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The answer to this question seems to be found in the very being of God Himself. Let
us pursue our enquiry with wondering hearts, for we are drawing near the holiest of all.
While some things may be known of God from the works of His hands, such as His
eternal or invisible power and Godhead (Rom. 1: 20)--so much so that the nations who
fell into idolatry were without excuse--there are other things concerning His nature that
are outside the sphere of evidence and beyond the range of reason. God is spirit, but that
does not necessitate creation. God is light, but it is not self-evident that God, Who is
light, should create the universe. But God also is love; and here we pause. Is it not
self-evident that for love to abide alone, with none but self to love, with no opportunity to
express itself in giving, to say nothing of sacrificing, is in the very nature of things
impossible? All Scripture unites to testify that love must give. All Scripture shows that
sacrifice is never far removed from love, and we may take without reservation the
statement of the Apostle in its widest sense:
"He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love" (I John 4: 8).
However married human love may now be by the presence of sin, there is nevertheless
in human love, the love of husband and wife (Eph. 5: 25), the love of parent and child,
the love of brethren, something which is the same in kind, though not in purity or degree,
as that which dwells in the very heart of God. Human love, even apart from the
illuminating and quickening of the Spirit, expresses itself in self-sacrifice:
"For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some
would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5: 7, 8).
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"
(John 15: 13).
If, then, it is self-evident that love must express itself, that it must have an object upon
which to bestow its gifts, it is clear that we have an answer to the question as to why God,
Who is self-sufficient and perfect in Himself, should have felt it necessary to create
heaven and earth, and to take upon Himself not only the initial launching of the universe,
but its upholding moment by moment. The answer to the question must be, that He did it
because He is love. When He made man in His own likeness, a living soul and a rational
moral being, He knew that His creature could not be deprived of freedom of choice
without denying his very nature. In His perfect foreknowledge He knew that, when He
launched creation, it would one day cause Him "grief", "repentance" and "anger"--and
that it would demand at length nothing less than giving up of "His beloved Son". If we
still ask, Why, knowing all this, did He create heaven and earth? the answer must still be,
Because God is love.
This fact not only lies at the threshold of Scripture; it is found again full-orbed at its
consummation. The closing pages of Revelation reveal the goal of the ages, expressed in
terms of a Father at home with his family (Rev. 21: 3). Or, as I Cor. 15: 28 suggests,