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Genesis 1:1
Creation and God's Power
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Why it is worth knowing
- God existed before anything else: he is uncreated
- Creation was an act of intentional design, not accident
- The heavens and earth are both under God’s authority
- This verse grounds all of reality in the person of God
Where it sits: Genesis 1:1-5
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night”. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Hear the passage it sits in, sung word for word, on BibleDo's Genesis page.
Background
The opening verse of the Bible makes an absolute, unqualified claim: God is the Creator of everything. It establishes that the universe is not eternal and that its existence is entirely dependent on God. In its basic form, the Hebrew word for “created” (bara) always has God as its subject: this kind of creating is uniquely God’s work. Scripture elsewhere teaches that God created from nothing (Hebrews 11:3). This verse is the foundation of a biblical worldview.