What Does Genesis 1:1 Have to Do with John 3:16?

In a word, everything. Soteriology is based on ontology. Salvation occurs in creation. Redemption takes place in reality. This should be self-evident but in our post-modern world more and more reality is being judged as simply social constructs or determined by the almighty self.

Let me explain. Ours is day when the very idea that absolute truth exists is judged outmoded, offensive, and hateful. This, of course, means that moral relativism dominates the thinking of many people. You can have your truth and I can have my truth and the two need not even approximate each other much less agree. What’s right for you may not be right for me. Ultimately each person (the self) is the determiner of is true and false, right and wrong, and good and bad.

It’s all relative, except, of course, the fact that it is all relative. That, my friend, is absolute. If you doubt me just try to live as if it is not and see how quickly you are charged with hate speech (or thoughts), bigotry, or violence. Such heresy must be canceled. The guardians of the left will not tolerate any questioning of their orthodoxy a person’s identity is precisely what [insert preferred pronoun] says it is. Biological sex has nothing to do with gender. Today when anxious friends ask brand new parents if their baby is a boy or girl, the only politically correct answer is, “We won’t know until they tell us.”

Ours is day when the very idea that absolute truth exists is judged outmoded, offensive, and hateful.

What is going on in the LGBTQIA+ revolution through which we are living is fundamentally a rejection of “Nature and Nature’s God.” This is the Apostle Paul’s point in Romans 1:26-27 where he describes the end result of those who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (25). “For this reason,” Paul writes, “God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (26-27, emphasis added).

Paul is talking about female (v. 26) and male (v. 27) homosexuality. Both are not “natural.” The word he uses is φυσικόςis (physikos)” everything which by its origin or by observation of its constitution seems to be a given. To call it ‘given’…is already to go beyond the sphere of naive description and implies a judgment on its actual constitution or true nature.”[1] In other words, male-male and female-female sexual relations are unnatural—against nature; against what is “a given.”

To put a fine but biblically and theologically fine point on it, such relations are a denial Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the creation account in chapters 1 and 2. It is a denial of creation and, therefore, of the Creator.

Here is where the connection to John 3:16 comes in. The God who “so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” is the same One who created the world in the beginning. To be reconciled to that God a person must lay down the arms of rebellion against him. That is, a person cannot continue worshiping the creation rather than the Creator and experience the saving grace of Jesus Christ, who is the Creator’s Son.

To make sure I am being clear—there is no such thing as a “gay Christian” or an “LGBTQIA+ Christian” or any other reality-denying-hyphenated Christian. You cannot deny the Creator and his creation and have his salvation at the same time. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus took place in the real world. He is a real Savior for real sinners. The salvation he gives is a real salvation. It is impossible, therefore, to experience this salvation while denying reality and the real God who both created it and accomplished salvation in it.

You cannot have the God of salvation while continuing in rebellion against the God of creation. He is the same God.

What this means is that Tim Keller’s would-be aphorism, though readily parroted by J.D. Greear and Ed Litton (and who knows how many after them) is as spiritually dangerous as it is disingenuous. Said Keller, “I know homosexuality doesn’t send you to hell because heterosexuality doesn’t send you to heaven.” While progressives and homosexuals readily applaud Keller’s cleverness, the Apostle Paul begs to differ. He wrote, “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:5–6). Homosexuals do are not excluded from the “sexually immoral.”

You cannot have the God of salvation while continuing in rebellion against the God of creation. He is the same God. You cannot have the real Jesus while you insist on living in unreality. An inevitable component of true repentance is the renouncing of every relation that is “contrary to nature.”

Soteriology is built on ontology. You cannot have the grace that saves while rebelling against the nature that is. We should never mislead anyone by suggesting they may savingly believe the gospel of Jesus Christ while living in the unreality of LGBTQIA+ identity or the contra-reality of homosexuality.

The good news is that those who are enslaved to such false ways of living are not beyond hope. The gospel really is the power of God to salvation for all who believe. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Corinthian church was a living testimony of this. In his list of the kinds of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God, Paul includes “the sexually immoral,” “adulterers,” and “men who practice homosexuality.” But then he reminds the church that “such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

By all means, let us proclaim the amazing grace that is announced in John 3:16. But let us never do so to the exclusion to the undeniable reality that is revealed in Genesis 1:1.

[1] Helmut Köster, “Φύσις, Φυσικός, Φυσικῶς,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 253.

When you look up at the starlit sky and ponder the vastness and beauty of the heavens above and the diversity and unity of the earth below, your thoughts are moved to the God who created such marvelous things. If the universe is so unfathomably expansive and so indescribably beautiful, what is the nature of the God who created it? What is God like, the one who exceeds the greatness and grandeur of the world we inhabit? When we begin to ask these questions, we quickly acknowledge that we are finite creatures contemplating the infinite God. Though we are finite creatures, the one true and infinite God has revealed himself to us in the world he has made and even more clearly in the word he has caused to be written. World and word together (natural and supernatural theology) teach the glory and majesty of our God.

Simplicity

God has revealed himself to his creatures as the God who is simple. At first glance, to say that God is simple sounds counterintuitive. The great and glorious God is simple? The Creator of the complexity of the cosmos is simple? Yes, because by the simplicity of God we mean that there is no composition in God. God is not made up of parts, or any form of composition whatsoever. God’s simplicity is fundamental to a true understanding of him.

We gather divine simplicity from Scripture, in three principal places. The first is God’s self-revelation of his most sacred name, “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14). God reveals his name as the one who is. He is his own existence. God is being itself subsisting. The one who is, who is his own being, indeed who is pure being itself subsisting, cannot possibly be a composite being. Therefore, we say he is simple. God is pure simple being itself.

World and word together teach the glory and majesty of our God.

The second is Jesus’ statement that “God is spirit” (John 4:24). Angels are spirits, but they are created spirits. They are composed of the possibility to be, and God making them to be. God is spirit, but not like the angels. He is not a being that has been brought into being. God is pure simple being itself.

The third is Paul’s doxology, “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36). For all things to be from, through, and to God, there can be nothing before God. But all things composed have a composer. All things with parts have been put together. If all things are from, through, and to God, he must be pure simple being itself, without any composition or cause preceding his being. God cannot be reduced to more fundamental parts. Because his is not composed, he cannot be decomposed. God is pure simple being itself.

If one were to respond that God’s being is “necessarily composite,” or that God is “necessary complexity,” but without a composer, not only is this a self-contradicting proposal when investigated, but also it would follow that there may be necessarily composite beings other than the one we know as God. Divine simplicity protects the uniqueness and singularity of God because he, and he alone, is pure being itself. The one who is, pure and simple being, gives existence to all things. From the infinite fullness of his perfect simple being, God has given them that most fundamental of compositions, to be brought from possibility of being into actual being and made “according to their kind.”

Analogy

God’s simplicity reminds us, once more, of the vast and inviolable distinction between the Creator and his creatures. We must confess that our words and thoughts of God fall short of reaching the height or finding the depth of his majesty.

Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? (Job 11:7)

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it (Psalm 139:6).

How can we speak of such a sublime God? As we form our understanding and speech of God from both the world and the word, we must do so in a way that keeps the infinity of God and the finitude of creatures in place. We must think and speak of God in a way that is fitting with his infinite being as God, and to think and speak of creatures in a way that is fitting with their finite being as creatures. When we do this, we are using analogy or analogical speech. In this context, to use analogy, or analogical speech, is to attribute something to God according to his being, and the same thing to man (if at all fitting) according to his being.

So, for example, to speak analogically is to say, “God is good,” and, “John is good,” but to understand that because of divine simplicity God is the goodness by which he is good, whereas John is good only insofar as he reflects God’s goodness. The difference between goodness in God and John is not merely one of quantity (more or less), but of being itself. God’s goodness is his own simple being—essential, infinite, eternal, immutable, and perfect. John’s goodness is a quality, something extrinsic to himself in which he participates proportional to his being, capable of increase or decrease. To speak of goodness according to God’s being, and according to man’s being is to use analogy.

We must think and speak of God in a way that is fitting with his infinite being as God, and to think and speak of creatures in a way that is fitting with their finite being as creatures.

To give another example, consider the difference between fire, and being fired up, or between heat and being heated up. It is of the nature of fire to be hot. Other things can receive heat from fire, but when the source of heat is removed, they lose that heat. When I eat lunch, I sit under a pergola with a metal roof. The roof heats with the midday sun, creaking as its temperature rises, but when a cloud covers the sun the roof immediately begins to creak oppositely as it cools down. It is not of the nature of metal roofs to be hot, so it heats and cools insofar as it participates in the heat of the sun. We attribute heat to fire, or to the sun, in a way that fits the nature of the thing, and so also with metal roofs, or anything that is heated or fired. For one, it is the nature of the thing to be hot. For another, it only participates in heat, or becomes hot, as it is exposed to that which is heat.

This example may be illustrative, but it falls short because the sun, so scientists say, will eventually burn out, and fires can be extinguished. The sun can increase or decrease in a number of ways, as can fire, but God is all that he is infinitely, eternally, perfectly, and immutably, like a celestial flame that is an infinite fuel unto itself. Despite the shortcomings of the example, it illustrates the point that in all our thoughts of God, we must think analogically, that is, according to the being of the thing of which we are speaking. Though we speak of God in the language of men, we must do so in a way that acknowledges and preserves his being as God.

This applies to how we read the Bible. God condescends to speak to us in human language in the written word, and we must recognize this to be an accommodation to our capacities as creatures. We must read the Bible in a way that keeps God’s infinite being in mind. So, for example, the idea of “regret” or “repentance” is inconsistent with the perfection and immutability of God, and yet the Bible attributes these to God in various places. At the same time, the Bible denies that God regrets or repents.

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind (Numbers 23:19).

The Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret (1 Samuel 15:29).

What is the solution to these apparently opposite statements? It is analogy, which God himself teaches us when his word says, “God is not man.” This means that repentance must be attributed to God in some way that is fitting with his being as God. This we can do, by recognizing that the God who decreed all things immutably, whatsoever comes to pass, decreed to make Saul king, to permit his demise, and to remove and replace him with David. All of this was decreed by the unchanging eternal God, without remorse, regret, or a change of mind. However, from the human perspective it appears as a complete reversal of plan and action, which is precisely what repentance is.

Repentance is borrowed from human speech to communicate the providential reversal of events within God’s unfolding plan, and therefore when we attribute it to God we must remember that God is not a man. If we forget this, we will bring God down to the level of the human language he has used to communicate with us. The point to be grasped is that the world and word teach us of the greatness of God, and we must think and speak of him analogically, that is, in a way that is fitting with his being.

The One Who Is, the great I AM,

Exceeds the meager mind of man.

As creatures, all we say or know

Of God above comes from below,

Because the things that he has made

With his own likeness are inlaid.

Behind our thoughts, Beyond our reach,

God, in kindness, speaks our speech.

But he remains transcendent still.

He always has, and always will.

More than a decade ago I stood in a square in old Boston listening to a very passionate guide talk about July 18, 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was read from the balcony of the Old State House there for the first time. One of my historical heroes, First Lady to be Abigail Adams, stood in the crowd that had gathered to hear the declaration read that day. She, an intelligent and thoughtful patriot, understood as much or more than anyone else in the square the significance of the moment.
As I listened to our guide and felt the momentary shadow of the importance of that moment years ago I briefly wondered what it would be like to experience such a day myself. To feel the weight of joy at the hand of God acting through the work of men for the good of a nation and to know the sober reality of the task now ahead. I did not really think I would see such a day in my lifetime.
But then yesterday, June 24, 2022, arrived and I sat awash with emotions at the news of the Supreme Court’s overthrow of Roe v Wade, declaring that the wicked decision which granted national legality to the murder of unborn children nearly 50 years ago was, in fact, not Constitutional after all.
The joy is weighty, overwhelming, deep. It erupted yesterday in happy tears in the middle of shopping and singing psalms at the top of my lungs while running errands. It exploded in thrown together plans for ice cream sundae celebrations with friends last night and the kind of bellylaughing that overflows from an abundance of joy. It was a good day. A feast day. A day that I will happily still be talking about when my hair is grey and my hearing is going. June 24 is a day that deserves the celebration and remembrance of generations to come.
This is a time for praise and thanksgiving to God who has used the work of men to bring about good for a nation who does not deserve His favor and grace. He has given us mercy once again and acted to stay the hand of those who wickedly participated in legalized murder, often gleefully. Mere hours after the decision abortion mills in Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Wisconsin had halted their activities and closed their doors. There are children who were scheduled for death yesterday who are still alive today. Praise the Lord! Praise, oh servants of the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord!
This is a time for praise and thanksgiving to God who has used the work of men to bring about good for a nation who does not deserve His favor and grace.
It is also a time for solemnity. For repentance for the national sin of abortion that has been allowed to stain our land for so long. For mourning over the 60+ million lives that have been snuffed out in the womb, little image bearers whose slaughter should take our breath away and drive us to our knees. For recognition that the work of complete abolition is ongoing and that the struggle will be fierce and, likely, bloody before it is done. But this is a good work, a work that honors God, and a work from which His children must not flinch. Our God is a God of life and calls us to courage in the face of all adversity. The words of Proverbs are instructive to us as we look to the days ahead.
“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?” (Proverbs 24:10-12)
And it is a good time to remember that we are not the first to have stood in the weight of joy and solemnity, in the day of great matters and in the face of hardships in the struggle to come. John Adams wrote to Abigail on July 3rd, after the Continental Congress had finalized the draft of the Declaration, with this same mix of joy and resolve that all who love the cause of life should feel today.
“I am apt to believe that it [the date of the adoption of the Declaration] will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
Our God is a God of life and calls us to courage in the face of all adversity.
“You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”
May God give us this same spirit of rejoicing as we celebrate the overthrow of Roe now and in coming generations, and equal courage and conviction to give our toil, blood, and treasure in a cause that is more than worth all the means, the rescue of those being taken away to death and the full abolition of abortion in every State in this Nation of ours.

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