#8 On the Nature of God: What God did for Man

The nature of God is that He is an eternal Spirit with great mental and creative power. In Genesis 1, He created life and a beautiful earth for the habitation of mankind. On the seventh day, He rested and blessed that day. This means that once God had created the earth, it was such a special place that further creation was unnecessary.

Something more can be learned about the nature of God by examining a summary of His work on day 6, Genesis 2:5-9:

“When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up— for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

These verses repeat the creation of man, Genesis 1:27. However, additional detail is supplied. God breathed life into the man so that he became a living creature. This action is not used for any other living being. Man was special.

In addition, God planted a garden and placed the man in the midst of it. At the same time, God gave Adam something to do and a code to live by, Genesis 2:15-17:

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The assignment was to work and keep the garden, probably an easy task since God had designed it and, no doubt, arranged it to be pleasant and beautiful. The law or code to live by was that the man was forbidden to eat of one special tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve thought the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked good, Genesis 3:6

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise… “

The nature of God is not only to arrange a wonderful place for man to live, but also to be thoughtful of His creation’s emotional wellbeing. When God presented all the animals to Adam to name them, none was found to be suitable to expel his loneliness.

God then induced the man to fall into a deep sleep, took one his ribs, made it into a woman, and brought her to him, Genesis 2:22-23:

“And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Several useful points emerge from this presentation by God of the woman to the man:

  1. God did not make a new man and present him as a proper companion. A woman is the proper companion for man.
  2. Neither did God make more than one woman for the man although the man had 23 other unused ribs. God gave the man only one woman.
  3. The will of God for a marriage of a man and a woman was expressed in Genesis 1:24:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Thus, God initiated the first marriage and home. We know this because of what Jesus said about this verse when asked about divorce, Matthew 19:4-6:

“He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Note Jesus’ language. He said that what happened in the first marriage was “from the beginning.” This means that God instituted marriage when He brought the woman to the man, intended marriage to be permanent, and always be one man and one woman.

The nature of God was to provide a beautiful place for man to live in and to have a woman as his companion.

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