“…and God saw that it was good.”
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” As most of us know, these are the first words of the Bible. They begin the true story of how God created this world. Until recently, I didn’t really understand how important this story is for me today. Not just so that I know that God created the world, but because without a proper understanding of creation, my life as a Christian cannot be lived out to its fullest potential.
God created this world. He created the plants, animals, humans, dirt, water… obviously I could go on forever. But God did not just create these pieces of nature that we see, God created potential. He created man, and the ability to form families, societies, government, economy, culture… again the list could go on. And when God created all of this, or the framework for it, he called it good, because it was. It was very good. And as we know, Adam and Eve messed up. As representatives for all of us, they dropped the ball and allowed evil and sin to come in and tarnish this awesome creation. Thus, nature, man, and all of these systems have been altered. We have been stained and ruined. So God decides to show grace and mercy and love and offer his own son, himself being God, as a sacrifice to reconcile us back to himself.
So now we have this chance to be redeemed, bought back, taken out of the altered, ruined state of sin and returned to righteous in the eyes of God. In other words, we are given the chance to be made good through the work of Christ, and as God intended us to be at the moment of creation. So we can be redeemed, what does that mean, though? It means a lot of things, but one that we often overlook is that it means we have a responsibility of godly stewardship over all creation. Once restored, we cannot ignore that God’s original command to mankind was to rule over creation, to take care of this good and once perfect planet. That doesn’t just mean we need to be ‘green.’ It means we need to work to redeem creation for the glory of God. It means we must seek to claim back these systems of family, government, economy, culture, etc for the glory of the Lord. And we should be excited about that. God created things good, for his glory and for our joy. The more we work to claim creation for God’s glory, the more true joy we have, and the more able we are to worship our Creator. While this task seems incredibly daunting and impossible, (and on our own it definitely is) we must not be afraid of it. We are not called to rid the world of sin, because we can’t do that, but we are called to live Christ-like lives, and in doing that, change our own interactions with creation to model those of Christ. In doing that, pieces will be redeemed for his glory. We will start to see the godly potential in all of creation as we attempt to understand God’s plan for it.
Sin is obviously still a ruling presence in this world, but our task of stewardship remains. God has given us his son in order that we may be redeemed. We must then be faithful, obedient stewards, working to regain creation for Him, stripping it of the sinful stain that has tarnished it. In all this we must remember, it is not our work, but the work and power of Christ that accomplishes this, and one day, his creation will be forever restored to perfection, beauty, and complete joy, and as faithful Christians, we will get to take part in that. We will experience that creation, as it was intended, for all eternity.
