I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Happy New Year!

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 1-3.

There are three stories in today’s passage: two different, unrelated, stories about creation and one story about original sin.  The first story contains a few points that I want to bring out today.  God made mankind in His own image.  We were given the ability to be more than slaves to our physical wants and needs.  As part of that, He gave us dominion over the rest of Creation.  That does not mean that we may destroy and kil purely for our own enjoyment.  Instead, God gave us dominion over the earth in order to manage it and care for it.  Just as God tells us that the job of being a leader of people is to serve the needs of those being lead, so having dominion over the earth means serving the interests of those things over which we have dominion (what that means is more involved than I want to go into at this time).  The final point I want to mention is that this first story of creation establishes the week as the basis for scheduling human activity and the fact that we need one day of rest out of seven.

The second story of creation is about the creation of humankind. We can discuss the meanings of the elements of this story in many ways. However, I believe that the most important meaning from this story is that men and women were created to be complimentary to each other and that marriage was created by God as a unique kind of partnership between a man and a woman. The nature of this unique partnership stems from the distinct differences between men and women. I think that I am on solid ground drawing this conclusion, since Jesus Himself referenced this passage when discussing marriage and divorce.

The third story is directly connected to the second story and may not truly be a separate story, but it makes a separate point. In this story, when Adam and Eve sinned, God did not reject them, they withdrew from God. God came looking for them as He had every previous day, but this time they hid from Him. God still comes looking for us, because of our sin our natural reaction is to hide from God. Just as God made clothes to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, so He sent Jesus to cover our sin. If we accept the covering which God has given us we can walk with Him once more.