Most of us would agree that we are living in a world in which the majority no longer believes the Bible is relevant. And a deeper issue is that many believers consider themselves to be New-Testament-Only Christians. They hold that the Old Testament no longer matters.
However, in John’s Gospel, he opens by describing how Jesus was with God from “the beginning,” having a hand in all of creation.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind” (John 1: 1-4).
Through His beginning, we have found our beginning. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that we are created in God’s own image. The concept of humanity being made in the image of God (imago dei) is the very basis for Jesus’ teachings on how we are to love one another. That is, love each other as God loves us!
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in Genesis 3:1-7, it would have been easy for a God who only cared about obedience to condemn them to spiritual and mortal death on the spot. Instead, because God is love, He did not abandon His children to let them live in a condition of eternal sin, brokenness and separation.
Because of God’s love for us, He disciplined us to save us. “And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22). So the Lord cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden as an Act of Grace to protect them from living in a sinful state of separation from Him for all of eternity.
While they were still in the Garden of Eden, the Lord promised that the way of restoration would come through the offspring of Eve: “And I (the Lord) will put enmity between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel” (Genesis 3:15).
Without seeking the relevance of the Old Testament, our understanding of the significance of Jesus Christ in the New Testament – His life, death and resurrection – is diminished. The Gospel begins in Genesis with a God who made a Way to love us in spite of our sins. And that Way was, is, and will forever be, Jesus. The hope of the world.
Christina Starnes
