Every work of the Spirit serves God’s eternal plan for his world and his people. In ordering God’s creation, beautifying Israel’s tabernacle, and bringing life to the First Adam and the Last Adam, the Spirit perfects and completes God’s eternal plan in history.

The first instance of the Spirit’s work appears in the opening verses of Scripture.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1–2

On day one of creation, God created all matter, time, and space. Think about it—before the first day of creation, all that existed was the triune God. There was not matter, time, or space. God created all of that on the first day.

But as Genesis 1:2 tells us, that space and matter—heaven and earth—was “without form and void.” Simply creating matter and space did not mean they were yet arranged in such a way so as to be inhabitable by human beings.

And so, it was the Spirit of God who hovered over the face of the waters as the person of the triune God who brought order to creation. The Hebrew term rûach can mean “breath,” “wind,” or “spirit,” depending on the context. The same is true in the New Testament of the term pneuma. We can have confidence that the term in Genesis 1:2 refers to the Holy Spirit because of the verb “hovering,” which would not fit “wind” or “breath.” Moses uses the same verb to describe God “hovering” over his people at the end of the Pentateuch as well, which appears to be a deliberate parallel with the opening verses of the Pentateuch (Dt 32:11).

Additionally, as we will soon note, Moses portrays deliberate parallels between the Spirit’s work in creating the world and his work in the creation of the tabernacle, further evidence that he intended rûach to refer to the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1:2. Similarly, Job states, “By his wind [rûach] the heavens were made fair” (26:13), and Job 33:4 clearly refers to the divine Spirit when it states, “The Spirit [rûach] of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

In other words, in the opening words of Scripture we find the Spirit of God actively involved in the work of creation. Indeed, in the opening chapter of Genesis we find all three persons of the triune God active in creation: God [the Father] created the heavens and the earth, he did so through his Word [the Son], and the work was brought to completion by his Spirit—these appropriations of the work of creation to persons of the godhead reflect their eternal relations of origin. Psalms 33:6 portrays this trinitarian act of creation: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath [rûach] of his mouth all their host.” So all three persons of the godhead were involved in creation, and as is true with all of God’s works, God performed the work through the Son, and that work was brought to perfection by the Spirit.

Thus, in the six days of creation, the Holy Spirit of God brought order to the cosmos—he brought to completion and perfection the creative activity of God. This orderliness is reflected in the Greek term cosmos, which the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses to characterize the finished work of creation: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host [cosmos] of them” (Gn 2:1). Paul uses this same term to describe creation in his sermon on Mars Hill: “The God who made the world [cosmos] and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.”

The Holy Spirit of God formed the cosmos, an ordered arrangement of heaven and earth such that creation displayed his own orderliness. This is why God declares his creation “good” (Gn 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). The Hebrew word implies more than just moral goodness; the term embodies the idea of aesthetic beauty and harmony. Creation is beautiful because it reflects the order and harmony of God himself.

Psalm 104 poetically embodies this idea of creation manifesting the beauty and order of God, identifying the person of the Trinity who brings about such wondrous creation:

³⁰ When you send forth your Spirit [rûach], they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.

The Holy Spirit of God, in his active work of creation, brought wondrous order to the world that God made.

Wisdom and Beauty

Notice also the particular quality that characterizes the Spirit’s work of creation in Psalm 104:24:

²⁴ O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

Wisdom is the quality the psalmist ties to the Spirit’s creative work, and this helps us to further confirm the nature of this first work of the Spirit. Wisdom is the capacity to fit things together as they ought to be, the skill to create harmony and order. Thus we should not be surprised when Proverbs 3:19 states that the Lord founded the earth by wisdom—by the skill to fit things together in a harmonious fashion.

This harmony and order of creation that was brought about by the Spirit of God is what we call beauty. Beauty is fittingness, order, and harmony. This is ultimately the Holy Spirit’s work in creation. As Ambrose of Milan noted, “After this world being created underwent the operation of the Spirit, it gained all the beauty of that grace, wherewith the world is illuminated.” The Holy Spirit is the beautifier.

Read More