Creation Moment 2/28/2024 - A Good Creator

"When Paul spoke at Mars Hill, he went back to creation to challenge key errors held by the Epicureans and Stoics in his audience.
In Lystra, Paul and Barnabas similarly identified their God as the Creator of heaven and earth. 

That Paul could reference Genesis so often as a precedent for his theology indicates that teaching Gentile believers about creation was a key element of discipleship for Paul.

*God is a good Creator whose laws are beneficial. 

*And when we rebel against His law, He has the right, and even the obligation, to uphold those laws by judging those who break them.

To understand the origin of sin and why we have to be saved, we

need Genesis. The creation account in Genesis 1–3 makes it clear that God did not create the world to include sin and death, but that they were intruders introduced by Adam’s rebellion in Eden. 

Paul makes this especially clear in his great chapter on the Gospel and bodily resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15. Paul first defines the Gospel by which we are saved: believing in Christ’s atoning death, burial, and resurrection on the third day (vv. 1–4). But then he connects Jesus’ resurrection with the reason He came to die: the sin and death of Adam: For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (vv. 21–22).
A few verses on (v. 45), he explicitly calls Adam “the first man”, not one of a population of humans that evolved from a population of ape-like ancestors." 

CMI