Brad Alles

Is God simply the universe, as pantheists believe? No, Genesis 1:1 clearly shows the difference between God and creation. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This verse is known so well that we fail to recognize how radical it is! God is not part of the world, as in other religion’s creation accounts. He is not the fresh water god, Apsu, or the ocean and mother of all things, Tiamat, as in the Babylonian creation account. He created the water and everything else, so He is separate and transcendent from His creation.

As this question was answered, we looked to the Bible for the answer. We can learn specifics on who God is—an all-powerful creator, transcendent and apart from His creation, putting His holy law in our hearts—from the Bible. This is called the revealed knowledge of God. From the Bible we also find out that God is Triune—three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet one God.

We also discover that this holy being could not tolerate our rebellion, so He sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, demonstrating His unconditional love for us. Without Jesus’ salvation on our behalf, we cannot enter God’s holy presence when we die due to our sin. These are aspects of the revealed knowledge of God, available only through the Bible.

The natural knowledge of God, that He exists, is evident to all. Just look around. From where did this orderly universe come, working with clockwork precision? By chance? But just knowing that some Intelligent Being is out there, who “wrote the books” in Einstein’s library illustration isn’t enough. We need to read the Book, the Bible, to hear the Law (that we have violated His holy will with our sinful lives) and the Gospel (that He forgives us through Jesus’ perfect life and atoning death on the cross). This only comes from the revealed knowledge of God, through the Bible.