January 4, 2022: Day 2 – Genesis 1-3 and John 1-3
January 4, 2022There is so much content in six chapters of Scripture that it might be helpful to at least give a brief outline of each of our readings. Genesis provides us with two creation accounts, what I like to call the creation account followed by the details of the creation of humans. Chapter 1 gives us the 7 days of creation, chapter 2 gives us the creation of humans, and chapter 3 gives us the betrayal of humans against God which continues as a theme throughout all of Scripture. We will see time and time again that God provides and gives gifts and we betray God even to the most simple things. But God remains faithful and even in the midst of God’s faithfulness we find that there are repercussions to our betrayal.
There is a word for that betrayal, and it is called sin. It is that sin which ultimately leads to our death, for as we read in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin are death. What we gain from our sin is death.
When we get to John we find John’s take on the creation narrative which has everything to do with the Word of God being present from the beginning of creation and that Word becomes flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Talk about a heavy dose of theology! This is our Christmas story that we just celebrated a week or so ago. Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior, is God, fully God. As disciples of Jesus Christ this basic truth has to be a building block to our faith. He is not just a good person, or a prophet, or someone that we ought to emulate, yes he is all those things, but he is God. Even the creator of the heavens and the earth.
That chapter then ends with John the Baptist calling Jesus the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and Jesus calls his disciples. The second chapter contains Jesus’ first miracle, which is that of changing water to wine. And then the third chapter has the visit of one of the main religious leaders of Jerusalem at the time who comes to Jesus at night and becomes a convert and one of his disciples.