Genesis 1:31

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. . . .

Q: What else did God Create?
A: God created all things by his powerful Word, and all his creation was very good; everything flourished under his loving rule.

In the beginning, God created the world in six days. After each of his acts of creation, God declares his work to be “good” (with the notable exceptions of when there was a heaven without an earth in Gen. 1:8, and when there was a man without a woman in Gen. 2:18). At the completed act of creation, God surveys all that he had made, and declares it to be “very good.” All the individual pieces of creation are good because God created them to be so, and because God declares them as such; creation inherits its goodness from God. Taken as a whole, as a completed act, God’s creation was very good.

The goodness of God’s character extends to his creation. And all of creation is very good in so far as it reflects God’s character. When God declares his creation to be very good, he is affirming creation’s original design and intent: to reflect and display God’s power, goodness, beauty, majesty, and love. To show his character. John Calvin writes that:

Correctly then is this world called the mirror of divinity; not that there is sufficient clearness for man to gain a full knowledge of God, by looking at the world, but that he has thus so far revealed himself, that the ignorance of the ungodly is without excuse. Now the faithful, to whom he has given eyes, see sparks of his glory, as it were, glittering in every created thing. The world was no doubt made, that it might be the theatre of the divine glory.

God’s creation points to him in such a way as to make it impossible NOT to see his handiwork. It demonstrates that God has created and that he is sustaining.

Further, God created by his powerful word: he spoke creation into existence. However, in the New Testament, we get a fuller picture of what is mean by God’s Word. In the first chapter of John, we read “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and without him was not anything made that was made.” So God’s powerful word, by which creation was made, is Jesus Christ himself.

So, Christ created all things very good: in the beginning everything was as God intended it to be. Creation was in perfect harmony with its creator: everything flourished under his loving rule. This is epitomized by the Old Testament concept of Shalom, often translated as “peace” in our English bible. In his book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Cornelius Plantinga offers this definition of shalom:

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight…Shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.… The full flourishing of human life in all aspects, as God intended it to be.

Shalom, therefore, is a much richer and deeper concept than the simple absence of conflict. It is the complete, perfect, and fruitful harmony between God, man, and the rest of creation. And when creation is in harmony with the creator, everything flourishes.

Obviously, this is not the case today. Sin has broken shalom and has brought death and decay into the world. Christ the creator is denied and openly rebelled against by we his creatures. Our harmonious relationship with God, with man, and with the rest of the created order is broken.

But it’s not going to stay that way. There is a redeemer, and his name is the Prince of Peace. He will restore all things, and it will be very good.