A Day Without a Sun: MacArthur on the First Three Days of Creation

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If God made the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day of creation, what exactly governed the first three? A congregant named Andrew put that question to John MacArthur, and the answer turns on a distinction we tend to collapse: light is not the same thing as the sun. What follows is his reply:

ANDREW (questioner): Hello, Pastor John. My name is Andrew, and I have a question on the first seven days of creation in Genesis.

DR. MACARTHUR: On what?

ANDREW: The first seven days of creation in Genesis.

DR. MACARTHUR: Sure. Six days. Sure. Seventh day, God rested.

ANDREW: So Genesis 1:14 through 19 describes how God made the sun, moon, and stars on day four of creation, and then he put them in the sky for signs, seasons, days, and years. A day, scientifically, is defined as the rotation of the earth around its axis one time. So before day four, there was no sun, so you wouldn’t have what we think of today as a day. So can you shine some light on what this means, from other passages in Scripture, on what a day is?

DR. MACARTHUR: Well, a day is one cycle that you just described, of the earth’s rotation, right? That’s a day, morning and evening. Your question, of course, is that you don’t have the creation of the sun at the very beginning. So you have to have a day without a sun, right? Correct? That is the question.

And my answer is, okay, you have a day without a sun. I don’t see that as a problem. You don’t have, until verse 14, the actual lights, the sun and the moon, and yet you have three days of creation leading up to that. So you have light then, the existence of light without a sun and without a moon. That simply means that light existed. It existed in some form that was consistent with a single rotation of the earth.

In the beginning of Genesis, “Let there be light,” there was light. Now, light is not the body from which it is reflected. Light is not the sun, and light is not the moon. Light is light. Light was created, and darkness was created also, on the first day. So there was light and darkness.

Without the celestial bodies, there was still light, there was still darkness and light, there was still morning, there was still evening. That’s as far as I can take it. But again, I think it’s so explicit that God is intending to communicate to us this actual one rotation of the earth kind of cycle that we know as morning and evening.

The phenomenon itself doesn’t have to be explained scientifically. For what reason? Because creation cannot be explained scientifically. But to help you with that: when scientists try to explain creation, they are trying to do the impossible, because there is no scientific explanation for creation. Let me tell you why.

Once, there was only God, and there was nothing. And then, instantaneously, there was light. And then there was water. Then there was heaven. Then there was dry land. Then there were plants. Then there were celestial bodies. Then there were living creatures. Then there were humans. And that all happened in six days. There is no scientific explanation for that. Anybody who thinks you could explain that scientifically is out of their mind. Nothing existed, and then the entire universe came into existence in six days. That is a divine miracle.

There is no scientific explanation for the resurrection of Lazarus. There’s no scientific explanation for the resurrection of anybody, including our Lord. There’s no scientific explanation for Jesus creating food to feed probably 20,000 people. There’s no scientific explanation for that.

Science is out of the discussion when you have a miracle. And the most massive miracle was the creation of the entire universe in six days. That has no scientific explanation. So to pose a question into the first chapter of Genesis about the science of it is alien to the entire event itself. You start with nothing, and ex nihilo, out of nothing, comes everything, by the massive power of God. That’s all we need to know. And if God says it was evening and morning, it was equal to the rotation of that one cycle that’s so familiar to us. If it was equal to that, then even before those bodies existed, then that’s exactly what God intended us to understand. Okay?

Why Do We Keep Moving Churches?

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Jeffrey Johnson writes:

Finding a Church

The Son: “Dad, why do we keep moving from one church to another? Just when I was making friends at the church in Ephesus, we moved to Smyrna, then to Pergamum, then to Thyatira, then to Sardis, and then to Philadelphia. I really loved that church. And now we’re leaving the church in Laodicea? I just wish we could settle down and remain part of a church family.”

The Father: “Son,” the wise father replied, “the church is not what it used to be. When I was your age, the apostles were still alive and overseeing the churches. Now only one apostle remains—John—and there isn’t much he can do, for he is imprisoned on the island of Patmos. But when I was young, the apostolic church was vibrant and full of life. I remember when the believers were fully devoted to the apostles’ teaching and to breaking bread together. Back then, no one lacked anything because they took care of their own. Those were the good old days.”

The Son: “But I thought you and Mom really liked the church in Ephesus. Didn’t you agree with its doctrine? And unlike the other churches, it takes personal holiness seriously and practices church discipline.”

The Father: “All those things are true, and they are very important to your mother and me. We didn’t leave because of those things. It had all the marks of a healthy church without being healthy. We left because the church had left its first love. There was something missing—something very important. Sometimes, my dear son, a person can do everything right on the outside and still be missing something vital on the inside. Though your mother and I couldn’t quite put our finger on it, we both agreed that we could not remain in such a church.”

The Son: “So that’s why we left Ephesus. But what about Smyrna? I thought that church was one of the best we had ever attended.”

The Father: “In many ways, it was. But, son, your mother and I couldn’t stay there. We were too concerned for your safety. We learned that the authorities were watching the pastors and even some members of the congregation. The church was too provocative, and the preacher couldn’t leave controversial topics alone. It was no longer safe for us to stay.”

The Son: “Then why didn’t we stay in Pergamum?”

The Father: “At first, we really enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere. Coming from Smyrna, it was refreshing. Yet, in time, it became evident that the atmosphere was a bit too relaxed. There were no safeguards over the teaching ministry. There was no way your mother and I could remain in a church where false teaching was welcomed.”

The Son: “And Thyatira?”

The father sighed deeply.

The Father: “Thyatira was a difficult place. There were many loving and devoted believers there. In fact, their works of service were increasing. But it seemed that the more the church sought to impact the world, the more the world impacted the church. There was little accountability and no real church discipline.”

The Son: “I never understood why we left Sardis. Wasn’t it a growing and thriving church?”

The Father: “Yes, the church was growing, but it was hard for your mother and me to find true spiritual fellowship. We stayed as long as we could, but in the end, it became evident that we needed to leave, even if it meant moving again.”

The son walked quietly for a moment.

The Son: “Philadelphia was my favorite.”

The father smiled.

The Father: “Yes, but just as Sardis was too big, Philadelphia was too small. There were no special programs for the youth, and for years the church had hardly grown at all. We simply didn’t feel that we could get plugged in there.”

The Son: “Then why are we leaving Laodicea?”

The father paused before answering.

The Father: “To be honest, son, your mother and I can’t tell whether it is cold or hot. At times it seems zealous, but for the most part it appears content to remain lukewarm.”

The son looked at his father thoughtfully.

The Son: “Dad, do you think the church will ever get back to the good old days? Do you think we’ll ever be able to settle down and remain faithful to one church? Do you think there will ever be a church that you and Mom are completely happy with? Will there ever be a church without sin to overcome or tribulation to endure?”

The Father: The old man was silent for a moment.

“Maybe not in our lifetime, son. But I’m sure that 2,000 years from now, things will be different.”

The Son: “Dad, until then, don’t you think it’s better to remain faithful to an imperfect church—one that Christ continues to speak to, rebuke, and correct—than to forsake the local assembly altogether?”

The Father: The old man smiled.

“My boy, shouldn’t you be fetching some fresh water for your mother so she can get dinner started?”

Imputed Righteousness: The Heart of Justification

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Stand a guilty man before a holy God and ask what he needs, and the answer runs deeper than most expect. He needs his sins forgiven. Yet forgiveness, considered by itself, would leave him with an empty record and still no positive righteousness to stand in. The law of God does not merely forbid; it commands. It says, “You shall not,” and also says, “You shall.” A clean slate, as wonderful as that is, is not a kept law. So the gospel must answer two questions at once: how can a sinner’s guilt be canceled, and where will he find the necessary righteousness? The Reformation’s answer to the second question, the answer of Scripture long before it was the answer of any confession, rests on a single word that has fallen on hard times in our day: imputation.

The Denial

The doctrine has its modern critics, and one of the clearest and most memorable forms of the objection comes from N. T. Wright. Righteousness, he wrote, is not “an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom,” and a judge does not transfer his own righteousness to the defendant (What Saint Paul Really Said, Eerdmans, 1997, p. 98). If imputation meant passing a substance across the room, the objection would land. It never meant that. And he is right about something further: a judge cannot simply hand his own righteousness across the bench. But the Reformed have never taught that God transfers His own judicial integrity, the righteousness He has as Judge, to the defendant. What is credited to the believer is Christ’s mediatorial righteousness, the obedience and satisfaction He rendered as the incarnate covenant head of His people, reckoned to everyone joined to Him by faith.

A Forensic Reckoning

Imputation, at its root, is a forensic reckoning. Forensic is simply a courtroom word. In justification it describes the verdict God hands down and the standing He grants, rather than the inward renewal He works in regeneration and sanctification. The word Paul reaches for again and again in Romans 4, eleven times in that one chapter, is logizomai. It can mean to consider or to calculate, but here its accounting sense is unmistakable: to credit, to reckon, to set to one’s account. Paul takes up Abraham: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3, citing Genesis 15:6). And lest we think faith is itself the merit being counted, he adds that God “counts righteousness apart from works” (Romans 4:6). Not infused. Not earned. Counted. Picture a ledger rather than a gas tank. The Judge does not pour a substance into the defendant. He enters a verdict and assigns a standing, and He does so on the basis of a righteousness that is truly Another’s.

Whose Righteousness?

Whose righteousness? “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). There is the great exchange: our sin laid on Christ at the cross, and in Him a righteousness from God made ours. “By the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Paul’s own longing was to be found in Christ, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but … the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9). A righteousness from God, received, never manufactured.

Union with Christ, and the Charge of Legal Fiction

Now notice something. Critics of imputation often treasure the language of being “in Christ,” of union with Him. Good. But that is exactly where imputation lives. Union with Christ is no rival to imputed righteousness; it is the saving bond by which Christ and all His benefits become ours. We are not credited with a righteousness hanging free in the air. We are credited with the righteousness of the One to whom the Spirit has joined us through faith. Calvin saw this and called it a double grace (Institutes 3.11.1): united to Christ, we receive at once both justification and sanctification, never the one without the other. It is what the older preachers meant when they turned a trembling sinner away from himself and toward “The Lord our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6). So the man who treasures “in Christ” has every reason to keep imputation and none to deny it. To let it go is to saw off the branch he is sitting on.

This is also the answer to the oldest complaint lodged against the doctrine, that imputed righteousness is a legal fiction, God pretending a guilty man is innocent and calling something true that is not. The charge would have force if the credited righteousness floated free of the person, a bare entry in a book with no reality behind it. It does not float free. The reckoning rests on a real appointment and a real, Spirit-wrought bond. Christ was set apart by the Father as Mediator, surety, and covenant head of His people, and He kept the law and bore its curse in that office, as one acting for the many. This is the structure of Romans 5. As by Adam’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of the last Adam the many are made righteous (Romans 5:18–19). The representative act of the covenant head settles the standing of all whom He represents. The Spirit then joins the represented sinner to his Representative by faith, and through that living bond what Christ accomplished becomes his own. God does not call us righteous while we stand alone and unrelated to Christ. He counts us righteous in Christ, our covenant head, and that union is no fiction, so neither is the verdict.

But Did Paul Mean Covenant Membership?

A fair hearing must reckon with more than the courtroom illustration, because Wright offers a constructive reading of his own. “The righteousness of God” (dikaiosynē theou), he argues, refers first to God’s own covenant faithfulness, His saving justice, rather than a righteousness handed to the believer. Justification, on this account, is God’s declaration that a person belongs to the covenant family, marked out by faith. There is a real point here. dikaiosynē theou can carry the sense of God’s own saving righteousness in certain texts, and justification does indeed declare a status rather than infuse a quality. The Reformed have always said as much: the verdict is declarative.

The question is what Paul says about the standing of the believing sinner, and on that question Romans 4 will not bend. Righteousness is “counted” to the ungodly man who believes, “apart from works” (Romans 4:5–6). That is reckoning language. The righteousness is set to the account of the man himself, the one who has no works to show. Philippians 3:9 places a righteousness “of my own” over against a righteousness “from God,” a possession received from outside, which a badge of covenant membership does not capture. And 2 Corinthians 5:21 holds its two halves in a tight parallel: He was made sin who knew none, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Set beside Romans 5:19, that exchange points to a righteous standing received in Christ rather than produced by us. (Wright reads “become the righteousness of God” there as the apostles embodying God’s covenant faithfulness in their ministry. The reading exists, and honest exposition should name it. Yet the structure of the sentence, sin for righteousness, His for ours, in Him, presses the other way.)

There is a deeper matter still. A verdict needs a ground. Scripture itself will not let the point go: “He who justifies the wicked … is an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15). A bare acquittal of the guilty, with nothing standing in their place, is the very thing God condemns in a judge. So, when the Judge declares a sinner righteous, and the declaration is true and no pretense, something must make it true.

Wright does give the death and resurrection of the Messiah a central place here, and that is to his credit. In his most focused treatment he makes it the whole of what is reckoned, calling it a “category mistake” to suppose that Christ obeyed the law and so secured a righteousness credited to those who believe; what is reckoned, he says, is Christ’s death and resurrection, and not His righteousness (Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, IVP, 2009, p. 232). But naming the event that secures the verdict is not yet the same as naming the righteousness on which the ungodly may be declared righteous. Covenant faithfulness on God’s side explains why He acts to save. It does not by itself supply the righteousness the sinner lacks and the law requires. A true verdict over the ungodly calls for a righteousness that answers the law’s demand, and only a righteousness reckoned, Christ’s own, answers the need.

Why It Is the Heart

And this is why it is the heart. Justification is more than the canceling of our guilt. Forgiveness deals with the debt, and thank God it does. But the law does not only forbid sin; it requires righteousness, a positive obedience we have never offered. Pardon alone, were that all God gave, would leave us with a clean record and still no righteousness to show. God gives more. He does not only refuse to count our sins against us; He counts us righteous in Christ.

Zechariah saw it in a vision. Joshua the high priest stands in filthy garments, and the command goes out, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Then the promise follows: “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments” (Zechariah 3:4). The removing of the filth is the taking away of his iniquity, named in the verse itself. The clothing that follows adds what cleansing alone could not give, a standing and a service he could never have provided for himself. The picture anticipates our acceptance in Christ: guilt taken away, and a righteousness not our own put upon us. The gospel strips off the filthy garment and clothes the sinner in Christ.

Our Lord kept the whole law in our place and bore its curse in our stead, and His obedience and satisfaction are counted as ours. Active and passive obedience name two aspects of one undivided work, His whole life of law-keeping and His willing endurance of the law’s curse. Together they are the single obedience of one Mediator. This is what our confession means, as a faithful summary of Scripture, when it says that God justifies “by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death, for their whole and sole righteousness, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith” (1689, 11.1). Take imputation away, and the verdict “righteous” has nothing behind it. You are left to supply a righteousness of your own, which is the very thing the gospel came to spare us.

Pastorally Beside the Point?

One objection remains, and it should be met head on, because once we are engaging Wright we owe him his strongest argument. He presses the matter pastorally: to know that you have died and been raised with Christ, he argues, does far more for a troubled soul than to know that Christ has kept the law in your place (Justification, p. 233). If the imputed obedience of Christ were a cold abstraction, a line in a ledger that never reached the conscience, the objection would land.

The choice is a false one. The believer who has died and risen with Christ is, by that same union, credited with the obedience Christ rendered. Both come to us in Him, and neither lies idle in the conscience. The trouble of a believer is rarely only the guilt of what he has done. It is also the poverty of what he has failed to be, the obedience he owed and never offered. To that soul, forgiveness says the debt is canceled. The imputed obedience of Christ says more, that the righteousness the law required is now his own, the whole demand met in his place and counted to him. A man afraid that a clean record is still an empty one finds here that it is not empty at all. It is filled with the obedience of Another. That is no less a comfort than dying and rising with Christ, for it is part of the same gift.

A Righteousness to Rest In

Set this where it belongs, on the conscience of a believer who looks within and finds a mixed and disappointing record. He will never find his standing there. Luther called the righteousness that justifies an alien righteousness, a righteousness from outside us, the righteousness of Another given to us. That is no insult to the believer; it is his comfort. On his best day his standing before God is not one degree higher, and on his worst day not one degree lower, because his standing was never his own to begin with. It is Christ’s, credited to him, fixed and finished.

So the trembling sinner is turned away from himself, again and again, to the name first spoken in Jeremiah, “The Lord our righteousness.” Faith brings nothing of its own to the bench. It is the empty hand that receives Christ, and it justifies because it lays hold of Him who is our righteousness, never because the act of believing is itself accepted in place of obedience. We come with the obedience of our Substitute and that empty hand, and it is enough. It is more than enough. To the Lord our righteousness, who kept the law we broke, bore the curse we earned, and is Himself our righteousness before God, be glory forever. Amen.