Created for Communion with God: An Interview with Harrison Perkins

In Created for Communion with God: The Promise of Genesis 1 and 2, Harrison Perkins explains that the creation account of Genesis 1–2 is primarily about God and his relationship with human beings. These chapters are God’s word for God’s people, to summon us into communion with him.

In our interview below, Perkins discusses how the goal of Scripture is supposed to teach us foremost about God and our relationship with him.

Harrison Perkins is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC) and author of Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction.

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Lexham Press: Hello, Harrison. Can you tell us the story behind Created for Communion with God and describe its basic thesis.
Harrison Perkins: This book is about how the first purpose of Genesis is to address God’s people concerning our relationship with God. The story behind it is that it grew from teaching that I delivered to my church. It gripped me that I wanted to point people past the repeated debates about creation so that we would all think more deeply about our Creator.

LP: What contribution do you hope to make with your book?
Perkins: I hope that it encourages readers to remember that – whatever has been a point of focus for us in a particular passage – Scripture is supposed to teach us foremost about God and our relationship with him. If this book is able to bring people to think more theologically about well known passages of Scripture, I would be delighted.

LP: What did you find was a particularly surprising or enjoyable aspect of writing your book?
Perkins: My dear friend, Byron Weigler, asked me something about what he saw in Calvin’s commentary one day, which led to a whole section being added to this book. Church members who think deeply about God’s Word have stretched me to reflect more richly on Scripture.

LP: Last of all, can you share a surprising fact about yourself that only your friends would know?
Perkins: I roast my own coffee.

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In this excerpt from Created for Communion with God, Perkins presents Genesis 1 & 2 as an invitation into communion with God by exploring how he formed us for relationship with him.

The book of Genesis continually captures the church’s imagination, captivating our thoughts with its description of the origins of the entire universe and, all the more, our own species. We seem never to tire of revisiting what details about our beginnings or even our modern world we might pull from the canon’s opening narrative. Truly, our ongoing fascination with a short two or three chapters in the Bible shows how God has inspired the holy Scripture with inexhaustible riches.

Because the Scripture is primarily about God, our continued focus should perpetually unearth new riches about the Lord in his majesty. Our explorations into what Genesis 1–2 may teach about creation itself represent efforts to take the Bible seriously concerning every facet of God’s world. Still, we cannot let ourselves become so preoccupied with themes about creation that we neglect what the Bible says about the Creator.

The studies in this book emphasize the doctrine of God in Genesis 1–2, hoping to accentuate the creation story’s properly theological aspects. Truly, Genesis records genuine history. The purpose of that history is to teach us about God himself and our relationship with him. Wherever you may be among various positions concerning the creation week, the conclusions offered in this book are meant to be an agreeable baseline that expands on how Genesis points us above the created world to consider God’s transcendent glory.

The hope for these studies is that they provide encouragement for your soul, grounded in the biblical text, moving to truly theological reflections, and always culminating in how each passage of Scripture points us to the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. These studies intend to set your attention on God to stir up your soul to a joyful consideration of the One who made you. They focus emphatically on moving quickly to theological reflections, drawing out the implications for our lives, always driving the point toward our relationship with God. Given that God is the divine author of the Bible, these investigations take for granted that he inspired the Scripture with rich meaning that always points to Christ as the Savior, who is the scope and hope of all Scripture (Luke 24:27). These theological expositions, therefore, always end by drawing attention to the Lord Jesus and our hope for salvation in him. In this way, they invite us into communion with God by exploring how he formed us for relationship with him, looking at the universe’s first extraordinary days.