In 1 Timothy 4:1-5 Paul informs us of the attacks of our adversary. His strategy involves an attempt to pervert the doctrine of Creation. Demonic doctrinal distortions of Creation produce our contemporary confusion of gender roles and relationships. If we would anchor our minds to Genesis, we could make great strides in ordering our lives according to God’s design and thereby stand against the onslaught of satanic deception which is presently ravaging our generation. It is my hope that the ensuing articles will aid us to image our Creator and Redeemer as Biblical men and women who thus glorify and enjoy Him.
The Nature of Created Life
In order to understand the devastation of death visited upon us in Genesis 3, we must first understand something of the nature of the life God created for us to enjoy. The life depicted in Genesis is a fabric, a tapestry of interdependent components. Each thread is knit together in mutual dependency so that the essence of ‘life’ is found in the unity, the oneness which results from all the parts being placed in their proper place, functioning according to divine design. ‘Death’ is the severing of this created oneness.
God’s design is seen in Genesis 1 as God sets out to order the cosmos which came into being by the power of His omnipotent Word. We see God meet the needs of His cosmos by creating light (1:1-4); giving shape and form to the universe (1:4-20), and then filling the void with inhabitants (1:20-31). His work encompasses the days of the Creation Week and is punctuated by repeated acts of judgment whereby the creation is morally assessed as ‘very good’. Every aspect of life functions symbiotically with the other created components to form a unified, living fabric. The concept of oneness should inform our understanding of created life. Created life is a system of cohesive codependencies which complement and complete one another. We see as well that the Creator is also the Judge of Creation. Life is not a morally neutral phenomena, but is inherently capable of being evaluated by the Creator.
The Context of Grace
The couple are presented to us as the apex of God’s creation work. With the man and the woman properly placed and functioning, we see a cosmos ordered to the glory of God. The entire picture is one of grace. Adam is not placed in the garden in order to earn the right to life by obeying the Law. He is given life and provided with all things necessary to glorify and commune with God. God delights to meet the needs of man. He does this by giving man life, and even more than that, by giving man Himself, for the epitome blessing of God to Adam is the gift of Sabbath – that sanctified time of communion with God Himself through His Word and loving Fatherly presence (Gn 2:1-4; Mk 2:27).
The Relationship of Sonship
Adam is the created son of God (Gn. 5:1-3, Lk. 3:38). We are not to think of his relationship to God as one which was essentially legal or contractual, hinging upon obedience to the law of Gn. 2:17. Yes, there is a legal dimension to this relationship. Yes, there is legitimate authority which requires obedience. But this is essentially a filial relationship of a father to a son. Law and authority are enveloped in the Creator Father’s love and grace for Adam. “Image of God” describes this relationship of sonship. A more noble identity could not be conceived!
The Dignity of Man
Our being has dignity in that man was made according to God’s decree (1:26,27), God’s pre-creative purpose which under girds His work of creation. Secondly, man was made directly and immediately by God (Gn. 2:7, 22). Thirdly, man’s essential identity is ‘image of God’. As such, our being is to reflect God’s being. We are personal, capable to verbally communicate with intellect, will, and emotion; endowed with moral identity monitored by conscience. Our status is to reflect God’s status. As ‘image of God’, we have a regal status: exercising dominion; prophetically entrusted with God’s Word; mediating God’s glory in worshipful service to God. Our activity is to reflect God’s activity: as we labor and give ourselves to Sabbath refreshment in God.
The Accountability of Man
Adam lived in relation to the God who breathed the breathe of life into his nostrils. Our view of man begins with God. If we are to know ourselves, we must know God and see ourselves as accountable to Him. Creation is morally and ethically assessed by the Creator. Sonship entails an accountability as we are responsible to image God accurately. God made us to be a visible reflection, replicating Him. Image bearing is the essence of ethics. If man does not image God accurately something is wrong. We are to image God by living according to His words and His example given to us in His work of creating. Both His creation words and acts are revelatory for which we, as image bearers, are accountable. Judgment is inherent in the stuff of creation. We innately know that we are scrutinized by the Creator. The unavailing attempt to avoid judgment explains men’s idolatrous dogmatic denial of creation, even against revelation, reason, and evidence. But God is God, and we are accountable to Him nonetheless.
We are responsible for what is called “The Creation Ordinances” in “The Dominion Mandate” of Gn. 1:26ff. Ethical accountability adheres to the mandate to procreate which is fulfilled in the ordinance of marriage, and the mandate to subdue the earth which is fulfilled in the ordinance of labor and Sabbath keeping. These creation ordinances inform the morality of all men in every culture and epoch of history. Ethics is not culturally conditioned, but is established in the nature of who we are as image of God. We are created in a moral climate and made accountable to God by the very nature of our created being.
Man is accountable to his Creator as a steward, responsible for his Master’s goods. God yet owns all things (Ps 24:1), but He has bestowed a stewardship to man over the earth, plants and animals. It is germane to our study to see that the man Adam, was exercising this stewardship before the woman was created. What explains his activities in Gn. 2 is “The Dominion Mandate”. His masculinity is defined in terms of the exercise of rule as the Creator’s prince of creation. We will focus upon his function of ‘headship’ later, but it should be noted that his headship was operative prior to the creation of the woman in Gn. 2:18ff.
Applications
If we were rooted in the truth of creation, we could avoid the aimlessness and confusion in life that so characterizes men in our generation. The common inability of men to understand and balance the stewardships of family, labor, and the worship of God is explained, often because he doesn’t have his feet solidly planted upon the terra firma of the first few pages of the Bible. Men deny and deform their essential dignity as they ‘fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom 6:23) ‘ Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.’ I am to glorify God as His created, and now redeemed, son, in my labor, in my sexuality, in my piety – in all that I am and do in God’s world.
Man’s innate tendency to idolatry. Romans 1:18ff. If man does not worship the true God, he’ll worship anything. He idolatrously makes an exchange. (Rom. 1:18-23). It’s not that he relinquishes God and ceases to express his innate religiousness. You’ll find him religiously worshipping himself and his idols. As a fallen sinner, man denies his knowledge of the Creator, takes to himself the prerogative of the deity and makes himself little gods, convenient manipulable idols, that allow him to indulge his lusts without fear of retribution. His idolatry is a religious devise to escape the judgment which he innately knows is characteristic of the life he lives in accountability to God. He needs to be told about his Creator!
Preach the Gospel! The denial of God as Creator has effected the desecration of modern man’s essential dignity. Today men define themselves in relation to animals rather than to God, and live violent, incontinent, beastly lives. But in his conscience, he knows he is something more than an animal. We need to target his conscience and preach the gospel to him beginning with creation as Paul did in Athens (Acts 17:22ff). Modern, secular, scientific man is now more inclined than ever to listen to religious answers to life’s questions. He finds himself gazing in religious awe through his telescopes, his microscopes, at his computer simulations. He is confronting mystery. He is becoming aware of something or Someone other than himself which is determinative in a realm into which he cannot penetrate by his finite intellect and limited technology. He finds himself more frequently experiencing religious responses to this created world which yet points him to the Creator God. We need to hurry to evangelize our fellow fallen friends before they direct their religiosity to idols and end up worshipping “the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.”
The paradigms of ‘The Enlightenment’ are crumbling and ‘Post-Modern Man’ is increasingly vulnerable to a resurgence of ancient paganism. We must seize the opportunity to tell men of their Creator God who “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.” We need to confront men with the claims of the God who created them and summons them to judgment. We need to couch the gospel, not in the context of man’s felt needs, but in the context of the glory of God the Creator. In the midst of man’s moral and religious confusion, we must assert with all confidence that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Building upon this foundational truth, we need to announce the amazing grace of the good Creator who stands ready to be the Redeemer of every fallen image-bearer who simply trusts in His Son, Jesus Christ. The incarnate Son of God has come to redeem the fallen created sons of God! He is able! God yet delights to do you good! The God who gives and sustains your life wants you to trust His Son and turn from your self-centered idolatry to follow Christ! Here is good news! The Creator God is now making new creations of those who simply believe in the crucified and risen Christ! May each of us savingly know the Creator as our merciful Redeemer, by the power of His sovereign grace and love freely given to us in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Published in “The Evangelical Presbyterian Magazine,” Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Northern Ireland.
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