Faith in God as Creator

January 25, 2025 by M. Stephanie Zeller

“Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6, NIV)

Shalom (our inward sense of completeness or wholeness) begins with a decision to accept and believe that God was, God is, and God always will be. God is the “I AM.” He does not need to explain Himself or prove Himself. Rather, He reveals Himself. The Bible begins with God’s revelation of creation.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was a vast waste, darkness covered the deep, and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water. God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light; and God saw the light was good, and He separated light from darkness. He called the light day, and the darkness night. So evening came, and morning came; it was the first day.” (Genesis 1:1-4, REB)

Successively, the days followed in which God created everything that was necessary for man’s existence and each day He called His creation ‘good.’ Lastly, on the sixth day “God created human beings in His own image; in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27, REB) He then blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply—to fill the earth and exercise dominion over all that He had created for mankind. “So it was; and God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:30-31, REV)

“Thus the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. On the sixth day God brought to an end all the work He had been doing; on the seventh day, having finished all His work, God blessed the day and made it holy, because it was the day He finished all his work of creation.” (Genesis 2:1-3, REB)

The first step in our journey of faith is to embrace with our hearts God’s declaration of creation. The Bible opens with a simple truth. God is saying, “I made you; I love you, and I bless you.” Remember, “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:30-31, REV) God is pleased with His creation. He is pleased with you and He is pleased with me.

For the present we live in time, but God lives outside of time and from that vantage point, He can see all of time. He is the alpha and omega and knows the end from the beginning. Thus when He created the first man, Adam, and was pleased with him, He also saw you and me and He was pleased with us—pleased because of who we would become because of the new heart He would be giving us. God said to us, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26, NIV)

Yes, at the very moment of creation, the plan was set. The plan began by even giving man the freedom to sin—the freedom to doubt God’s character and disobey God’s one restriction. Man exercised this freedom poorly and in the process disconnected himself from God—essentially severing his “spiritual umbilical cord” that was connected to God. In doing so, man exchanged his god nature for a sin nature.

For a season, God gave man the space to sin without imposing judgment, but then at the proper time He gave man the gift of law. Law was to be our tutor and show us we were sinners. Law also brought judgment, and the punishment for breaking the law was a helpful deterrent to sin. Law helped to preserve humanity for a season, but it could not prevail to change our hearts.

Finally in the course of time, mankind was ready for the central point of human history: the gift of Christ to the world, so that He might die and bear the punishment for all our sins, for all of time. Christ took our sins upon Himself, so that God could bestow grace to us without sacrificing justice. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” (Galatians 3:13, BSB)

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely, He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 54:3-5, BSB)

“This happened so that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet would be fulfilled: ‘He Himself took our illnesses and carried away our diseases’.” (Matthew 8:17, NASB)

“And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom of priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth’.” (Revelation 5:9-10, NIV)

Christ bore the punishment we deserved for the joy that was set before Him. God wanted a people who were capable of loving God in the same way that God loved them. “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16, KJV)

The gift of Christ to the world did not end with His crucifixion. Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead as a testimony to God’s great plan. Death could not defeat Him nor can it defeat those of us who place our faith in Him. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9, NKJV)

We do not earn this grace; rather, God’s grace is a consequence of God’s loving nature. Grace is a gift we cannot earn. Faith in God is also a gift and it has a sure foundation. Faith in God is trust in who God reveals Himself to be. “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17, NKJV)

We cannot hear the word of God, the words of scripture that will build our faith, until we meditate on those words with the eye of faith. Scripture comes alive when we approach it with the understanding that God is speaking to us through its pages. Each of its books from Genesis to Revelation is inspired by God and speaks to us of the nature of God and His good plan for creation. That plan begins in the book of Genesis with the Garden of Eden and ends in the book of Revelation with the New Heaven and the New Earth. Jesus Christ is the central event of human history for He is God and was made flesh. Through His death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit is made available to each of us to change our hearts of stone to hearts of flesh, to transform us into the very likeness of Christ.

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” (John 14:15-31, NIV)

Faith in God as creator must include faith in God’s full plan, for we were created for a purpose and have a destiny to spend all of eternity with Him. Our God is ever present with us, watching over us and desiring that we live in the victory that He has already provided in Christ. God has spoken His wonderful plan into existence and God’s word never returns void.

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Where scripture translations neglect to capitalize pronoun references to God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit, we have taken the liberty to do so.