If you read through the days of creation in Genesis 1, you’ll see an overall pattern:
- God commands a thing into existence
- He divides it from other things
- He names it
- He evaluates it
The pattern is not slavishly adhered to in every case; like a musical theme it’s embroidered upon in various ways, for various reasons. But the overall pattern holds. The only time God says something is “not good” is when he’s looking at a man alone. The man was meant to be the image of the triune God, and he cannot do this by himself, without another person to relate to.
And then, in due course, Paul comes along and tells us, “If any man be in Christ, He is a new creation.”
When we believe in Jesus, we, too, are born into existence by God’s command, separated by the gospel to be a new people for His name, and given the right to be called the children of God. The evaluation comes after all that.
If God says “not good,” it will be for the same reason He said it in the garden: because we fail to reflect the image of God to which we are called, for which we are separated from the world, and by which we are named. This failure is certainly possible.
But notice that failure, if it comes, comes after we are re-created, separated to God, and named His children. None of those things are dependent upon passing an evaluation. Which is to say that we are justified by faith, not works, and we know this from the very first chapter of the Bible.
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