And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

There is very little argument over how this verse of Holy Scripture is to be translated. Almost every English version translates it the same way. Among the most interesting is Young’s literal translation which reads, "and God saith, 'Let light be;' and light is."

This is the earliest attribution of speech to the Creator. It takes place on the First Day of Creation. In fact, besides creating all things out of nothing, this is the first act of God we are given to know by the Holy Spirit: He spoke. In His speaking, creation is subject to bring about precisely the very thing He speaks.

Both explicit and implicit in speech is a recipient, or one who hearkens. Hence it is part and parcel of the creation from the beginning that it is subject to a Speaker, or a Giver. Our experience bears out in multitudinous ways the fundamental reality that nothing happens without cause and effect. So too, we confess that the Word of God blesses and sustains the creation as we know it, even in its fallen state.

Also explicit in speech, cause, effect, and creation as we know it are male and female, a complimentary arrangement whereby new life comes into being by mutual correlation, through a mutual give and take characterized chiefly by love.

Also explicit and implicit in this first speaking (and every speaking from God thereafter), is love. The words, “Let there be light” have a clinical sound about them to our weak hearing, but we have the full, retrospective account of Holy Scripture to attest that God is love. Therefore every word that proceeds from His mouth is characterized by the same.

Note the voice of this first speaking. It is not a question. It is not a declarative or descriptive sentence. It is not an exclamation. Nor is it vocative. We would call it a command (or imperative), and yet it is a command that brings into being, not a command for something that already exists to behave a certain way.

It is characteristic of a man to say, “Look at what I did,” or “Look at what I can do.” To speak this way is quite often the entire aim of a man so that he might be praised for his abilities and skills. Here the Holy Spirit teaches a man to think and speak otherwise, and to say, “Look at what God has done.”

A reading of Holy Scripture will reinforce this truth over and over again, so that a man is continually drawn not to himself and his accomplishments, but first to God, in whom and through whom and to whom are all things.
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