Now that we've seen Genesis 1-1 in terms of the who of creation, the what, the why, the how, what I want to do now is move to Roman numeral 2 and look at creation as a Trinitarian act. Because too often people associate creation with just God the Father. Right? And we attribute, is the expression, we attribute creation to God the Father, and we attribute redemption to God the Son, and we attribute sanctification to God the Holy Spirit.
And there's some truth to that, I mean, the catechism is kind of organized in that way. But in reality, the Trinity is unified in the Godhead. There's one God in three persons. The only thing that distinguishes the person of the Trinity are the relations.
So God the Father is not God the Son nor God the Spirit. And so on and so forth. So everything else they have in perfect unity. And so only the relation separates them.
So while we attribute creation to God the Father, in actual fact, creation is an act of all three persons of the Trinity. Okay? And so Genesis, the opening verses of Genesis, we can see the hints and the vestiges, and the presence of all three persons of the Trinity implicitly. And it's not going to be until the New Testament that this is made explicit through the revelation of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit and the apostles get this.
So we're going to come back to that. We'll look at John 1 and Colossians 1 in just a second, where the implicit is made explicit through the revelation of Jesus Christ. So there's a unity in the Trinity and the unity of creation of all three persons. So we should see in here in these opening verses the three persons of the Trinity.
And in fact, seeing Ambrose says here in the top of your notes, one who pays close attention. So we've got to be paying attention. One who pays close attention will recognize the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the beginning. The Father creates the heavens and the earth, the Spirit moves over the waters, and the Son, who acts while the Father is speaking, separates the light from the darkness.
And that last line is pretty cool. I want to take you full circle back to this when we go to John 1, separate the light from the darkness. Okay? So where is the Trinity in the opening verses?
What I'd like to do here is let's just read the first few verses and then unpack this a little bit. So here we are. Genesis chapter one verse one, which we just studied, but in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and it goes on verse two, the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
And God said, let there be light, and there was light, and God saw the flight was good, and God separated the light from the darkness, etc, etc. Okay, we'll stop right there. So where is God the Father? This is pretty easy to point out because it's God, right?
Elohim who creates. So that's a pretty easy one. That's kind of like a softball throw right there with a wall, really. And then you've also got the presence of the Spirit.
That's also really, really easy to point out because it says the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters, fine. Spirit is Ruach in Hebrew. It could be wind or breath or spirit. The translation of Spirit is a good one.
Even in other places in the Pentateuch in the Old Testament you have Ruach translated as the Spirit of God. I have one example for you from Genesis 41. You could go to your commentary and find a whole bunch more. But Genesis 41, I pick because it's from the book of Genesis, which is what we're studying.
So Pharaoh said to his servants regarding Joseph, can we find such a man as this in whom is the Ruach, the Spirit of God. Right, so here the Ruach is moving or hovering over the waters, and so we can identify God the Spirit right there very, very easily. Now before we move on to God the Son, I want to stop for just a second because the Hebrew word, the verb that is being described as moving or hovering over the waters, is actually often what could be translated as fluttering, like a bird flutters when it flies in the sky or above the trees or wherever the bird flies. The bird flutters and that's really, really fascinating because if you can use your imagination, the Spirit of God here in Genesis 1 in the original creation account, the Spirit is fluttering over the waters.
And this is kind of a foreshadowing of a couple of very important points coming up. Now in Genesis 9, there's the story of the flood. We'll spend a lot more time looking at this and a number of lessons down the line. But for right now, what I want to point out is, imagine there's the flood waters, there's Noah and Mrs.
Noah and their children floating around like a cork in the water, and the rain has stopped, and he wants to find out if the waters are receding. So he sends out that dove, it comes back, you know, it's where it goes on, he sends out the dove again, and it doesn't come back and he realizes the waters have receded. Well, this is interesting because the story of the flood where the waters have now covered the face of the earth, and now Noah is sending a dove out there and it's fluttering over the waters. This is echoing back to the creation story because as I'm going to teach you down the line, the flood is basically a recreation story.
It is a recreation recreation, got his hitting the reset button for a reasonable talk about later, and now Noah is basically a new Adam, and he sends out this dove to see if land has appeared, right? The waters have receded. So already you've got that connection with the dove fluttering over the waters. Now fast forward to the New Testament.
And in the New Testament you'll remember very well in Matthew chapter 3, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, he goes under the water, and the Spirit of God descends in the form of a dove over the waters of his baptism. Why is that important? Well, I'll have to say here, but basically if in the first creation you've got the Spirit hovering above the waters, that is revisited in Noah as a new Adam and a new creation with the dove fluttering over the waters, what's going on here is that in the baptism of Christ, when he establishes the sacrament of baptism, what's going on here is that we are made new creatures when we are baptized. We die, we go under the water, we die to our sinful self, the old creation, we rise in Christ as new creatures, and so we are reborn, we're regenerated by water in the Spirit.
And this is exactly what Jesus says to Nicodemus, here in your notes I have John chapter 3 verse 5, truly truly I say to you unless one is born of water in the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. This rebirth is really the sense of recreation, it's this theme that we keep talking about here, we're only two lessons here in Degenesis, but creation, the original creation is ruined by sin, we'll talk about that in a couple of lessons, but it will be restored, there will be a new creation in Christ. In order for our souls to be born again, we need to die to our old self and rise with Christ, and that happens according to Jesus by water and the Spirit. This is exactly what we see in the creation account, the flood account, water in the Spirit, new creation comes up.
Titus 3, 5 here as well, your notes is the same thing, the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Spirit, it's interesting that Paul says the washing of regeneration, it uses that explicit very important word, you can hear Genesis in that regeneration, the washing of the water regenerates us and it's the renewal of the Spirit. So water in Spirit makes us new creatures, and we can see all of this foreshadowed implicitly through typology right here in the opening verses of Genesis. So the fluttering of the Spirit, that verb, like a bird, is really, really important, but later on we're going to see that being unpacked through the flood and then of course in the New Testament. So I wanted to clarify that typological connection for you.
So let's get back and be like, okay, so we got the Father, we got God the Holy Spirit, where is God the Son, and Saint Ambrose already gave us a hint, it's when God speaks. So God speaks creation into existence, there was nothing and it comes into existence by his effortless, efficacious, powerful word. It's really beautiful as we just saw here in Genesis 1, 1, we looked at all that in section number 1, so he speaks everything into existence with his word. And Jesus, this is all implicit now in the Old Testament, but it is made explicit by the New Testament in a couple of really important verses.
In John 1 and in Colossians 1, you also have Hebrews 1, but I didn't put that in your notes. What I wanted to do actually is to give you the whole section of John 1 and Colossians 1, but the catechism actually puts the two together in paragraph 291, which I want to read for you right now. Okay, so here in your notes, catechism 291 says this, it opens up by quoting John 1 verses 1 through 3. In the beginning, and this is intentional, by the way, John is making a specific callback and echo to the creation account.
So he says, in the beginning, which is supposed to make us think of Genesis, in the beginning was a word, and the word was God, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made, that was made. That's John 1 verses 1 through 3. So John is telling us what is implicit is now being explicit, in the beginning was the word, was the word of God when God speaks, that is the presence of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. And everything that was made was made through him.
So the catechism goes on and says the New Testament reveals, that's a very important word because this is divine revelation. We would not know anything about the Trinity unless it were revealed to us by God. So the New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal word, his beloved son. And now the catechism is going to quote Colossians 1 16 through 17.
In him, all things, so this is what Paul is saying now. In him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, all things were created through him, and for him, he is before all things, and in him, all things hold together. So that's Colossians 1, so John and Paul, and basically, the whole New Testament witness, the revelation is that in the beginning was Jesus, the word of God, all things come into existence through him, by him, for him. So this is what's being revealed.
Let me go on here with the catechism. The church's faith likewise confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the giver of life, the creator spirit, the source of every good. So catechism 291 ties it all together here. So John 1 and Colossians 1 is making explicit when God speaks, that is the second person of the Trinity in his God.
But John is doing a lot more in that, in verses 1 through 3 that the catechism quoted here, when he begins in the beginning, what John is trying to say is that there is essentially through Jesus, the word of God, there is going to be a new creation. If I had time, we would look at the whole structure of John 1 and 2, everything leading up to the waiting of Cana where there's this whole depiction of a new creation going on. But I just want to share with you one simple, like, call it an appetizer if you want, where John is making explicit what is implicit in the Old Testament. So you notice in verses 1 through 3, he says, in the beginning was the word, the word was God, all things were made through him, etc., and ends at verse 3.
Well, it's interesting because verse 4 continues on by saying, it's here in your notes. In him was life and the life was the light of men, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And he goes on from there. This is really interesting here because in the original creation, on day 1, God says, let there be light and he separates the light from the darkness.
Alright, now what John is doing in his opening chapter is he is depicting a new creation through Jesus Christ because Jesus is the word, he is God, all things come into existence through him, and he says explicitly, Jesus is the light of the world and he said, and darkness does not know it, the darkness rejects it, the darkness does not overcome it. Jesus is the light of the world for the new creation account. And to take this one step further, just to kind of hopefully drive home the point, that's the original creation, light and darkness is separate on the first day. This is true through Jesus Christ.
When Jesus conquers death, Satan's sin and death, his light overcomes darkness. Now, on the first day of the new creation is technically speaking the resurrection. When Jesus rises on the first day of the new week, which is Sunday, the light has entered into the world, having conquered Satan's sin and death. So the new creation is Jesus rising from the dead, him as the new light of the new and life, bringing us, making us a new creation.
So I hope you're following me here because there's a lot more to say that's running through my mind. But in the new creation, on day 1, the day of the resurrection, Jesus is the light and the life of everything bringing us back to the Father. So right there you can see the parallel here. The parallel here.
In the old creation, the separation of light and darkness, new creation, separation of light and darkness through the resurrection of Jesus on the first day. I hope that makes sense. That makes sense everybody. Okay, perfect.
Good. Alright, so that is the presence of the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit implicitly made explicit in the New Testament with such a verse as John. We will definitely do a Bible study on John.
We'll have a lot more time to go through the rest of that gospel. But really, John is depicting this new creation through Jesus Christ. It's terrific. Okay.
So one more thing here with the kind of the hint of the Trinity. I have it number four on your notes. It's the use of plural language. What you're going to notice where later on in verse 26, when speaking about the creation of Adam, Aaron mankind, he says, Let us make man in our image and our likeness.
That plural, that first person plural, often people will say, it's like the royal we, oh, let us do this, right? Which is very unlikely. Or he got us speaking to the angels. And that's also very likely because in Scripture only God creates.
Okay. And it's talking about the creation of man. So it can't be angels who create. What this is, is a, again, a Trinitarian illusion.
Let us make man referring to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And you have this repeated again, or at least you find it in two other passages in 3.22 After the sin of Adam and Eve, God says again, he's become like us knowing good and evil. And then 11 chapter, chapter 11 verse 7 with the Tower of Babel. He says, let us go down and basically see what they're up to.
So there's the repetition. In fact, I don't think it's an accident that three times the plural language is used for his first employer. So for all of this, I think that's enough on this argument that creation is a Trinitarian act. Now that it's go and look at what we just read here, there's a major problem in creation which is that the earth is formless and void.
So Roman numeral three, let's look at the creation of matter and form. Okay. There's, there's nothing. And now we're going to see how you got this amorphous mass of, you know, this chaotic amorphous mass of matter there.
And God is going to solve the problems of emptiness and formlessness here in the sixth day. So look at that now Roman numeral three. I'm Dr. Nick.
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