Articles
Jesus in Genesis
Reading: Genesis 1
This year, our bulletin articles will guide us through a year-long study to answer one question: “Where is Jesus in the book of Genesis?” As we go chapter by chapter each week, we want to meditate on how Jesus Christ was involved and active even at the start of all things. We will learn to see how this book of beginnings points us over and over again to the gospel plan realized in the Son of God.
The opening chapter of all Scripture gets straight to the point: the beginning of all things came about by the word and working of God. This isn’t a debate, just a statement of fact: in six days, the Creator designed the entire material universe we know and live in. From light, to time, from cosmic masses, to intricate cells, all through the diversity of our planet’s life that reached its zenith in humanity—God brought all this into existence. He calls each new development “good,” and at the end of the sixth day He pronounced it all “very good” (v. 31).
Though the Son isn’t mentioned outright in this text, later Scriptures reveal His involvement in creation. Colossians 1:15-17 tells us that “all things were created through him and for him,” and “in him all things hold together.” John begins his gospel with the same three words of Genesis to impress upon us Jesus’s divinity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” When we see that God spoke all things into existence, we cannot miss the role Jesus as the Word played in our creation. And because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), He also re-creates us into the image of God we were made for.
