By Pastor RAUL GRANILLO“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1 NIV)
In the beginning God created (Genesis 1:1). From the account of the Bible, we can surmise that God created because God is love. But to understand this, we have to do some unpacking.
Imagine, even before Genesis 1:1, what God was like. We know that He was holy and glorious (Isaiah 6:3). And when Isaiah had his vision in the throne room he said, “‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty’” (Isaiah 6:5 NIV). For all he imagined God to be, when Isaiah saw Him, he instantly realized that God was so holy and awesome that he couldn’t even believe he could be in His presence. So, we know that God is beyond our imagination, incomparable, and absolutely amazing.
We also know from the scriptures that God is triune. There are not three gods, there is One God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each distinct and yet each the same God. The trinity is so impossible to understand that around the 4th century theologians created a word to describe this perfect relationship—perichoresis. The perichoresis is like a divine dance in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are absolutely one. It reveals to us that God, by His own nature, is relational.
God is also love (1 John 4:7-8). He is the origin, source, and fullness of genuine love. So imagine this God: He is awesome in all that He is, He is relational, and He is love. His perfect relationship as the trinity means that He is not lonely nor in need of worship. But because of all that He is, God then did the most loving thing that He could do, He created so that He could be enjoyed—He shared Himself! His love is so great that it manifests itself in His creation. All of creation was created for the distinct purpose of being in a relationship with God and enjoying the fullness of who He really is.
Of course, if you have ever read Genesis, you know that mankind only lasted a couple of chapters before we chose to live separately from God. And by separating ourselves from God, we took an unnatural path that caused us to live in a way that is unauthentic to who we were created to be. This phony living has caused great suffering in our lives, in the lives of others, and in all of creation. But God remains true to who He is, and His love has not forsaken us—even when it might have been merited.
Instead, God immediately promises a means to reconcile mankind to Himself so that we could once again live authentically in His presence as we were created to do. His love, once again, manifested itself in creation, and Jesus became incarnate, being both fully man and fully God. God comes to us in flesh, He suffered, He died, and He was resurrected so that we can receive the grace that saves us from ourselves.
And God, once again by grace and love, gave us a gift that documented both our history and our future so that we can be informed and discern reality from fantasy—the gift of the Holy Scriptures. The Bible is a book of hope that documents our history and reveals God’s love for us. John’s gospel is about the fulfillment of God’s promise to man to conquer death and establish His kingdom. John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word,” and it reminds us that God has not changed, nor ever will change. From the beginning, His love manifested itself by creating life where it once did not exist. In its entirety, the Bible contains that we need to receive salvation and live Christian lives that reflect God’s glory back into all of creation.
Today, we are blessed to live in a country where we readily have access to the most powerful book in mankind’s history. We have access to the word of God and yet far too many of us have not read it in its entirety. This book is the narrative of our history with God—it is your story; have you read it lately?
To find out more about La Vista Church, or to hear this and other messages, visit our website at www.lavistanaz.org or email me at raul@lavistanaz.org. Follow Pastor Raul on Twitter @RaulGranillo007
Please come join us as we fix our eyes on Jesus. We meet Sundays at 9 a.m. for Sunday school and 10 a.m. for worship. Everyone is welcome!
