To be sure, God did not create because he had to, not in any sense of the word ‘had to’. God’s existence, unlike ours, is radically free; nothing ever forces his hand or exists alongside him in the shadows of eternity and coerces him into doing things. He was free to create, and it made him happy to do it, but he also would have been free not to. This means that he didn’t create as a way of ‘finding himself’ or exploring and expressing himself in new ways so he could understand himself better and really complete his own existence (this is the basic idea that people are referring to when they talk about ‘process theology’). Nor did he create because he had so much pent up ‘cosmic energy’ that he needed to find a project to help burn off some steam so that he would be able to relax in the evening. And he certainly didn’t do it out of curiosity or to pass the time. God created intentionally; he doesn’t do things on a whim. The only things God does are things he has planned to do, and his plan arises freely out of his will to be the loving Father, with no pressure at all from the outside (or the ‘inside’) leaning on him to do things in a way that’s different from how he really wants them done. God created because he freely chose to create, not because he was compelled to do so. This is part of what it means when we say that God creates ex nihilo. Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase that literally means ‘out of nothing’, and includes the idea that God, unlike us, doesn’t need any pre-existing materials when he decides to create something. It’s what makes God’s kind of creation so amazing: us humans can create paintings and buildings and scientific ideas, but only because God has already made colours and raw materials and the natural laws of the universe—and our own imaginations—available to us. Ultimately, we are able to create only because we ourselves have already been created. With God, creation means something different. When God creates, nothing sets the limits for him, he is totally free to do it however he likes, even in the absence of anything out of which to create. God creates without being constrained in any way. He didn’t create because he had to.
Along the same lines, it is especially important to remember that God did not create because he was lonely. Remember that God, in his very essence, is sociable: he is Father, Son, and Spirit, living and sharing life together. He’s not lonely. When we say that ‘the Father loves the Son’, it is more than just an abstract definition, it means that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are actually always hanging out together and having an awesome time of it: they love each other’s company, and love spending their lives together. There is no neediness in the life of God that goes unsatisfied if he decides not to create, and it is misguided to think of creation as the act of a lonely (or bored!) God who is desperate to finally have some friends. God doesn’t need more friends or some sort of cosmic ‘spouse’ to keep him company or entertain him. Of course he wants to be in relationship with us humans, and it makes him so very glad to call us his children, but he doesn’t need us. Before he creates, God is already totally complete and happily content with who he is and the way he lives. God is never under pressure to create; God is never motivated by loneliness. God didn’t create because he had to.
Why then did he create?
Well, I was pacing around our little living room last week (burning off some steam so that I would be able to relax in the evening), talking with my wife about my plans for the afternoon: “Well, I probably ought to get cracking on my next accreditation essay.”
“Oh, which one do you have this week,” she replied, lovingly feigning deep interest.
“Why did God create?”
At which point my daughter Flora, freshly home from kindergarten and dangling upside-down on the couch, cut into the conversation (as usual) and announced: “Because he loves us!”
And that’s it really. God created because he loves us.
He created because he wanted to enjoy our company, and for us to enjoy his. He created out of a will-to-love. This is what Paul means in Ephesians 1:4-5 when he says that “even before he made the world, God loved us and . . . decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.”
You see, God’s love is the kind of love that overflows. It is not a selfish love that only loves itself, or only loves when it gets paid back, but the kind of love that spills over and shares itself even when it isn’t returned. My mom once told me that we pay back the love of our parents not primarily by loving them, but by loving their grandkids the way that they loved us. God’s love is that kind of love, just as happy seeing the effects of his love spill over to a loved third party as he would be receiving it back himself. Maybe more happy. The Father and Son never hog one another’s love, they share their love—they share each other—with the Spirit. Father to Son to Spirit to Father: the love of God continually spills over from one Person to the others.
And in creation, this love of God overflows to us. God created because he had more than enough love to spare and so he wanted to share that love with us. God’s motivation to create is like having extra tickets, and inviting your friends (especially the ones on home assignment from Indonesia) to come along, not because they need to come in order for you to get in, but because it feels great to share the joy of the game, both for you and for them. God sculpted this whole universe just because he knew how much pleasure we would get from exploring and using and living in it together.
God didn’t create to fulfill an obligation, he created because he loves us. His whole plan is just this: to create us for love, with him and with one another, to share his love with us, and to make us able to respond with real love of our own. The Father wanted to see us have the fun of enjoying our everyday lives in the presence of the Son through the Spirit. He wanted us to have the experience of falling in love and living in love with one another. His chief purpose in creation was to create for himself an expansive family of persons enough like himself—made holy, able to love—that he could shower his kindness on forever. Romans says that this was God’s plan all along, that “his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” (Ro 8:29) Of course, because of our sin it looked like we destroyed the plan, but even that could not stand in the way of God’s power to achieve his will-to-love.
That’s why God created, because God is love. He didn’t have to create, he made all this only because he knew we’d love it, and made us because he wanted to share the overflow of his life with us. His will-to-create is grounded in his will-to-love. God created because he loves us.
If I was preparing for accreditation I would . . .
• Make sure I understood the meaning of the term ex nihilo
• Memorize Ephesians 1:5 and Romans 8:29
• Rent Lars and the Real Girl starring Ryan Gosling with my mentor and talk about what it really means to love, and what that teaches us about why—and how—God created us (hint: the differences might be easier to spot than the similarities)
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