Something From Nothing

Jen Wilkin

(from the chapter on God's self-existence):

What freedom is found in recognizing that only God creates! No longer must we labor under the delusion of our own self-importance. We need not find our value in people or possessions— it rests in our origin. We need not look to the success or failure of our pet projects as validation of our worth. We bear the mark of our Maker. It is not our job to be original, but to worship the Origin of All Things. We are free to explore the limits of human creativity to the glory of our Creator. We are free to love and cherish others at great expense without demanding their worship in return.

Furthermore, we are free to rely on God when our hope for a relationship or a situation has dwindled to nothing. Remember, our Creator-God specializes in bringing something from nothing. We cannot create hope where there is hopelessness or love where there is lovelessness. We cannot create repentance where there is unrepentance, but we can cry out to the God who can. In that first great act of creation, God miraculously rendered something from nothing. And he rejoices to continue that work in human hearts.

Jesus Christ, the one in whom life dwells, acted to create something from nothing in Genesis 1. And he is still doing so today: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5: 17).

 God takes a heart in which righteousness does not exist, speaks the Word of life, and where once there was nothing , there is something: the righteousness of Christ. Where there was no righteousness, now there is his righteousness. We become new creations, created in Christ Jesus to do the good work of human creativity—applying the gifts he gives to reshape and reorder the sin- broken world he has charged us to steward.