The biblical account of creation is amazing in its uniqueness. It is structured so as to parallel other Near Eastern creation myths in order to reject their doctrine. In other stories, the beginning of the universe is violent and chaotic; humans are slaves to the gods, and work is overwhelmingly bad. But in the book of Genesis, God actually shares his responsibility and power with humans. In Genesis 1:26-28, often called the cultural mandate, he commands humans to rule over and tend his creation. After naming all that he makes on the first three days of creation, he leaves the work of the remaining three days to be named by humans. Old Testament scholar J. Richard Middleton comments on the implications of this:
This sharing of power is radically different from the ancient Near Eastern worldview, in which only some elite person (typically the king) was regarded as the image of God. Indeed, the entire social order in the ancient world was predicated on the concentration of power in the hands of a few who controlled access to blessing from the gods, thus reducing the majority of the populace to a lower, dependent social status.
Human imaging of God’s power on earth will therefore need to take into account the fact that in the biblical account no human being is granted dominion over another at creation; all equally participate in the image of God. The process of cultural development is meant to flow from a cooperative sharing in dominion, modeled on God’s own sharing of power with human beings.
- J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and A New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 51-52.
Creation is the beginning of the Gospel. But what comes after that? The fall, and then reconciliation and ultimately consummation. The fall in Genesis 3 is essentially the collective turning of humanity from God. This is the beginning of what we call sin. Sin is rooted in idolatry, which New Testament scholar N.T. Wright defines as the failure to worship and reflect God’s image into the world. The result of sin and idolatry is that we give power to created things, power that they never should have had. And so these things rule over us, and the entire creation is out of joint. Our relationship with creation, with others, and with God is broken. Redemption is thus the correction of this brokenness, the restoration of this relationship. This is why when asked in Matthew 22 what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
20th-century Swiss Reformed theologian Emil Brunner explains this thusly:
For sin as personal self-isolation from God is at the same time self-isolation from man. When through faith in Christ sin is removed, and man’s heart is opened to God, it is opened also to his fellow man; life for oneself is replaced by life for another, by the will to fellowship and the capacity for it. Thus regeneration means two things: that we become our real selves, and that we become capable of real fellowship. The faith through which we are born again includes the knowledge that the creation of a true self is identical with the creation of a true capacity for fellowship.
-Emil Brunner, Dogmatics: Volume III- The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, trans. David Cairns (London: Lutterworth Press, 1960), 274-275.
The clearest way in which this is love demonstrated is the means Christ used to save us. Being fully God, he could well have chosen to stay above us. But he,
Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
–Philippians 2:6-11
This example of Christ is quoted throughout the letters of the New Testament as the basis of Christian ethics. What makes this especially mind-blowing is what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:10: Christ did this while we were “enemies of God”. If the holy God of the universe gave up his rightful place and died to save his enemies, how much more should we mere idolatrous humans who have been saved by his grace lay aside ourselves and every claim to privilege for those around us? In light of this, what justification do we have to cling to our rights- or to what we believe to be our rights - at the expense of others?
