God created us from nothing. Therefore he owns everything and we own nothing.

We are going through the book None Like Him by Jen Wilkin. This series is going over the characteristics of God that Jen goes through in her book. Today we’re on the third chapter.

God was not created. He has always existed. And he created all things. “God speaks and the universe leaps into being. From nothing he creates something.” No one gave God life, but he has given life to us all.

What are the implications of God having created everything?

1. God is distinct from his created. Creation isn’t a part of God like some believe. He is separate from us because he’s our origin.
2. God owns everything because he made it!

“Because he owns everything, he’s responsible for it’s care and has the right to do with it as he wishes. Because we have created nothing and own nothing, we have no rights before our Maker, nor is there any way we can obligate him to us.” This means it’s silly to think we have the right to do things our own way, no matter how we feel, if God has said that we’re to do it another way.

However, he has given us the responsibility of stewarding the things he’s given us and nurturing the lives he’s placed in our path. But sin has marred our vision and instead of seeing the earth and those people who live in it as entrusted to our care, we see them as objects of worship. Things get thrown away because we don’t want it anymore. Married couples get divorced because their spouse doesn’t meet their needs. People jump from job to job because they don’t feel fulfilled.

“Worship of the creation is actually a veiled form of self-worship. People and things only have value to us when they satisfy our desires and cravings, but are cast off once they fail to meet our desires.”
Jen Wilkin (None Like Him)

Many times we confuse stewardship with ownership; we convince ourselves that we’re like God in our ability to create something from nothing and seek to build ourselves and kingdom, not realizing all we have is a gift from the Lord. Our families, our jobs, our ministry. We work hard to get where we want to be in these areas. We sacrifice our time, money and talents to make them what we want them to be. We think “we deserve credit for creating that which we are called to steward.” We worship ourselves when we take the credit for sacrificing for our kids, building our career from scratch, meeting a need in ministry.

All worship is owed to God, not because he demands it, but because he made us. Click To Tweet

However, “All worship is owed to God, not because he demands it (although he rightly does), but because he made us. He is our origin. And anything good that we build or accomplish or ‘create’ originates not in us but in him.” Our value doesn’t come from what we do in life. “Our value, yours and mine, derives form our origin.” God created us and our value comes from him! We are free to use the creativity God has given us to glorify him, the creator of everything. We’re free to love others, not expecting to be glorified in return, but giving all the glory to the one who loved us first. We’re free to rely on God when our hope has dwindled to nothing. “We cannot create hope where there is hopelessness or love where there is lovelessness. We cannot create repentance where there is unrepentance, but we can cry out to the God who can.”

In the beginning God created something from nothing with his word. His word is Jesus Christ, who became flesh. And through his death and resurrection on the cross, he’s still at work creating new creations today:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come”
2 Corinthians 5:17

In him we’ve been given good works to do – using our creative gifts given to us to show Jesus Christ to this sin-broken world. Our creator God has given us gifts – let’s use them as a steward – not for our glory but for his.

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