The Gospel in Genesis

The Holiness of God

     “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Gen. 1:1). These are the very familiar first words of the Bible, and what awesome words they are. What a mental stretch to attempt to imagine the time before the creation of the world when there was absolutely nothing but God. He was all that there was, and He was enough. However, the book of Genesis records how God decided to make creatures for Himself who would mirror His glory. The book then details how these creatures fell from that honorable position, and placed themselves under the wrath of God. God, however, chose to rescue certain members of His creation from Himself, and to preserve them forever. That is the story of history, and that is the story of Genesis 1-9. God's holiness, the fall of man, God's righteous wrath, God's intervention, and man's need to accept that intervention. The Gospel is written on the very first pages of history, and it all begins with the holiness of God.

     “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:1-2). Before the beginning, there was only God. Nothing more. He was perfectly holy, lacking nothing and needing nothing. He was holy, and there was nothing unholy in His sight, only Himself mirrored in the face of His Son eternally forever.

     Then, this all-holy God decided to do something. Genesis does not explain why, but He chose to create. It wasn't because He was lonely, or because He needed more glory, or because He was incomplete in any way. Perhaps God alone knows why He chose to create, but He did. He created the heavens and the earth, the light and the darkness, the sky and the waters, the land and the sea, the vegetation and greenery, the sun, moon, and stars, the birds and fish, the beasts and animals, and finally, man. And here is the awesome thing: everything He created was good (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). God could not create anything evil, for He was perfectly holy. What a testimony to the holiness of this Great Creator, for who but a perfectly holy God could create only good things?

     Yet His holiness is seen not only in that He made only good things, but also in that those good things reflected His holiness. Each one of His creations mirrors His own attributes. This can be seen in Job 38-41, where God simply blows Job away with His holiness and majesty. Does God do so by directly describing Himself though? No. Instead, God goes on in detail about the attributes of His good creation. Creation mirrors God's attributes clearly enough that God can declare His own majesty by pointing to His creation.

This is true of man also, for “God created man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). Man was made to be an image of God. Man was meant to mirror the glory of God to God. God created man in order that He might look at him and see an image of Himself. This can be seen in that He gave man “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28) because He wanted an image of His own power and dominion. God is holy, and His holiness is mirrored here in Genesis in the holiness of His creation.

     There is at least one other way that God's holiness can be seen in the creation account of Genesis, however. I see it in chapter 2, verses 16 and 17: “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'” God has standards of holiness, and therefore has the right to command His creatures to live up to those standards. He wants the creatures He created to mirror His holiness by living holy lives. He is so holy that He cannot tolerate having the slightest imperfection in His sight, and so He must lay down requirements for His creatures to keep them from imperfection. Clearly, from before the foundation of the world, God is holy.

The Fall of Man

     Man, however, did not follow these requirements, and thus failed to live up to God's standards of holiness. Genesis 3:1 says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?'” The first thing this evil serpent seeks to do is to cause the woman to doubt God, to question His requirements. The woman then proceeds to explain what the LORD had said, and then the serpent does two things in one sentence: he tells both the truth and a terrible lie. He tells the truth when He says that they will gain the knowledge of good and evil, but he tells a black lie when he says that disobedience will not cause death. Sin is sin, and God cannot tolerate it for a single moment. Even though it is true that they would not immediately die physically, they would die spiritually the instant the man bit into that fruit.

     Genesis 3:6 records the final stroke to the fall of mankind: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” The results of the man's bite into that fruit were catastrophic: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. . . . And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Gen. 3:7,8).

     Their eyes were opened, just as they wanted, but what they saw was not what they wanted. Sin is always like that, isn't it? Satan makes it look so appealing, but when you bite into it, it always bites back. After their sin, the history of mankind instantly plummeted. Man was created to live in the presence of God, and as soon as he ate of that fruit, sin separated him from his Creator, and he died. It wasn't physical death, though that would certainly come. Rather, it was a spiritual death, for man's relationship with God had been severed. God could not have a relationship with an unholy sinner, for He is perfectly holy and cannot tolerate sin. The history of mankind has been a downward spiral since that day.

     This fall can be seen right here in Genesis, starting with the list of curses on the serpent, the woman, and the man. After the curses, God “drove out the man” (Gen. 3:24). After that comes the story of Cain's murder of Abel (Gen. 4:1-16), and then the story about Lamech, who was proud of committing murder (Gen 4. 23-24)! Genesis 6:1-3 says this about mankind at this time: “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.'”.

     God is holy, and His Spirit is holy. Before sin, human flesh was also holy, but not after sin. God could not let His holy Spirit abide in man's sinful flesh. This is so very sad, for man was created to mirror God's holiness. By the holy Spirit within them, they were to be images of God's glory and majesty, but by sin they tainted that image. Therefore, when God looks at man, He sees a tainted image of Himself, a filthy image of Himself. How repulsive to a perfectly holy God! This creature that He had made so good and righteous and holy had turned on Him, soiled His image, and profaned His glory.

     It is easy to forget just how far man fell after the fall, but He fell from life to death, from holiness to filthiness. He fell from righteousness to wickedness, and from the presence of God to the absence of it; from a passionate love for God to a fiercely cold hate of Him. What a terrible fall!

God's Righteous Wrath

     How does a holy God respond to such a terrible fall? With fierce wrath. Genesis 6:5-7 says,

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart. So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

     Look at what that says about man: every intention of his thoughts was only evil continually! That is great wickedness! Clearly, sin is no longer just an occasional little accident, but a lifestyle that has taken over the world. And God hates it to His core. These wicked creatures are images of Himself, and to see how they profane His image is grievous.

     God is holy, and He has been since before the beginning. Man was created to reflect that holiness, and by sinning against God's commandment, they threw dirt on the image of God. Now when God looks at the image of Himself in His creation, He sees filth and dirt. Being perfectly holy and perfectly righteous, He has but one response: wrath. He hates sin, and to see it on the image of Himself is totally disgusting to Him.

     We have to understand that man was created to be God's mirror. We were created perfect and holy and good so that we could reflect God's perfection and holiness and goodness to Himself. We were created so that God could look at us and say, “That is good!” and be speaking of Himself. When man sinned, he picked up a clod of dirt and threw it on that image. He picked up dirt and threw it at the image of God! He lifted a bucket of mud and dumped it over the mirror that reflected God's glory. He dumped mud on his own head and thus soiled the image of God in a most abominable way.

     There is only one response a perfectly holy and righteous God will have against such rebellion. As Paul puts it in Romans 1:18, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” God will pour out His wrath on the human race. As God Himself put it, He “will blot out man whom [He] has created from the face of the land” (Gen. 6:7). That word, “blot out,” is the Hebrew word "אמחה". According to Strong's Concordance, this word means “to erase . . . to make smooth . . . to abolish, blot out, destroy” (H4229). That is what the all-righteous, all-holy God does to sinful humans who throw filth on the image of His holiness: He erases them, abolishes them, blots them out, destroys them. His holiness allows no other alternative.

Christ's Intervention

     Sounds like it's over for the human race. God is holy, and man is obviously unholy. Man must be obliterated. But wait! The story of Genesis does not end here. In fact, we're only on the sixth chapter of the entire Bible. It must not end here. Yes, God has said that He will blot out mankind from the face of the earth, but then Genesis 6:8 says, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” First note the word “but”. This man, introduced in Genesis 5, is an exception: he sticks out from the rest of the world. The world is wicked, and God grieves over them. But Noah finds favor with the LORD.

     And so we come to the story of the flood. Genesis begins this story with a definition of Noah:“Noah was a righteous man, blameless in His generation. Noah walked with God” (Gen. 6:9). Clearly this man is different from the world, and his righteousness is a stark contrast to the wickedness and corruption of his society. In Genesis 6:11-22, God tells Noah of the destruction He has planned for all of creation, and without further explanation, begins to command Noah to build an ark. Noah obeys, and the ark is completed.

     The first thing I want to note is that the ark was built in obedience. God gave Noah directions and commands, and Noah followed them perfectly (Gen 6:22). Therefore, this ark is an ark built essentially by Noah's righteousness. If he hadn't obeyed, it wouldn't have worked out. He did obey, however, and the ark was successfully completed.

Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him. (Gen. 7:1-5)

     The story is familiar. Noah goes into the ark, the rains come down, the fountains of the deep burst forth, and in only forty days, water covers the entire earth. The only living things remaining are those in the ark. Everything else has been blotted out, destroyed, erased. Does God forget those in the ark? Never! Rather, Genesis 8:1-3 says that “God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually.” God brought Noah and the animals he had saved safely to rest at the end of the storm. An amazing story, isn't it?

     Is that all there is though? No way! This is not just a story about a man six thousand years ago who jumped on a boat with some critters and survived a giant flood. This is the story of you and me! Think about it. Noah builds an ark in perfect obedience to God. The ark is built by Noah's righteousness. He then lets a whole bunch of beasts onto the boat, and God, using Noah and the boat, saves all those animals. The whole entire world is obliterated, except for those whom God put on the ark built by Noah's righteousness. Are you catching on?

     In this story, Noah is representative of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to this earth, obeying His Father's command, and built an ark by His righteousness. Remember, every man and beast is fallen, wicked, and doomed to destruction. We have profaned the glory of God in the most abominable manner, and a price must be paid. And it was. By “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8), Jesus Christ paid the price that was necessary to build an ark of His own righteousness. Because that ark was built, God can now draw all those whom He chooses to get onto this ark and be saved from the flood of His wrath. We are in a boat built by the righteousness of Christ! Because of His obedience, we can ride the waves of the wrath of God in a boat built not of wood, but of the righteousness and holiness of the Lord Jesus. While God's justice sweeps the entire world away, we float safely along in the ark of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is amazing.

     Genesis 7:17-24 makes it very clear that not one single creature survived the flood of God's wrath save those in the ark. All but those with Noah perished in the waters. “But God remembered Noah and all the beats and all the livestock that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 8:1). That means something more now, doesn't it? That verse now demonstrates that those whom God saved through the righteous work of Jesus Christ are never forgotten. God remembers them, and God saves them. God brings them to land and to safety.

     This is the heart of the Gospel. God is holy, we profaned His holiness, and He in His wrath determined to make an end of us (Gen. 6:13). But He did not leave us without a Savior. He sent one who, by His righteousness, would make us an ark to bear us over the wrath of this holy God. He will remember us and bring us out of this boat, and we will stand in safety. Yes, the Gospel is much much more, and obviously not everyone, in fact very few, even get into this boat. But those who do are saved, and that is some very good news. Very good news, and very mind boggling news. We didn't have the righteousness to escape the flood on our own. We could only escape by the righteousness of another. Is that not awesome? Does that not bring a greater appreciation for the Gospel? How truly thankful we should be that God chose to send His Son to make us an ark of righteousness!

A Covenant with the Living

     There is more, however. Yes, we have been saved from the wrath of the all-holy God. Yes, we have been carried over the waves of God's justice in the ark of Christ's righteousness. Yes we have been saved, but there is more. The good news of the Gospel is not only that we have been saved from the wrath of God, but that we have also returned to a relationship with Him. We are now, through Christ's sacrifice and His imputed righteousness, capable of coming into God's very presence! This is miraculous. Not only will we not be destroyed in God's wrath, we will live for eternity in His presence!

     This is not only the teaching of the New Testament either. In fact, it is demonstrated very clearly right here in the story of Noah and the flood. When the flood ends and Noah, his wife, his sons and his son's wives, and all the animals come out of the ark, Genesis says this:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. (Genesis 8:20-22)

     Like Noah's sacrifice in this passage, Jesus made a sacrifice to God. When God looked at Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf, He promised to never blot us out of His presence again. That was His covenant with those whom Jesus saved. As Paul said in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Because of Christ's death in our place, God's burning wrath against our rebellion was forever quenched. Clearly it isn't that man stops sinning, for he is still as evil as ever. The description of man before and after the flood is very similar (Compare Gen. 6:5 with 8:21). Only one significant thing has happened to change God's reaction to this sin: an ark was built and a sacrifice was made. And now our relationship with God is forever restored!

     There is another element of God's covenant with those whom Jesus saved. We read of it in Genesis 9:12-15:

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

     The good news of the Gospel is not only that we have had Christ's righteousness placed on us, and not only that we have been eternally saved from the wrath of God, but also that we have a mediator, someone who stands between us and God. If I sin, profaning God's holiness once again, Jesus is my bow. God sees Him, and He remembers His eternal covenant with me. I have the righteousness of Christ placed on me, I have the wrath of God removed from me, I have my relationship with God restored, and I have security in this position forever. That is such good news, such unfathomably good news!

     How is it that a sinner like me, one who has profaned God's glory so abominably, can be so bountifully forgiven? It can only be through the righteousness of another. On my own works, I can only be destroyed. There is only one way into the ark, out of the flood of wrath, and under the bow: through Jesus Christ the righteous. We must throw ourselves into Him.

Works Cited

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Wheaton: Crossway, 2001. Print.

Strong, James. “H4229.” The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Nashville:

Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990. Print.