifested in the person of Jesus Christ.

Why do I think this? Let's look at the first chapter of the gospel of John, verses 1-4:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Firstly, it is through Jesus that "all things were made", and "without Him nothing was made that was made." Jesus was central in the action of the creation of the worlds and all creatures. Matthew Henry comments on a valuable realization to be had in this truth: "This proves the excellency of the Christian religion, that the author and founder of it is the same that was the author and founder of the world." Jesus is not only the Redeemer of the souls of those whom He justifies, but also - being with God, in God, and divinely God Himself - the creator of all mankind. Our existence was created, and will be perfected, in Christ.

Secondly, Jesus was not only the giver of our life, but He is also the sustainer of it. Our life force - including all things which make Man uniquely Man, "the light of men" which allows us to bear the image of the Creator - finds its source in Christ Himself.

And Jesus, who is, with God the Father, the source of our life as well as the sustainer of our life, this same Jesus was also the perfectly righteous spotless Lamb on whom was poured all of the wrath of God for our sins. So how can it be that creatures who have been created, sustained, and redeemed by the very God whom they have sinned against be the focal point of, and reason for, their own creation?

(This post is getting long, and I'm getting tired, but I have more I want to say, so I'll finish later. Feel free to dialogue on this!)