I’ve often wondered what God was thinking when He created the Universe. Was He bored with things and decided to occupy His time in a better way? Was He like an artist and just started painting on His canvas? Maybe whatever came into His mind He would start creating as one thing led to another. Was He getting lonely and as He began creating, He decided to create something in His image to maybe be friends with? In Genesis 1:27 we hear, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” In Paul’s letter to the Colossians 1:16 we hear, “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.”
The way God went about doing His Creating becomes more interesting as we observe how He provided for us and how He configured us humans, His children. We may have been created in God’s Image, but we certainly aren’t just like God. He wasn’t looking to create partners that were equal to Him. Why would He make us to be Gods and flood creation with many Gods? In Deuteronomy 4:35 we hear, “You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other.”
In God’s Revelation to John 4:11 we hear the 24 Elders as they fall down from their thrones in praise in saying, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” To put it in the worldly vernacular, “God is a one man show.”
Even though God is fully in charge, He wants to be friends with us and use us to carry out His Will in this world. Yes, we are “Christian Soldiers” and if we understand God’s Word through our Lord Jesus Christ we have that connection as Christians back to God from the very beginning. Jesus the Christ was and is the Word of God.
As we hear in John 1:1-5, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
As Jesus, who is the Word of God tells us in John 15:14-15, “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
In Psalm 8:4-9 we hear, “what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Maybe it will help us understand why God created us if we think about why we humans have children. Do we want someone to take care of us when we get old? Is it just to carry on the family name? Is it because we love babies? Is it human nature? Does something tell us we’re supposed to? Does it give the joy of existence to another? Is it to give us grandchildren? Is it to cement our love for our mate? How do we compare with God? He gave us our reasons to procreate according to His Will in making us His people.
Robert Halsey Pine was born at Newark, Ohio in 1943. He is a graduate of Northeastern University and completed the program of Theological Education by Extention: Education for Ministry, School of Theology, the University of the South.