Elohim, God

[Genesis 1:1 NKJV]

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Where do we begin when we speak of God?

At the beginning, where Scripture itself begins.

The question of why there is something rather than nothing confronts us with a question only one answer can satisfy: something must be self-existent.

Science can describe how the universe behaves, and it can trace chains of causes back astonishingly far. But it cannot finally answer why anything exists at all, or identify the foundation on which reality rests.

Different worldviews answer this question differently. Some hold that God is the self-existent foundation of all things. Others hold that the universe itself, matter, energy, or natural laws, simply is, requiring no cause or explanation. Still others treat existence as a brute fact, or dismiss the question as unanswerable.

Scripture offers a clear answer: Before anything existed, Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) was. Scripture reveals to us a personal Creator instead of impersonal matter, an intentional will instead of blind forces, and provides proof of the nature, character, will and personhood of this Power in the texts after Genesis 1:1.

Not only was Elohim self-existing, He also created. Elohim stands before creation, above it, and untouched by its limits. And then He created, not from pre-existing materials, not out of need, but out of will. From nothing, by His word alone.

Notice the name. Elohim. It is the very first thing Scripture tells us about God, before His mercy, before His covenant, before His law. Power comes first. The root (El) speaks of might, strength, and supreme authority. And yet there is something strange about the word. Elohim is grammatically plural, a form that, in other contexts, would mean "gods." But here, and throughout the Old Testament, it takes singular verbs. "In the beginning Elohim created", not "created" as many, but as One.

Scholars have debated why, whether it is a plural of majesty, or an early whisper of what later revelation makes explicit: one God in three persons.

This is where the name lands for us. If Elohim is the foundation of all that exists, then existence itself is not neutral. It is authored by a will beyond our will or anything created after the beginning.

And if that is true of the cosmos, it is true of you.

You are not a random reshuffling of atoms that happened to become aware of itself. You exist because Elohim, the Mighty One, the Creator, the God who speaks things into being, willed you into existence by His Word and formed you by His Spirit in time.

May the grace of God through Christ be with you.