Summary article: Genesis One – Summary
In the beginning
The beginning of both the (Greek) old testament, and the prologue to John’s gospel. Not just a way of affirming the divinity of the Son of God, John is saying that with the coming of Christ we have another Genesis 1 moment. God is doing the new thing he had promised, he begins the fulfillment of that which Isaiah promised us:
For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.1
And just like the old creation we have an “in the beginning”, and we have God taking up his dwelling in his temple:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us2
The parallels go further, Christ is the new Adam, not just in Paul but also in John, where Mary mistaking Jesus for the gardener (which as N.T. Wright likes to say, is the right mistake to make):
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him…3
From an apologetics standpoint it is remarkable how well early Christianity understood how what they had just experienced fulfilled the promises of the old testament, certainly with greater clarity than later Christian theologians and their future rabbinic counterparts did. From the perspective of a pious Christian life (which is more important, I hope you’ll agree), however, it is essential. It shows the current world not as an “evil place from which we need to save souls”, but the good creation of God that he has begun to remake in and through his Spirit-filled Christians. People are the mission field, but so is the world. Paul says “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.”4 And of course there is a future-expectation of all of this, but Paul is equally clear that this new creation has already begun in the Christian:
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation
We are the new creation, where God dwells, and it is our job to spread it. Awaiting the day when God will make the whole world his new creation.5
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
