11th July 2025

Creation is the act by which the Bible introduces us to God, and ‘Creator’ is the first name God reveals about himself in scripture. He is not a creator, or simply someone who creates, God is the creator. It is to this the Creed now turns. 

The Father, as the ‘Almighty’ is associated with the act of creation, but not to the exclusion of the Son and the Spirit. The creation is from the Father (as creative Source), through the Son (as creative Word), in the Holy Spirit (as creative Agent). While the Father has always been Father, there was a time when the Father was not Creator.¹ There was a time when there was no creation, but God became Creator and created the cosmos out of nothing.  

The reason for the creation is that it is not God’s will to exist for himself alone. The triune God, who is complete in himself, lacks nothing and so has no need for a creation. He did not create because he was lonely, or bored, or incomplete, rather because God is love: he wills to create in order to love his creation. As T. F. Torrance explains, ‘although God is wholly self-sufficient in the inner fellowship of his being, God does not will to exist for himself alone, but has freely and spontaneously brought a world into existence out of non-existence…upon whom he may bestow his bounty and with whom he may share his divine communion of love and personal being.’ ²  Torrance goes on to say, ‘The whole raison d’etre of the universe lies in the fact that God will not be alone, that he will not be without us, but has freely and purposely created the universe and bound it to himself as the sphere where he may ungrudgingly pour out his love and where we may enjoy communion with him.’ ³

God did not create ‘to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it’ ⁴  and the greatest communication of that glory is the good news that God wants to share his life with us. Just as God in the beginning could create everything out of nothing (Genesis 1:1), so he can also create spiritual life in us as we are born from above (John 3:1-8), and an eternal spiritual bodily life through the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). The ultimate purpose of creation is that God, who is the creator of all things (Colossians 1:16), may at last become ‘all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28), simultaneously displaying his eternal glory and our eternal joy (Psalm 16:11).

And so, the Creed’s assertion that we believe in God as creator as a means to share forever in his divine triune communion leads us into worship: ‘Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name; worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness.’ (Psalm 29:1-2).

¹ Torrance, T.F., The Trinitarian Faith, p 87.
²  ibid., pp 90-91.
³  ibid., pp 94-95.
⁴  St. Bonaventure, In II Sent. I, 2, 2, 1.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion West Hampstead 
Sidings Community Centre
150 Brassey Road
West Hampstead
London
NW6 2BA

Meeting time:
Sunday 12.30 pm

Local congregational contact:
Gordon Brown
gordon.brown@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:  
wordoflife@gracecom.church