The Bible says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…”
Theistic evolution says: “In the beginning God created the Big Bang.”
In spite of what the Bible clearly says, just how God created has been the subject of much debate over the years. On the one hand, the Bible says that God created everything in six ordinary days using nothing but His Word. On the other hand, theistic evolution says that God started the universe going and let everything develop through evolution. According to this false teaching each “day” in the Creation account represents a few million–or even a billion–years.
What one believes about how God created speaks volumes about one’s attitude toward Scripture and the power of God.
Christians who disregard God’s Word and prefer to believe that God created via evolution would like to have it both ways. They say that they can believe in God the Creator, but that because of the “overwhelming scientific evidence” regarding evolution, they feel that one is forced to believe that God must have created by way of evolution. They go on to say that it’s only creation and that it doesn’t impact their faith in Christ their Savior.
But how can it not impact faith? In order to believe that God created via evolution, one must toss out or distort at least the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. If one begins to pick and choose which parts of the Bible to believe, while ignoring or throwing out other parts, then the whole Book becomes suspect (What’s true and what’s not? Is any of it true?).
The Bible says that God created all things using only His Word in six twenty-four hour days. “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3).
The Bible says that Jesus is my Savior, who has taken away all of my sins and has won for me and all people God’s forgiveness and life eternal, for we have been “reconciled with God through the death of His Son” (Rom. 5:10). The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, has washed away all of our sins (1 Jn. 1:7).
God’s Word Is Truth
How do we know this? God says so in His Word. There is no other way for me to know other than from the Word of God. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9). Apart from God’s Word it is not possible for me to know and trust in Jesus as my Savior from sin.
What does evolution have to do with justification? Apart from the fact that it excuses man of responsibility for his sins, and therefore removes any need for God’s forgiveness, evolution impacts our faith in our Savior at its source.
If I don’t believe that God’s account of creation is accurate, how can I be sure that what God says about the forgiveness of my sins is accurate? If it might not be true, how can I have complete trust in Christ as my Savior? As we learned in Confirmation class: “If part of the Bible is not true, then the rest of it might not be true too.”
The scriptural account of creation is important for our salvation because it speaks to the certainty of our faith. All of the Bible is the Word of God, verbally inspired by God the Holy Spirit–word for word and without error–for “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:21).
Therefore we can be and should be certain that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” just as God presents His eyewitness account in Genesis. Because all of God’s Word is true and accurate we can also be certain that God did send His Son Jesus to suffer and die in our place to pay for our sins. And we can believe without doubt that our sins are forgiven.
We can believe all of this without doubt because God says so in His Word and, as the Bible teaches: “the Scripture cannot be broken” (Jn. 10:35).
–Pastor Joel Fleischer