Unboxing the First Verse of the Bible

“Hi, welcome to this wonderful journey of learning God’s word. I’m glad that I’m able to meet you like this. As we are studying God’s word, we are going to look into the first verse of the Bible today. I am so excited that today we are going to explore so many important things about God from this first verse of the Bible. So, without delay, let us get into it.

In the beginning, God created heavens and earth (Genesis 1:1). This first verse of the Bible gives us a glimpse of what basically God is like. As we already saw in that earlier video, the basic truth we learned from this verse is that God exists. From this foundational fact that He was before anything else, we can draw two important conclusions about him: God is eternal and He is free.

What it means that God is eternal: when we usually think God is eternal, we associate it with time. God exists in infinite time. There is nothing wrong with this understanding, but when we associate eternity with time, we try to determine God based on human measurement. Time, for us humans, is bound; we have 24 hours for a day, and we cannot lengthen it or shorten it. But those who know basic science know this fact that time is related to this Earth. However, the fact that God existed before the creation of the world shows us that he is beyond this time. In other words, God created time. The factors that control us do not control God, which means God is beyond time, above time. That is what Eternal means. Very interesting, right.

Now, look at the fact that God is completely free. The fact that God is not bound by time or limited to time gives us the fact that he is completely free, which means he does not have to depend on others for anything. Sometimes we humans talk about being independent, but the fact is we cannot live a truly independent life. We have to depend on others even for our basic daily needs. Can anybody deny that? Think about the afternoon meal and think about how many persons are needed to put that meal on our table. But when we say God is free, he is totally, completely free. He does not need to depend on anything or anybody for His existence. He is complete in Himself; He needs nobody to meet his needs.

The first verse also says God created heavens and earth. The God of the Bible is the creator of all things. He created things that we can see, and He created things that we cannot see but discover by the science. It is also worthwhile to say that he created things which are not yet discovered by science.

So, let us look into the fact that what it means that God created Heavens. The word ‘Heaven’ is used in two different ways in the Bible. The first one is the cosmic Universe, which is anything beyond this Earth. This is also called Heavens in the Bible. With the help of science, we discovered how big this universe is – our Earth, the solar system, our Milky Way galaxy with millions of stars, and millions and millions of galaxies like our Milky Way galaxy. The universe is so vast and so big that we cannot even imagine with our minds. The Bible says God created everything. The Bible also calls a spiritual place, a spiritual realm, heaven, where God and His Angels dwell. When we say spiritual, with our limited scope of understanding, spiritual means formless, shapeless; it is not solid, it is not liquid. That is what we say spiritual, right? It cannot be seen directly by human eyes, a vague explanation. I understand that. But it also can be another dimension with different kinds of substances. There is no mention anywhere in the Bible of when and where this place was created, but it was created before this universe was created. But this is the place God calls his Abode. One thing is certain that God created angels who dwell with him in this place, and they were also created before the Earth was created. This way, we can understand the same God who created this spiritual space and the beings in it.

Why are we talking about this? God who created this spiritual space, who lives among these spiritual beings, He himself is a Spirit. The Bible calls God is Spirit, but we do not know what it actually means, because nobody has seen God. It is important at this point to understand the spiritual beings who are with God, angels. The Bible says God created many angels, so many angels – countless in numbers (which does not mean endless or infinite numbers from the human perspective). So many to count are not able to count. God created these angels to worship him and to do the tasks he asked them to do. The Bible also clarifies that these angels are full of strength, knowledge, wisdom, and free will.

The first verse again says God created the Earth and all life in it. God created this material world and all carnivorous beings. Except man, God created all life forms through his word. God created Adam and Eve, the first parents of this world. Yes, God created humankind. The Bible says, ‘Then the Lord God took dust from the earth and made man. The Lord God breathed his life breath into his nose, and the man came to life.’ Man is not like a carnivore, just like other animals; he has a God-given soul in him. That is what makes man unique from other animals. God created pure spiritual beings, angels. God created pure material things. God created material things with life in them. But man is material plus life plus soul. Man, at his core, is a spiritual being. That is what it means, and that is why man is the crown of all creations.

So, God created this material life-soul combination of man, and He separated a part from this man and created Eve. But the important thing we are going to see today is, the Bible says God created man in His image. We already saw God is a spirit or in a spiritual form, but also, the Bible says God created man in His image. What it means is that God created humankind in His image. Because God is in a spirit form, the image of God in man is primarily characteristics. God is intelligent; he made humans intelligent. God has emotions; he gave humans emotions to feel. God has will; he also gave human beings free will. God is a creator; he made human beings creative.

So, the God of the Bible is eternal, independent, and a creator. He is not a God who can be controlled by humans; he created humans so that he can control them. He is not a God who can be controlled by nature because he created nature and he controls nature. Since God created humans in His image, a spiritual being at their core, it is possible for humans to communicate with their creator. Since we do not know what it is like to be a pure spiritual being or how God looks like, it is wrong to make any image for God.

I hope this video is useful to you. You got so many inputs and insights. What you learned newly through this Bible study, put that in the comments. Like this video, subscribe to this channel so that this channel will reach like-minded people like you. Thank you for watching. We will meet you in another video. God bless you.”