Saint George Antiochian Orthodox Church

God is love. This statement from Saint John’s first universal letter (I John 4:8), while simple, is incredibly profound and gives us a lens through which we can begin to understand the infinity of the Holy Trinity and our place in relation to him.

Before the universe was created, the only thing that existed was God’s love. God was complete in himself, and needed nothing.

God, however, decided to create beings that could share in his love, and he created the angels—real beings, as real as anything we see around us, except they are immaterial. The highest of the angels, the Archangel Lucifer, became filled with pride. He, along with one third of the angels, rejected God’s authority and fell, becoming Satan and the demons—also real beings who are present in our world.

At this time only the spiritual world existed. God then decided to create the material world, and this is where the Book of Genesis begins. God the Word brought matter out of nothingness (II Maccabees 7:28), and ordered the matter to become the universe and our world. God saw that the world was good, completely free of evil.

Then God made humans in his own image and likeness. As humans were created as the overflow of the Trinity’s love, we are created to love God, his creation, and others as God loves.