“In the beginning God created.” No argument is entered into to prove the existence of God. Instead, His existence is affirmed as a fact to be believed.
And yet, sufficient is expressed in this one brief sentence to expose every fallacy which man has invented concerning the Deity. This opening sentence of the Bible repudiates atheism, for it postulates the existence of God. It refutes materialism, for it distinguishes between God and His material creation. It abolishes pantheism, for it predicates that which necessitates a personal God.
“In the beginning God created,” tells us that He was Himself before the beginning, and hence, Eternal. “In the beginning God created”—and that informs us He is a personal being, for an abstraction, an impersonal “first cause,” could not create.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”—and that argues He is infinite and omnipotent, for no finite being possesses the power to “create,” and none but an Omnipotent Being could create “the heaven and the earth.”
“In the beginning God.” This is the foundation truth of all real theology. God is the great Originator and Initiator. It is the ignoring of this, which is the basic error in all human schemes.
False systems of theology and philosophy begin with man, and seek to work up to God. But this is a turning of things upside down. We must, in all our thinking, begin with God, and work down to man.
Again, this is true of the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures. The Bible is couched in human language, it is addressed to human ears, it was written by human hands, but “in the beginning God,” and “holy men of God spake, moved by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21)
This is also true of salvation. In Eden, Adam sinned, and brought in death; but his Maker was not taken by surprise. In the beginning God had provided for just such an emergency, for the Lamb was “foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20).
This is also true of the new creation. In the beginning, God chose us (the body of believers) in Christ (Ephesians 1:4), and now, “we love Him, because He first loved us.”