From the first verse of Scripture, God’s Word establishes that meaning and existence do not spring from human autonomy but from divine initiative. Bereshith bara Elohim eth hashamayim ve’eth ha’aretz – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Before any human desire, thought, or act, God was. This priority of the Creator stands as the foundation of biblical ontology.

The Key Problem: The Modern Self-Creation Project

Modern culture whispers with deceptive subtlety that we author our own story. Identity, it says, flows from self-expression; meaning arises from our ambitions; truth bends to our perspective. Descartes’ cogito ergo sum echoes in popular form: “I think, therefore I am.” This is the new creed of self-worship.

Yet Scripture thunders in response: “Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps 100:3). The Hebrew verb asah (“he made us”) grounds identity not in personal creation but divine formation. Augustine warns against turning inward to find meaning apart from God, writing in Confessions 1.1, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Inevitable Progression: From Divine Creation to Restful Identity

Paul teaches that “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things were created through him and for him” (Col 1:16). We are not cosmic accidents in search of purpose but intentional creations embedded with divine design. The apostle further writes, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).

Isaiah’s imagery remains our guide: “But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isa 64:8). Clay does not instruct the potter but yields to his forming touch. Bavinck rightly concludes that “only in submission to the Creator does the creature find freedom” (RD 2.562).

Concluding Reflection

True freedom and identity are not discovered through the exhausting burden of self-creation but are received through resting in God’s eternal design. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:13–14). Our worth lies not in our own hands but in the One who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11).

Here lies our hope. In Christ, we do not find the death of individuality but its fulfillment within the grand symphony of God’s eternal purposes. As John Owen writes in Communion with God (Works, vol. 2, p. 38), “To be known by God, to be owned by him, is the foundation of all true comfort.”