What happened before the beginning?

A friend of mine went through a phase of preaching about Genesis a lot - to the point that we would tease him that 'it all begins in Genesis'.  One big focus he had was on God as Creator..."In the beginning God created...." and we are created in God's image so we are made to be creative too.

But if you read Genesis chapter 1 you'll see that God already existed before He created anything.  So what was He doing before He created? Genesis chapter 1 and John chapter 1 together paint a picture of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit all existing in relationship together before the universe began.  So even more fundamentally than being Creator, God is Father. Before He ever created He was already Father.

What implications does this have for us and how we view God and our relationship with Him?

The Bible talks constantly about God's grace and that we are saved by grace not works.  Despite this we still seem to have this idea in the back of our minds that if we do good things that makes us a good person who will be accepted by God and if we do bad things it makes us a bad person ("sinner") who will be rejected by God.  As mentioned in a previous blog post (http://www.smallstace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/are-you-cursed.html ), this is utter heresy, known as Pelagianism. Or maybe we don't go quite as far as Pelagius - perhaps we accept God's forgiveness as an act of grace, but then from that point on live the rest of our lives as if we owe Him something and are still trying to pay back that debt.

As a soon to be parent, the theme of Father/Son relationships described throughout the Bible has new meaning to me. I am not having this baby because I want anything from him. I'm not expecting him to look after me or do things for me or give me stuff or do anything to earn my love. (In fact I'm expecting to give my life over to doing things for him and get nothing in return!).  Instead, I am having this baby because my husband and I love each other very much and we want to share that love with another and draw someone else into the loving relationship that we have. I will not be keeping a record of his rights and wrongs in order to weigh them up and decide whether to love him.  My reason for loving him will be only based on his identity as my son.

For this same reason we were created. In the beginning God the Father was loving the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Son, desiring to share the love the Father lavishes on him, chose to lavish love on us. We do not need to earn this love, only to be open to receive it as a free gift!

"God destined us to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ because of his love. This was according to his goodwill and plan  and to honor his glorious grace that he has given to us freely through the Son whom he loves." Ephesians 1:5-6