Creation and New Creation

The story told by the Bible begins and ends with “creation.” From its opening words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1), to its final depiction of the world transformed into “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1), Scripture presents the story of the world as God’s creation project. The theme of creation and new creation is not best viewed as a topic of study in the Bible but the story in which we are living under God’s gracious provision and promise. Creation is not merely the playing field on which the game of life and the work of redemption are played and then left and discarded. In sharp contrast, creation itself is the domain of God’s glorious redemption, and the new creation is the end result of God’s gracious and redemptive gifts. Creation, therefore, is a central part of the Bible’s message of “good news.” The story Scripture records not only begins at creation but is longing for and moving toward the new creation. Just as Jesus is “the beginning and the end” (Rev 22:13), so also his ministry accomplishes the purposes of God from the beginning of creation to the goal of the new creation. 

Sadly, most Christians truncate the topic of creation to the first few days of the history of the world. They hear the word “creation” and think “origins.” But the Bible presents the world and its entire history as God’s creation project in which God forms, facilitates, and fulfills his purposes for the world and the people he created. For this reason, Scripture defines the theme of creation as not only the beginning of all things but also the end of all things, that is, the goal of all things. The theme of creation in the Bible is the beautiful marriage between protology (the study of “first things”) and eschatology (the study of “last things”), giving Christians the lenses to see their purpose, provision, and place in the world. 

Because of scientific debates over theories of evolution, most Christians have used Gen 1-2 to address the “how” question (i.e., origins), which focuses almost exclusively on the manner in which God created the world rather than the meaning or significance of creation. It is more accurate to say that Gen 1-2 seeks to answer not one but four questions: not merely the “how” question but also the “who,” the “what,” and the “why” questions. Science asks the physical questions (cause and effect), which are good and true, but the church addresses the metaphysical questions (nature and purpose). In trying to explain or defend Scripture against various answers or approaches to the “how” question in the modern era, the church lost track of its ministerial responsibility to explain and address the other three questions that have to do with personhood (“who”), plan (“what”), and purpose (“why”). The formal introduction to the biblical story in Gen 1-2 is not merely answering a scientific question (“how”) but a very pastoral and practical set of questions: Who is God? Who are his image-bearers? What is God intending to do in and with his creation? And why did God make the world? While there is some biblical wiggle room for Christians to disagree about “how” God created the world, we must not misunderstand “who” God is and “who” humanity was designed to be, or “what” God intends to do in the world, or “why” God made the world and the way that explains the life and purpose of every Christian. 

Unlike the “how” question,” which too easily remains “in the beginning,” questions regarding the “who,” the “what,” and the “why” are only introduced in Gen 1-2, for they require the whole biblical story to explain the nature and purpose of God’s creation project. This is why the biblical topic of creation must not be confined to origins, for it must also include the Bible’s communication of the Creator’s intentions for his creation and his creatures, especially humanity, as well as the intended goal of all creation. That is, just as the Creator (Jn 1:3) is “the Beginning and the End” (Rev 22:13), so also is the biblical story about creation and new creation. The theme of creation and new creation can be summarized in three points using the scheme of creation-redemption-new creation which captures the full movement of the biblical story. 

Creation

God’s creation project reveals the purposes for the world. From the beginning of Scripture creation is presented as God’s project, a good work that is aimed at a glorious purpose that God will accomplish. Said another way, creation is not only something God did but also something God is doing. The whole world is made for and aimed at the “new creation,” the finalized state of all things. All of this is revealed in the beginning of the biblical story which explains that God designed creation with a directed intentionality that involves two ultimate and beautiful goals. First, creation is created to be the cosmic temple of God. Genesis 1-2 reveals what the rest of the Bible confirms that God created Eden, and therefore the world, to be his sanctuary (Ezek 28:18; Ps 78:69; Is 66:1), the dwelling place of God. Proof of this is how Israel’s tabernacle/temple uses the creation account as its blueprint (Ex 25-27), and how the coming of Jesus is the inauguration of God “dwelling/tabernacling” (Jn 1:3) in the world he created. If Genesis announces creation’s temple design, Revelation declares its fulfillment in the new creation: “Look, God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them” (Rev 21:3). Second, humanity is to be the prophets, priests, and kings of creation. Like the physical form of creation, God formed his creatures – humanity – to have a specific relation with and role for God. God created every person, male and female, to be his image bearers who represent their Creator and Lord in his creation. This representation means that humanity is ordained by God with prophetic, priestly, and kingly natures and duties. God made Adam and his descendants to manifest his own royal and ministerial nature and to establish his will and exalt his worth in all creation. And as the biblical story will reveal, the ultimate and perfect representation will finally be accomplished through the person and work of the second Adam, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:12-14; Col 1:15-20). The world was created to be a place where God’s people dwell with him in Christ to share for eternity in the fullness of God’s goodness and glory.

Redemption

God’s creation project facilitates God’s provisions for the world. The world God intended was thwarted by humanity’s failure to properly execute their prophetic, priestly, and kingly natures and duties. The church has rightly defined humanity’s failure as “the Fall,” the formal rejection and incompletion of God’s purposes for the world. The Fall reveals the conflict of the biblical storyline, but it also has the tendency in the minds of Christians to truncate the biblical story to fall and redemption, eclipsing creation and new creation as mere background to the real action. Rather, in the biblical story the failure of humanity is subsumed within God’s creation project, where the sin of humanity projects God’s perfect intentions “through [Christ] to reconcile to himself all things … by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Col 1:20). As the story of Joseph instructs the Christian, what humanity planned for evil, “God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done” (Gen 50:20). From the beginning God had intended to create a purpose-filled and eventually perfected world through Christ, for “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). Because he is the Redeemer, then, Jesus Christ is both the Creator (Jn 1:3) and the Re-Creator, for Christ is and has always been “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev 22:13). 

The redemptive aspect of God’s creation project helps make sense of the nature and purpose of God’s creatures, especially the people of God. God created humanity to be his prophets, priests, and kings, his image-bearers who represent him and promote his purposes in his creation (Gen 1:26-31). Humanity’s failure to do what God had asked them to do was stark and definitive. But God’s gracious provision assumed as much, knowing full well that it would be the second Adam, not the first Adam, who would be God’s proper and complete image-bearer (Col 1:15). The rest of God’s creation project would involve the transformation of humanity, beginning with Israel and expanding to the church – all of God’s creatures, into the image of Christ. The Old and New Testaments tell this story in a progressive and therefore pastoral way. What Israel failed to do in the Old Covenant was God’s way of pastoring the world to see its need for Christ, the redemptive provision of God. When Christ arrived and established through his person and work the New Covenant, now all creatures by their union with him could become the image-bearers God intended from the beginning. The people of God, the church, are now able and commanded to live in the world according to the “who,” the “what,” and the “why” first announced in Gen 1-2. In alignment with God’s creation project, the church now has a priestly, prophetic, and kingly role in the world, befitting God’s original design for creation. This is done not in spite of Christ but “in him,” as images of the image-bearer of God. The universal church is collectively therefore “God’s temple” in and through which God dwells and ministers by his Spirit (1 Cor 3:16). The church is the true Adamic humanity who in Christ and by the Spirit live, work, and minister according to the original design of God’s creation project.

New Creation

God’s creation project culminates in the perfection of the world. The creation of the world always had as its goal the new creation, the culmination of God’s purposes and provisions. God’s creation project ends when the perfect capacity of creation reaches complete perfection – when God declares over our world what he did at our redemption: “It is finished” (John 19:30). What God promised in Genesis he declares fulfilled in Revelation when the garden of Eden is cultivated into a garden-city in the shape of a temple. In the new creation, what had been the sacred and exclusionary place of the presence of God in the holy temple in Jerusalem has now expanded to fill the whole world. The entire world will have full access to God and will be fully accessed by God. And in the new creation, the “good news” of the gospel will be fully realized and the eschatological sabbath will have dawned and been established by God himself. For on that day what had only been seen through visions will be seen with resurrected eyes: all of God’s creation dwelling in the fullness of his glory and singing to Jesus Christ, their Creator, Redeemer, and King, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is fill of his glory” (Is 6:3).  

The biblical theme of creation and new creation, or what we have referred to as God’s creation project, gives pointed insights into the nature and purposes of God’s creation and his creatures. Several applications are pastorally useful for the Christian life and its practices. First, Christianity is, stated simply, an invitation to be fully human. To be “in Christ” is to become the image-bearing version of humanity God announced in Gen 1-2. Christianity explains and guides a person into the true meaning of what it means to be human and to live according to God’s purposeful design. Second, the Christian life is not merely a spiritual life but also and equally a physical life – a life lived in creation and in relation to the Creator. The gnostic tendencies (i.e., the separation of the soul from the body) or otherworldly escapism of many Christians today misunderstands the truth that God is equally Savior and Creator, but also that as Creator the world was made “very good” (Gen 1:31) and is the intended dwelling place of God. Finally, Christians must work hard to see themselves and their world through the biblical lens of God’s creation project, aligning themselves to the intentions of the Creator and properly participating in his ministry in creation. Such biblical thinking will foster in disciples of Jesus several postures that reflect the inaugurated new creation: a unified view of the body and the soul, an appreciation of both God’s special grace (as Savior) and God’s common grace (as Creator), an appreciation and anticipation of the goodness of the physical, created world (the earth), and a desire to cultivate creation (i.e., culture-making) that aligns itself to God’s creation project and its pursuit of human flourishing.