T. Justin Comer

We (hopefully) read the Bible daily. It isn’t daily that the Bible decides to read us. I’ve been stuck in Genesis 1-3 for a month. Every time I go anywhere else, I find myself back there somehow. I’ve read Ephesians, Mark, and attempted to read the rest of Genesis and somehow still ending up in Genesis 1-3…
I’ve read these passages a thousand times. I’ve turned the stones and walked these words forward and backward, and yet the past month or so I’ve been seeing something. It’s been building. It’s been forming. It has opened the door to an entire cathedral that I had never before seen. The pieces suddenly clicked together, and I cannot recover from the sight of it.
There is a universe in the Bible, and not just a collection of stories and oracles. Genesis presents reality at its most basic layer. It speaks on every branch of theology and Scripture: God, eternality, ontology/being, anthropology/human vocation, priesthood/mediation, sacrifice, deception, sin/disobedience, ruling and reigning, cosmology, salvation/covering, and so much more. And it weaves all of these things so fluently that it’s as if you cannot separate them without destroying each subject individually.
Genesis feels alive, because it describes the structure of reality before you even learn how to live inside of it.
How many times have you read Genesis 1-3 as a description of “what happened”? Me too. I’ve oft considered Torah the foundation of the rest of the Scripture. If you cannot understand the first 5 books of the Bible, then the rest of the Scripture will also be affected. I’ve begun to be convinced that the fullness of everything else in Scripture is found in seed form within these first three chapters. Genesis 1, 2, and 3 are structural and architectural.
Genesis isn’t answering surface questions. It isn’t telling us “what happened.”
Genesis is telling us what is.
“Let there be” is about order in chaos. It’s about progression. It’s about manifestation. It’s about Divine self limitations to enter time and space for the sake of fellowship (Philippians 2:6-8 logic before the incarnation). It’s about what kind of space God made, and the way it functions, and what all of the various aspects in the cosmos are meant to be and do. God made all, shaped all, filled all, progressed all, maintained all, sustained all, and brought all into rest through His speech.
Genesis is the seed of:
Ontology — what it means to be
Cosmology — where reality is going
Anthropology — what it means to be human
Psychology — why humans fracture
Christology — what humanity becomes
It says that darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit moved, or hovered, over the waters. Those “depths” reflect like a mirror, and if we turn aside to see the thing that we originally thought to be formless and void, we might also feel as that same Spirit hovers over us, stirring us through the same process that led to rest.
This is the first installment of a series of the things I’ve seen. I have seen something. I can’t say I fully understand it yet. But, much like Isaiah, who saw the Lord high and lifted up, and he cried out due to the reality that was revealed, so too have these verses and passages revealed something in me.
God isn’t finished speaking. He still stirs with His Spirit. He still forms and shapes. He still provides. He still dwells and walks with us. And, He still asks, “Where are you?”