1 Past work, creation: “By him, were all things created” (Col. 1:16).
2 Present work, conservation: “By him, all things consist” (Col. 1:17).
3 Future work, consummation: “By him to reconcile all things” (Col. 1:20).
The great scope of this threefold work is “all things in heaven and in earth.” Jesus Christ was Creator before He became the sustainer (or Savior) and reconciler, and the awful price of reconciliation, “the blood of his cross,” is the measure of mankind’s terrible offense against our Creator. That offense, furthermore, consists essentially of rejecting His Word, and thereby denying that He is really the Creator. One truly “preaches Christ” only when he first of all presents Him as the Almighty Creator, from whom man was alienated when he rebelled and repudiated God’s veracity in His Word. Only when this is first understood is it really meaningful to speak of God’s forgiving grace and saving love, His incarnation and redemptive sacrifice as Son of Man.
3. Foundation of Faith
The great message of Christianity is that “the just shall live by faith” (Heb. 10:38), speaking of “them that believe to the saving of the soul” (Heb. 10:39). But exactly what is this living faith — this saving faith? Faith in the abstract is only naive sentimentality; it must be faith in something and/or someone to have any substance.
The faith of which the apostle speaks, of course, is outlined in the verses immediately following, the great “faith chapter,” Hebrews 11. It is the faith of Abel, offering an acceptable sacrifice; it is Enoch’s faith, pleasing God in obedient witness; it is Noah’s faith, believing and acting on God’s Word; and Abraham’s faith, stepping out trustingly on God’s promises.
But, first of all, it is the foundational faith of Hebrews 11:3, the faith by which “we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” This affirmation clearly tells us that any meaningful faith for salvation and the Christian life must be founded, first of all, on faith in God’s special creation of all things, not out of already existing materials, but out of nothing, and solely by His omnipotent Word!
4. Foundation of the Gospel
Many Christians who either ignore or compromise the biblical doctrine of creation have urged creationists just to “preach the gospel — not creation!” But this is impossible, because the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is squarely founded on creation. The wonderful threefold work of Christ (creation, conservation, consummation) as outlined in Colossians 1:16–20, is identified as “the gospel” in Colossians 1:23. The very last reference to the gospel in the Bible (Rev. 14:6–7) calls it the everlasting gospel (therefore, it could never have been any different), and its message is to “worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”
While it is surely true that the central focus of the gospel is on the substitutionary atonement and victorious bodily resurrection of Christ (1 Cor. 15:1–4), it also includes His coming kingdom (Matt. 4:23) and His great creation. Any other gospel is “another gospel” (Gal. 1:6), and is not the true gospel. Without the creation, a supposed gospel would have no foundation; without the promised consummation, it could offer no hope; without the Cross and empty tomb, it has no saving power. But when we preach the true gospel, with the complete person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as they really are, we build on a “sure foundation,” we can promise a “blessed hope,” and we have available “all power in heaven and earth” through Christ who, in all His fullness, is “with us, even to the end of the world” (Matt. 28:18, 20).
5. Foundation of True Evangelism and Missions
If creation is the foundation of Christology, saving faith, and the saving gospel of Christ, as we have just seen, then it must also be the foundational basis of leading people to Christ as Savior. This is further proved by the fact that the one book of the Bible with a specifically evangelistic purpose begins with the doctrine of creation. The apostle John said that what he had written was to help men to believe on Christ as the Son of God and, thereby, to receive eternal life (see John 20:31). Significantly, then, he began this writing with “In the beginning was the Word. . . . All things were made by him” (John 1:1–3).
Later, after the death and resurrection of Christ, as the apostles scattered everywhere to preach the gospel, they would likewise begin with creation whenever their hearers neither knew nor believed the Scriptures (Acts 14:11–18; 17:22–31). When they preached to those who already believed the Old Testament Scriptures and the Genesis account of creation, they proceeded to preach Christ and His resurrection (e.g., Acts 17:1–3).
Even Christ himself, in His first teaching ministry after His death and resurrection, began with Genesis. “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).
If we would follow the example of Christ and His apostles, we also should begin with Genesis and creation if we would firmly ground our potential converts in the truths of the gospel and lead them to a genuine, stable, understanding faith in Christ. This is especially true if they have been raised in a pagan culture or in an educational system structured around evolutionism.
6. Foundation of Home and Family
The most important human institution is that of permanent, monogamous marriage. This was established by God when He created the first man and woman on the sixth day of creation week (Gen. 1:26–28; 2:18–25; also Matt. 19:3–6). The family, especially the father, is then responsible for the teaching and training of the children (Gen. 18:19; Eph. 6:4).
7. Foundation of Salvation
The very reason we need a Savior is that we have rebelled against our Creator, both as individuals and as a whole. Because of His holiness, God must judge and condemn all sin, so none who are in a state of sinful rebellion can possibly have the very fellowship with their Creator for which He had made them. At the same time, since God is both omnipotent and omniscient, He will not fail in His purpose in creation. Consequently, the Creator himself must pay His own righteous penalty for the redemption of sinners and for the sin of the world. Neither angels nor men can accomplish our salvation. Only God the Creator can be our judge, and only He can become, as the God-man and Messiah, “the only wise God our Saviour” (Jude 25).
The Dominion Mandate
When God created man, He placed him in dominion over His entire physical and biological creation, as His steward, not to exploit and misuse, but to develop it for the good of all and the glory of God. He was given “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. . . . Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1:26–28).
This “dominion mandate,” as it has been called, is still in effect, authorizing every honorable human occupation as necessary to understand and administer God’s great and complex creation. Thus, every person has the high privilege of being a “minister” of the Creator in his or her particular sphere of service.
1. Science and Technology
In order to “subdue” the earth, men must first understand its systems and processes. This implies scientific research. After understanding, comes application or development (engineering, agriculture, medicine, etc.).
Evolutionary assumptions abound in the writings of modern scientists. Leading biologist Stanley D. Beck says, for example:
No central scientific concept is more firmly established in our thinking, our methods, and our interpretations, than that of evolution.1
But it was not always thus. Beck himself, after defining and discussing the basic premises of science (that is, the existence of a real world, the capability of the human mind to understand that