Developing a Christian Worldview: Based on Creation

The Biblical worldview begins with Creation, not with Jesus. We often make Jesus the leading salvo of our Gospel presentation, but there is no context for redemption in Christ apart from the foundational reality of creation and Creator. When Paul addressed the pagan idolaters in Athens, he began his sermon by talking about creation and Creator (See Acts 17.22-31). With the rising secularism of our own times, it would be wise to learn from Paul’s approach in Athens when sharing the Biblical message.

God has made a covenant with creation, to uphold it until His purpose is complete. God’s faithfulness to His covenant with creation is the backdrop for all His dealings with mankind (Jer. 33.20-21; 25-26). This means that we can trust God.

Creation and Sovereignty

Something that we must avoid from the outset is the unbiblical view called Deism. This is the belief that the universe is like a giant machine that runs by itself according to natural laws while the Creator is uninvolved and perhaps even uninterested in what He made.

The Biblical view is that the God who made the world is also keeping it in order (2 Pet. 3.5, 7). We live in God’s world, which must submit to His sovereign decrees (Psa. 95.3-5; 148.8; 119.91).  Theologically speaking, the concept of creation and sovereignty go together and cannot be separated. God’s care for the world He made has also been described as His providence.

To say that God is Creator is to say that God is sovereign over what He made. In fact, the created world was created, at least in part, to be a stage or a theater for God’s sovereignty to be put on display. The Bible hints at the fact that more than just human eyes are watching what God is doing in the world. God’s work is being done “on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Creation and Law

Scripture uses the term “law” to connect God’s creative will and His sovereign will (Psa. 33.9). Law is not just the specific commandments that God has revealed but is a much broader concept that concerns all of God’s sovereign will for the world and His purpose for human life in it.  Creation is governed and administered by the law of God. God is redeeming His fallen creation by grace, but He is upholding creation, even in its fallen state, by His law.

The Bible also connects God’s law and God’s word (Psa. 148.8; 33.6; 2 Pet. 3.5; Heb. 11.3). God created the world with just a word of command, and God’s word also upholds the world (Psa. 147.18; 148.8; Heb. 1.3). The most important connection between God’s word and creation is Christ Himself (John 1.3; Col. 1.16; Heb. 1.2; 2.10). The Son of God is also upholding the created order with just His word (Col. 1.16-17; Heb. 1.2-3).

The law of God works in the following two ways: 1. Directly, through God’s intervention, and 2. Indirectly, through human involvement (Al Wolters). In the natural world, God’s law is direct. God tells the earth to rotate on its axis, for example, and it does so. If God were to suddenly cease to uphold the natural world everything would return to a state of darkness and chaos. God’s law works indirectly in the world of human society. Human beings have been called upon to work with God in the realm of human affairs and the development of culture and society. So, there are laws that govern the world of nature and there are laws that also govern the world of human interactions.

There is an order in Creation that God ordained, and that God maintains. This created order is good for mankind. We are not to reject things that God created and that remains good and blessed (1 Tim. 4.3-4). For example, marriage and human government are both institutions created by God which are good for mankind (Rom. 13.1-2; 1 Pet. 2.13). Instead of seeing God’s law as a means of enjoying life and blessing, we tend to see God as an unnecessary restriction of our freedom and progress.

The laws of nature can easily be seen in operation. The law of God in the realm of human society is not so neat and tidy. The earth spins on its axis in obedience to the law of God. The natural world never ceases to obey the will of its Creator. But human beings are a different kind of creature. Mankind has been given the responsibility of executing God’s will and He holds us accountable for doing so. Unlike the earth, mankind can choose to ignore and to disobey the law of God. In Western thought, there is a great gulf of separation between the natural law and the social law of God. But the Bible does not separate these categories. The same God who orders creation also orders human life.

At times God intervened directly in human affairs and gave specific commands to specific people. There were also times when God circumvented the normal, natural laws in order to produce a miraculous sign. But God was always consistent with His own nature and character so that we can trust Him to be good, righteous, and faithful all the time.

Creation and Wisdom

Modern man is rather unique in separating the realm of nature and of mankind. The ancient worldviews all held that there was a natural law that governed all human affairs. The whole burden of ancient wisdom, or philosophy, was to discover the direction in which the grain of the universe was running and go with it. This same kind of thinking is seen in Biblical Wisdom literature, but with the one, true God of Israel as the proper object of worship and obedience (Psa. 147.15-20).

In the Old Testament, the law of God in creation is associated with wisdom. “Wisdom is ethical conformity to God’s creation” (James Fleming). On one hand, is the law of God woven into creation. On the other hand, there is our need for wisdom or conformity to that Divine Order (Prov. 1.22-23; 8.4; 22-23; 27-30; 9.6). The wisdom of God in Creation is available and knowable. All our scientific knowledge of the natural world is made available to us by the Creator and is the basis for human society and civilization. Even our knowledge of agriculture is something that God teaches through the wisdom in creation (Isa. 28.23-29). Discerning this wisdom takes time and reflection as well as teamwork with others.

The wisdom of God in His special revelation of Scripture can help us understand the general revelation in nature. John Calvin compared Scripture with a pair of glasses that bring the world into proper focus. Scripture is a light to our path (Psa. 119.105). We might think of Scripture as a verbal explanation from the engineer who had designed a complex piece of machinery.  

Creation and Mankind

Humans serve God in a unique way by ruling over creation. The Divine image in mankind is linked to our dominion over the creation. The ruling task is that of cultivation, like a farmer or a gardener. This is a communal undertaking as we image God corporately and not just individually. This cultural development is illustrated in its beginning phases in the Genesis account of creation (Gen. 2.4-4.26).

History is the development of man’s dominion over the creation. God does not support mankind’s wanton destruction of creation. We must acknowledge God’s covenantal relationship to the earth and our accountability to God. We are God’s caretakers. We are free to use and to develop but not to destroy nature. Mankind will be held accountable in the end for the stewardship of the world (Matt. 25.14-30). There will be a Day of universal accountability for how we handled God’s stuff. We are merely managers. Everything belongs to God and nothing really belongs to us. We are never free to just live for ourselves, independently from the Creator, though this kind of autonomy is the cornerstone of the modern, secular worldview.

The Creation is revelatory (Psa. 19.1-4) and this “general revelation” is available to everyone (Acts 14.17). Fallen man chooses not to acknowledge this revelation (Rom. 1.18-20), but we cannot escape the moral order God created, which continually presses its demands upon us through the universal witness of conscience (Rom. 2.14-15). Though man is fallen and worships idols rather than the Creator, the law and revelation of God woven into the created order presses in upon the mind of men everywhere and makes them accountable.

While God upholds the Creation, He has given over the care of it into the hands of human beings. God put an image of Himself on earth to care for and develop the Creation. The cultural evolution of Creation is the task of civilization given specifically into the hands of mankind (Gen. 1.28; Psa. 8.6). After God created the world the stage was set, and the drama of human history began. The history of civilization is the opening of the possibilities and the potentialities of creation. The man was placed in the Garden of Eden to care for it (Gen. 2.15).

This was the beginning of human society and civilization in which creation would be developed and cultivated. People would participate with God in the flowering of creation. History is the story of this development. Mankind’s management of the world was always God’s plan. The creation was supposed to grow and mature into something under mankind’s management. This meant that some type of cultural evolution would be required. Eden did not represent the final stage of God’s creation, but only the beginning of the world. Even the New Creation that is envisioned at the end of the Bible will not be a return to Eden but will somehow encompass all of mankind’s cultural achievements, minus the curse of sin and death (Rev. 21-22). In the New Creation, human life will be like the butterfly that develops out of the pupa (Herman Bavinck). Human history began in a garden, but it will end in a city (Al Wolters).

Creation is Good

The Creation was declared by God to be good and we should not take a dim view of the material world because God does not. As C.S. Lewis said, “you do not want to be more spiritual than God.” The ancient heresy of Gnosticism once threatened to take the Biblical view of creation from the early Church, and remnants of Gnostic thinking cling to us today. One of the great errors of nearly every unbiblical worldview is that they tend to single out one aspect of creation and make that the scapegoat for all of humanity’s woes (Al Wolters). We want to shift the blame for our problems to something in creation, which is tantamount to blaming God (Al Wolters).

Creation is a cause for joy and celebration in both mankind and the natural world, which is often personified as praising and obeying the Creator (Psa. 104.24; 139.14). God is worthy to be praised for what He has made. In fact, we need no other reason to praise, worship, and obey Him (Jer. 10.1-16). The creation was meant to give glory to the Creator (Isa. 45.18).

The position of creation towards the Creator is one of complete dependence (Psa. 119.89-91). The fact that we are creatures calls us to humility before God who is the source of everything in the world that is good.

Creation and our Work

We need to revisit a point made earlier in this lesson and find some personal application. I am indebted to Tim Keller and his book Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work for the following insights.

The Protestant Reformation brought a new focus on the importance of so-called secular work. The Reformers began to point out that all work is just as much a calling as being a priest of a monk. The Lutheran tradition has continued to teach that God uses our work to care for the world. People are acting as the hands of God when they do various kinds of work. The Calvinist tradition emphasized that our work is a way of creating a culture that glorifies God and provides for human flourishing. Writers like Abraham Kuyper believed that faithful work comes from operating out of a Christian worldview.

God’s original act of creation is described in Genesis as work. God was doing work at the end of which He rested. God then put the man and the woman in charge of caring for creation and developing its potential (Gen. 2.1-3, 15). There was work before the Fall and the entrance of the curse of sin and death. Work was not itself a curse, though the curse of sin would have an impact on work, along with everything else in creation.

A careful study of the Genesis creation account will show how unique it really is and how it differs greatly from all the other pagan mythologies about creation. According to pagan myths, the world was created as a result of warring deities. The Genesis account reveals the world was made by a loving Craftsman, who had no rivals, and who took pleasure in what He made. The Greek philosophers viewed the early world as a paradise in which both men and the gods did not have to do any work. But this clearly differs from the Genesis account where both men and God had work.

The work of God is shared by mankind under God’s provision and guidance. Human beings were created to work rather than to be idle. A sense of dignity and worth is attached to our work. We cannot live fulfilled lives with having meaningful work, along with times of rest. Work is not to be avoided. We serve God and we serve others through our work. Again, this differs from the ancient pagan view of work. The Greeks thought of physical work as demeaning. The philosophers sought to be as far removed as possible from physical things to engage in the “spiritual” life of contemplation, like the gods themselves. This idea continued through the Middle Ages with the separation of spiritual, sacred work, and secular work. Even in modern times, people tend to divide work into physical and mental, with the more physical trades taking a back seat to the more important work of the mind. There is no such distinction and division of work taught in the Bible.

Work reflects the Divine image in us. Animals live according to their instincts, but mankind was given a special mission and a unique job in creation. All kinds of work are necessary for human flourishing and that means all kinds of work have worth and dignity. When God Himself came into the world in human flesh, He was a carpenter!

According to the Biblical worldview, the physical world matters a great deal and is blessed by God. The idea that being truly spiritual means being removed from physical things is a pagan idea. The doctrine of Creation harmonizes with the doctrine of Incarnation, where God Himself enters the world that He created in order to redeem it. A Christian worldview acknowledged that the material world is good. When we work, we are partnering with God in the care and development of creation. That means every kind of work may be done for the glory of God and as an act of worship and service to mankind. Obviously, there are some activities that are against the law of God and destructive to both the creation and human life. But unless we are engaged in wickedness, we can take pleasure in our work.

Work is an act of cultivating God’s good creation. God put human beings in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it. Mankind was given this mandate. The act of civilization was a Divine command. God still owns the world, but He has given it to mankind to care for and to develop. We take what God has made, since we are not capable of making something from nothing like He is, and we form or rearrange it to create something more than what was there before. The world has potential that mankind must develop through work. All work is another act of creation.

Developing A Christian Worldview: What is a Worldview?

In an obscure verse in the Old Testament, it was said of the tribe of Issachar that they understood the times to know what Israel should do (1 Chron. 12.32). The thing they understood at that time was that David should be king over Israel. We can take that verse and apply it to ourselves: it is critical for us to know the times in which we live.

A perfect New Testament example of someone who knew the times was the Apostle Paul. In the book of Acts, we read of Paul in the ancient city of Athens. Even though Athens was the cultural center of the world, it was filled with idols. Paul was upset by the idols all around him and he preached a message to the philosophers on Mar’s Hill (Acts 17.16-34). Paul knew the times and he knew what to say to his generation.

Understanding the times is more important than ever because we find ourselves in a time of increasing secularization and hostility towards the Christian Faith. If we are seeking to understand the times in which we live, we need to know something about how the people around us think about the world and understand the meaning of life. We need to understand how we develop a worldview. To help us in this study we will enlist a writer named Albert Wolters who wrote a classic book called Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview. Another useful source to consult is by Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton, who together wrote a book called The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview. This subject seems rather philosophical and academic because it is! We are not replacing Scripture with philosophy. We are attempting to apply the teaching of Scripture to the times. When we do this, we will immediately see that God’s Word is always relevant to the needs of mankind.

A Basic Definition

Our first order of business is to understand what makes up a worldview. Al Wolters defines a worldview as “the comprehensive framework of one’s basic beliefs about things.”

Let’s dissect that definition.

When we use the word “things” we are being intentionally broad because a worldview must also be broad. A true worldview must embrace everything about life in the world, even spiritual questions and the existence of God. No part of life may be excluded from a worldview.

A worldview is about our beliefs. Beliefs are often confused with feelings. Our beliefs certainly give rise to feelings, but beliefs are not just feelings. A real belief makes a claim about knowledge of something that stands true no matter how we feel about it. A belief can even be defended by rational argument. In fact, if we really believe something, we will be willing to defend it. We are committed to our beliefs and we will sacrifice for them and even suffer if necessary. Modern people are very concerned with preserving freedom of thought or opinion. But everyone understands that we must think thoughts that are both rational and in agreement with reality.

A Model for the Good Life

A worldview is a belief about how life ought to be. It is like a model that we all hold in our minds and we are constantly comparing that model with the world around us. We have hopes and dreams about how the world could be and we strive to make that a reality. Therefore, worldviews are deeply spiritual and religious in nature.

Modern people get very uncomfortable with religion, mostly because of the narrow definition that has been given. In a manner of speaking, everyone is religious, but not in the same ways. Religion is more than ceremony, it is a comprehensive view of life and especially of values. Religion is usually a term that has a moral flavor as well. Our views about good and evil, right and wrong, are a crucial part of world-view. So, in many ways, world-view and religion are synonymous.

Modern people are much more comfortable with the term spirituality. If spirituality is taken to mean the values that we hold about what is important in life or those things that give life meaning, then this term can also be equated with a worldview.

We often come face to face with our beliefs during times of great stress, pain, or crisis. Our worldviews are expressed by the stories that we tell each other as we experience the world (N.T. Wright). The Christian Faith and the whole message of the Bible is really a story that is the basis for a worldview. Most people do not overtly articulate something they would call a worldview, but everyone tells stories about life. Even if we do not express it, we all have beliefs that form a worldview. We interpret life experiences through the lens of our worldview.

Most of our experiences in life involve either experiencing or witnessing pain. Wrestling with the meaning of life against the backdrop of pain and suffering raises some of the most difficult questions that we face. How we interpret pain and suffering and the whole question of evil is a crucial part of a worldview. In fact, having a worldview that helps us cope with pain is a necessity.

We will never understand all the mysteries of evil, but if we cannot find a way to cope, we will end up in despair. Old Testament Wisdom literature, such as Job and the book of Ecclesiastes, is wrestling with the issue of suffering.

What we call culture is really the externalization of worldviews. The term “culture” has been used ambiguously. For many, it simply means how people dress, or the music and food they enjoy. But this is only the shallow aspects of what makes culture.

To go to another country and sample the local restaurants, buy a native hat, and see a traditional dance might be enjoyable and different, but we can hardly say we have really come to know a culture by simply being tourists. We must ask what is behind or beneath culture and that gets us to a worldview. Culture has more of an impact on us than we realize or are likely to admit. Even becoming a Christian does not remove a person from being influenced by culture. Culture is like a giant puzzle. All the various pieces are the normal functions of society: marriage, family, politics, education, business, and religion. The way people live their daily lives and pursue their goals and passions grow up in the soil of worldviews. Worldview is passed on to children through cultural norms, practices, and tradition. Our own cultural indoctrination may go undetected until we reach adulthood and begin to question things. It is a strange but universal truth that every culture believes itself to be superior to all other cultures. We believe that our way of seeing the world is normal and it can be very uncomfortable to be forced to reconsider our fundamental beliefs about how to live our lives. Young adults who suddenly find themselves on a university campus can experience a kind of culture shock without even leaving their native country! Parents who are from a more conservative worldview often fear to send their children into environments that will challenge the traditional views. But meeting people with other worldviews can also be the best way to solidify one’s own worldview. Still, this can be an uncomfortable experience that we often avoid.

A Source of Conflict

Sometimes we must define our beliefs over and against someone else’s beliefs. Not every culture contains a single worldview. Society is more likely to be an amalgamation of worldviews. Some of these will naturally be in conflict. When worldviews collide, a society can experience severe unrest.

This is often best observed in political and religious conflicts. The results of worldview clashes can be violent. It is common to see a majority worldview attempting to oppress, silence, or even eliminate a minority worldview. There are people who insist on total cultural assimilation and reject the idea of cultural pluralism. Movements on both the Right and the Left of the political spectrum have been guilty of cultural oppression and exclusion. Groups of people who compete for power in society often come from radically different worldviews. Conflicts can erupt over any number of issues because behind it all is a difference in worldviews. Sometimes worldviews are so divergent it almost seems that people are living in separate realities and can barely even communicate with one another. It is important to understand worldview so that we can begin to see why people believe the things they do. Much of the religious and political unrest in the world comes from an inability to understand how to speak to one another.

Worldviews are always shared. In fact, true community is only possible when there is a common worldview. In every group, there is a “dominant vision of life” (Arnold DeGraaff).

Despite all the individualism of Western society, we still tend to move in herds, and we identify with other people who think as we do. Human beings need community. Unfortunately, we identify with a group so that we can also differentiate ourselves from other groups. Because of sin, this can lead to hatred, prejudice, and even violence. Isolating ourselves from people with different worldviews can lead to prejudice and stereotypes that only strengthen the alienation. At some point, we feel free to make broad, sweeping generalizations about huge groups of people while we never have any interaction with anyone from that group! In his classic book “Bowling Alone”, Robert Putnam argues that Americans are spending less time together generally, but we spend much less time specifically with people who are different from us.

A Guide for Making Choices

We need a worldview because we cannot go through life without some reference point or guide. We cannot escape our sense of responsibility. Despite what some people claim, we simply cannot believe anything or do anything, at least not without certain consequences. We are constantly being called upon to make decisions and these decisions will be made according to our worldview. The choices that people make about what is important to them say much more about their worldview than they might say about it themselves. We will spend our time on those things we believe to be important in life. That might be a career, relationships, entertainment, or any number of other pursuits. Many of these things are not inherently bad or evil. But the fundamental question must be about values. We cannot assign the same price tag to everything in life. Some things must be more important than other things and we must act accordingly. It is crucial that we make the right judgment calls about values or we will end up wrecking or wasting our lives. The central issue with values is usually one of balance.

While there are some black and white issues in life, most of the value decisions we make are according to weight and cannot be categorically good or bad. Money is a good example of this principle. Are we to conclude that money is of absolutely no importance and is inherently evil? That would be absurd. On the other hand, what would happen to a person who makes money his one, absorbing passion? We would conclude that this person has put too much value on money and will suffer the consequences with being so far out of balance.

Sometimes we even fail to act according to our own worldview. When this happens, we must either change our worldview to justify our behavior, or we must change our behavior. The fact that we fail does not in any way negate our need for a worldview or that we need to be guided by something outside of ourselves. It is very important to come to terms with the ways we fail to live according to the worldview we claim to have. We may discover that we are not being honest. A hypocrite is someone who wears a mask and is playing a part rather than just being himself. Religious hypocrites get all the criticism but are by no means the only kind out there.

How do World-views Form?

How we come to form our worldviews is a complex and controversial question that is itself subject to interpretation by our worldview. Some people have said that we really do not form our own worldview but are programmed by our family, culture, class interests and other external factors. We cannot completely dismiss these observations. There are many things that press in on our minds. As Christians, we cannot forget that we are sinful and are subject to many wicked influences. Other people believe that we choose our worldview and that we are completely free to do so, as we apply our ability to reason objectively and independently.

Many of the Enlightenment and Modern thinkers belonged to this latter school of thought. Most people today are more willing to consider how outside influences impact our worldview and our decisions in life.

According to Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton, in order to form our worldview, we must, either consciously or unconsciously, answer the following questions:

·         Who am I?

·         Where am I?

·         What is wrong?

·         How can we fix it?

We must have basic beliefs about the nature and purpose of human life, the nature and purpose of the natural world around us, the nature of the problems that keep us from finding fulfillment, and the possible solutions that can remove the hindrances to finding fulfillment. Everyone has some type of answer to these basic questions, even if they do not express these beliefs. To a large extent, the whole history of human civilization is an attempt to answer these fundamental questions about life. How we answer these questions will inevitably move us to act in certain ways. For example, how would a Marxist give answers to these questions? He would probably say that we are in a world that is fundamentally unfair where the common man, like himself, are oppressed by class distinctions. The only way to fix it is through a revolution where the common people rise and take control by overthrowing those who oppress and establishing a classless society.

How can we Evaluate a Worldview?

But how do we know that our answers to these questions are right? We must evaluate a worldview, even though there are some people who say it is impossible to know one way or the other if a worldview is right or wrong. This is misleading, however, because even the people who say that worldviews cannot be evaluated themselves have a worldview by which they evaluate all others!

All worldviews must be based on “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are” (C.S. Lewis in “The Abolition of Man”). The fact is, every rational person believes there is something that is objectively right and therefore there must be somethings that are objectively wrong. The trouble is that we do not always agree on what those things are. But we cannot shake the basic, underlying assumption that there is a standard or a norm by which all things must be compared. We know what is crooked by comparing it to something straight.

Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton suggest several ways to evaluate a worldview:

·         Our worldview must open and illuminate all aspects of life. If we focus on certain aspects while ignoring or minimizing other areas, we will not have a true worldview but only a partial or unbalanced view of life. For example, our worldview must include some view of what constitutes healthy sexuality. While some people are uncomfortable with the topic, if we cannot address this important part of what it means to be human, then our worldview is half-baked.

·         Our worldview must be coherent. If our view of life does not hang together, we will be carried off in different directions and will be at war with ourselves. People who try to divide life into different compartments, each compartment having its own rules, will eventually find themselves living a fractured, schizophrenic existence. This can become like living with a double or even a triple identity as we divide and subdivide our lives and our worldview into isolated areas. The classic example of this worldview fallacy is an attempt to divide reality into categories of sacred and secular. 

·         Our worldview must not blind us. Sometimes our worldview hinders us from seeing areas of good and evil. Americans had to come to terms with the fact that on one hand, we enshrined values of liberty while we directly engaged in vicious racism and oppression of black Americans. This blindness was even more apparent in the Christian community. On the one hand, we hold up the Bible, which teaches us to love our neighbor, while on the other hand, we found ourselves either ignoring or even directly supporting segregation and the toleration of an unjust social system that discriminated against black people. Even though Americans claimed to love liberty, and even though most Americans claimed to be Christians and to accept the Biblical worldview, these racial evils festered in our society for decades and have not completely disappeared.

·         Our worldview must be open to correction. If everything tends only to legitimate our worldview then we are probably guilty of pride. A person who is prideful cannot be taught and is also incapable of repentance and of renewal.

The Gospel is the ultimate worldview correction. But even after we become Christians, we often retain our old ways of thinking that must be brought into submission to Christ and the Gospel (See Gal. 2.11-16). Christians are notorious for claiming to be right and for telling everyone else that they are wrong. But the first attitude of a true Christian is that he or she is a sinner who needs to repent and to be forgiven. We must never think we are right about everything or that we can be made right by our own efforts. Our worldview is like a window we look through to see the world. That window can become dirty and smeared and must regularly be cleaned. Only a fool would refuse to accept instruction and to acknowledge the truth in broad daylight. If we say we are in the light but walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth (1 John 1.6).

The Biblical Evaluation

The ultimate Biblical test of any worldview is if that worldview brings life or death, blessing or curses (See Deut. 30.15-20). The Biblical worldview puts the glory of God at the center of life. With God there is life and apart from Him, there is nothing but death. That was the original choice offered to mankind in Eden and the choice of ways is still before us today.

Obviously, not everyone has a Christian worldview. We can perhaps begin to see the great gulf that exists between a Christian worldview and other worldviews. Because there are so many competing worldviews, we must be constantly checking ourselves in the light of Scripture. We face a constant temptation to get our worldview from somewhere other than Scripture. The Bible is God’s revelation to mankind. A Christian worldview must be based on a careful reading and study of the Bible.

We want to base our worldview on the Bible rather than on any worldly philosophy or even Christian tradition, though we can glean much help from what other Christians have said about the Bible. We desire to constantly be reforming our worldview based on reading Scripture with the goal of being faithful to God in all areas of life.

When Christians appeal to Scripture we are appealing to a higher authority. We believe that the Bible is God’s word and God has the final say on every issue. One thing we must resist is the idea that the Bible only has jurisdiction over spiritual or religious matters. This is popular teaching used against Christians today. They will say that we may have our personal religion, but we must not bring those things out into the public sphere and try to “bind” them on other people. Anyone who tries to have one worldview for their private life and another for their public life will end up living a fractured and incoherent life. It is our responsibility to live according to our worldview all the time, even if there are people who do not agree with us or like what we have to say.

The central purpose of Scripture is to instruct us (Rom. 15.4). Reading the Bible is part of renewing our minds (Rom. 12.2). We must then think Biblically about every area of our lives. There can be no sacred/secular division. Everything in life can be thought about Biblically or in a way that is contrary to God’s revelation. Strangely enough, even theology can be thought about unbiblically! And some things that are usually labeled as “secular”, like the Arts, philosophy, or politics, can be thought about in the light of Scripture. One Christian writer observed that “there is nothing in our experience, however trivial, worldly, or even evil, which cannot be thought about Christianly” (Harry Blamires). We must not be in a position where we allow our worldview to be at variance with Scripture and with our confession of Jesus as Lord.  

The good news is that you do not have to have special education or even a high level of intelligence to think about worldviews. Our purpose in thinking about worldview, especially our own, is not just to become more intellectual but to be equipped by the Scriptures for a life of good works which please the Lord (2 Tim. 3.16-17).

The Sources of Temptation

Genesis 3.6; Matthew 4.3-9; 1 John 2.16

When people go to professional counselors for help, it is common practice for them to ask for a family history. They know that by understanding where you came from they can understand what you are today. You are to a large degree the product of your family origin or personal history. That also seems to be the underlying logic of Genesis. The account of the first temptation and the fall of man is telling us about our lives today. That scene of the first temptation in Eden is a situation that has been replayed many times over. Unfortunately, the results have always been the same: Satan tempts us, and we fall. 

There has been only one human being who successfully resisted temptation. Jesus’ skirmish with the Devil at the beginning of His earthly ministry is one of the great moments in salvation history. We should read and think about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness in juxtaposition to the very first temptation in Eden. Where Adam and Eve failed, Jesus succeeded. And in so doing He inaugurated the New Creation.

We are never going to be perfect people, even after we decide to follow Jesus. But there is no reason for us to give the Devil any more advantages. You probably don’t leave your keys in your car, inviting someone to steal it. You probably lock your doors at home because you are not just going to give a burglar an easy time. Likewise, the Bible tells us not to give a place to the Devil, making his evil work even easier.

There is no way to escape being tempted. While we are in the world the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” are all around us and even within us. But simply knowing what our situation is will help us, even if we sometimes feel overwhelmed by the challenge.

We have been given an advantage in the fight against temptation because we are told about the sources of our temptations. All temptations come through: I. our adversary, II. our desires, and III. our location.

I. The first and most notable source of temptation is our greatest adversary. In Genesis the serpent just shows up without any back story being offered as to his origins. But his purpose is immediately made clear, and that is what we really need to be aware of. It is dangerous to be too curious about the Devil himself. We need to know he is there and what he is up to but having a morbid curiosity about the Prince of Darkness is not a healthy preoccupation. The Devil is no laughing matter and should never be taken lightly. The comical depiction of Satan with horns and a tail is folklore, not Biblical theology, and has fostered a kind of lightheartedness about our adversary that plays into his hands. In her innocence, Eve did not recognize the danger of the serpent. Many people today simply laugh at the idea of Satan and do not acknowledge the danger.

Satan is the enemy of God and he targets those made in God’s image seeking to destroy anything and everything that God loves and cares for. His ultimate intention is to destroy us by separating us from God. He wants to make us enemies of God just as he is, and he is not above twisting God’s words and questioning God’s intentions. Satan loves to talk theology and can even quote Scripture. But he can soon have you thinking that God is your real enemy, the one who is keeping you from really enjoying yourself. The only way to really live is to throw off this obtrusive God and live your own life as you please. Everything will be alright, the Devil reassures us, because God does not really mean what He said.

One of Satan’s most effective lies has been that God is some cosmic killjoy. Many people are convinced that God will only spoil our fun and that life is better lived on our own, apart from His petty rules and interference.

There in that pristine paradise of Eden God richly provided the first man and woman with everything they needed. There was only one restriction placed upon them: they were forbidden to eat from one of the trees God had planted in the garden. This single restriction was the very thing the Tempter directed Eve to think about and discuss with him. Even though she had the freedom to eat from a hundred of the other trees in Eden, the Tempter wanted her to think about that one restriction that God had placed upon her.

Eating a piece of forbidden fruit does not seem like a serious sin. But the serious nature of that transgression was in their intention to have a go at life without God. Satan managed to convince Eve that her independence would be better and that God’s warning about death was a lie or maybe just an exaggeration designed to frighten her into submission. Satan turns God into a problem that Eve must be rid of if she wants to really be something.

When it comes to the Devil there are two extreme errors to be avoided. One extreme is to disbelieve in the Devil’s existence. There are those materialists who reject the existence of any supernatural beings. But there are plenty of people in the Church who do not believe in the Devil.

Not only does this position reject the teaching of Scripture, it also oversimplifies the problem of evil in the world.  In other words, if we reject the existence of cosmic evil, we will always be trying to explain evil either as a psychological or sociological problem with psychological and sociological solutions. But evil is not that simple to explain or to eradicate.

It is dangerous to discount or underestimate the power of Satan, even this side of the Cross and Resurrection. Satan is called the god of this world and he still rules a kingdom of darkness. Everyone who does not belong to Jesus is under Satan’s dominion.

But the other extreme is to give the Devil too much power or attention. We are told to fear God, but we are never told to fear the Devil. And just as Satan has convinced many people that he does not exist, he has convinced many more to fear and even worship him. This explains the stubborn fascination people have with the occult and spiritualism.

We are told to resist the Devil and to be aware of his schemes. Christians have been delivered from the power of Satan and we can say “NO!” to him just like Jesus did when he was tempted. We cannot personally overcome the Devil. Jesus has already done that for us. But we can resist the Devil. We may have to resist repeated attacks. Jesus just kept saying “No!” to the Devil until the Devil left him. Perhaps we fail in temptation because we simply give up too soon. Consider this encouragement from Luther’s famous hymn: “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”

II. The second source of temptation comes from within our own hearts through our desires. Satan’s strategy with Eve was simple: he made Eve want something other than God. We fail to see the true significance of the forbidden fruit because we usually don’t think of it in relation to God. God had to give them a choice between himself and something else. There could have been a world without the possibility of sin, but that world would also be devoid of loving relationships as well. God made it possible for them to choose fellowship with Him or for them to choose their own way.

The forbidden fruit was probably just another tree in Eden, but God made it the object of choice. Eve decided, under the serpent’s influence, that there was something she wanted more than God. The trouble began when she began to look at the forbidden thing and then to desire it. The actual transgression was just the final domino to fall. Temptation starts with desire or what John calls the lust of the flesh.

You will never be tempted by something that disgusts you. Temptations always come in delightful, attractive packaging. We think there is something that will make us more happy, secure, popular, wealthy, or calm. Sometimes we just want a good time and a tingle up and down our spines. We want those things that will give us some advantage in life and we may even begin to think that we really cannot live or enjoy life unless we have that thing. When a desire has really taken hold, we are convinced that if we can’t have that thing we would rather not continue living.

These things that we desire take many forms and may not be inherently wicked by themselves. Many of the desires we have are rooted in perfectly neutral areas of our lives. Temptation takes a harmless desire and attaches it to the wrong object. Or, a desire may become overgrown and out of control, dominating our lives like the constant throbbing of a toothache or cramping muscle.

At some point we can no longer differentiate ourselves from our desires. We are eaten up with desire and we become the things that we long for, like an addict loses himself and becomes nothing but a drunk, or a druggie, or a gambler, or a pervert. We can’t imagine ourselves or our lives without those things that we pine and wish for. We all have desires that captivate our imaginations and activate our living. We set our goals based on desires. These goals may be for good things, but Satan wants to make them the ultimate things in our lives instead of God.

Satan knows that you can easily be made a slave to your desires and will spend your life doing nothing but scratching all the various itches while ignoring God. Augustine said that sin is taking a legitimate desire and trying to fulfill it without God. God gave us desires so that He can fulfill them. He is no ogre or cosmic sadist, enjoying it while we twist and writhe in the agony of unfulfilled desires. For every desire there is a godly, lawful, even a holy fulfillment. If there is not a fulfillment in this life, there will be in the world to come. God is good, and He wants us to trust Him with our desires.

Satan wants us to grab what we want right now on our own initiative because God cannot really have our best interests in mind. When our minds have been so poisoned against God, most of Satan’s work is done.

Once Eve’s mind was poisoned against God she began to look at the forbidden fruit in a different light. God could not longer be trusted. Temptation is a direct attack on the character and goodness of God. When the Devil tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread, it was the same strategy. Jesus should use his power to care for himself rather than rely on His heavenly Father. You cannot trust God to take care of you, so you had better come up with something yourself. Jesus’ answer is “man does not live by bread alone.” There is more to life than satisfying one’s own desires. Satan made Eve forget that. Satan will not necessarily tempt you to become a professional criminal, a drug dealer, or pervert. He will simply make sure that you are always thinking about yourself first. Satan’s suggestion that Jesus throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple mount is just another temptation for Jesus to put himself at the center of things rather than listening to God. If the Devil cannot persuade us to doubt God’s goodness, he might just take the opposite approach and tell us that God is so good He will support you and come to your rescue no matter what you do!

If God is not good, then you must do for yourself. If God is good, then you can do what you want. Either way, self is at the center and the Devil wins the contest.

So, what do we do with our desires? You really can’t just kill every desire and Christianity does not ask you to do that. The cessation of all desire is the religion of Buddhism, not Christianity. In fact, Christianity affirms that every desire at its core is something from God. The problem with desire is not the desire itself but the objects we become attached to. We love the wrong things. Our affections are misdirected and disorderly. Our hearts become so disordered that we often don’t even know what we want.

Salvation, or that aspect of salvation that is sanctification, is about getting the heart in order by reordering the affections. A famous Scottish preacher named Thomas Chalmers once preached a profound message entitled “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” The thesis of his sermon was the only way to effective expel the love of worldly things from our hearts is to get another more powerful love. We can give up this world if we come to love God. It is the love of God, not the Law of God, that will give us the power to overcome the sin in our hearts. But the reordering of our affections takes time. It is sort of like an army slowly taking back lost territory. We will never reach a state of sinless perfection. We will still be tempted by the Devil. And we will still have the Flesh in us with its desires. We will have to keep redirecting and reorienting our hearts toward God.

That is the whole purpose of worship, especially in a corporate setting. In worship we are helping each other see and love God more and more. When that happens all the desires of our hearts will fall into line. We will find that when we love God first we are set free to really love and appreciate other things more, especially other people.

The person who does not love God cannot love anything or anyone else truly because we will only be users not lovers. When we love God, everything else becomes good. When we do not love God, nothing is good.

III. The third source of temptation comes from our physical location in the world. John called it the lust of the eyes or the material things that we see and that we want. The forbidden fruit was tempting to Eve’s eyes. It was attractive. Is it strange to you that the thing God had forbidden would have been so pleasing to taste and to see? Why not forbid something that was already loathsome to see? Well, for one thing, everything that God made was good. God doesn’t make loathsome things. The world that God made was very good and was blessed by God. God has nothing against material things. He created matter. God made things beautiful.

As C.S. Lewis said, you don’t want to be more spiritual than God, as if all material or physical things are to be loathed. Naturally the fruit was pleasing to Eve’s eye and good to eat! God made it. We live in a world that is full of beauty and goodness, even this side of the Fall. There are thousands of things to see, touch, taste, and enjoy. God made these things and then gave us the faculties to experience these sensations. We are sensual beings who can respond to our environment.

When we hear the word “sensual” we almost always think of sex. The forbidden fruit has become a metaphor for sexual temptation, which is probably the most powerful physical experience we can have. But even that was created and blessed by God. Nothing is bad of itself.

Eve was not forbidden to eat and to taste fruit. She knew the forbidden fruit would taste good because she had presumably already tasted other fruits in the garden! The thing that God had made, which He had then forbidden, was sensually pleasing and attractive.

But we are overly impressed by the appearance of things. We like shiny things, colorful things, shapely things. We like to look at things, even those things we cannot possess for ourselves. We covet things. We spend vast amounts of time and energy looking at and collecting pretty things. Things become the main obsession of our lives, especially in the prosperous West.

For many people the accumulation of things becomes a standard by which to measure the success of their lives. To be successful implies the ability to get things or to purchase pleasures and experiences. The lust of the eyes is much harder to condemn than the lust of the flesh. We would immediately recognize adultery for the base sin of the flesh that it is, but you can be materialistic and still be an upstanding member of the local Church. If Satan can’t get you with the baser sins he will be satisfied to tempt you with the higher and more noble vices.

If he can’t make you into a sexual pervert or a drunkard, he may just turn you into an art collector or a purveyor of fine antiques. The result is the same in the end: something becomes dearer to us than God. Where our treasure is, there are hearts will be also.

The choice in the original temptation was between God and something God had made. They could enjoy the creation, but they could also enjoy the Creator. At some point, they had to choose to enjoy the Creator OVER the creation or the creation OVER the Creator. Creation was good and blessed. Creation was beautiful.

The natural world gave sensual delights and experiences. But the man and the woman were not made to enjoy these things as the primary experience of life. They were made to be with God. The Creator Himself was to be their ultimate delight and source of joy, not the fruits of the garden of Eden.

When Eve began to look at the forbidden fruit and saw that it was appealing to her senses, the sin of idolatry was conceived for the first time in the human mind.

Idolatry is to put some aspect of creation above or in the place of the Creator. Creation is good and was blessed by the Creator. But creation’s pleasures must never become a substitute for the glory of the Creator. Human life was never meant to be lived only on the level of the sensual to the exclusion of the spiritual. The world can be enjoyed but must never be worshiped. Life in the world can never be a substitute for life with God. It is possible for us to look at creation and see something of the glory of God. It is also possible for us to exchange the glory of God for some aspect of creation.

Temptation is what happens when our gaze is turned away from the glory and the beauty of God to some lesser glory or beauty. God does not forbid us from enjoying and experiencing beauty. The beauty that He has placed in nature is meant to be an invitation and an introduction to His greater glory. Satan would have us stop and stare at the threshold rather than enter the Holy of Holies.

The true depth of temptation is not simply in the appearance of the things the world parades before our eyes, but in how these things make us feel. The deception of temptation is in the fact that we seldom end up appreciating the things we want. We are after a feeling, not the things themselves.

If we could want things for those things themselves, we might begin to be thankful for them and this could lead us to worship the Creator who gave us those things as a gift. That would spoil all of Satan’s temptations. Satan’s temptation to Eve was not simply for her to enjoy the forbidden fruit as a midday snack, but to take it as a path to wisdom that would even make her like God. Imagine the intoxicating feeling of being truly free and independent like a god or goddess without any boundaries.

To step outside the limitations of our humanity, which implies dependence on the Creator, and to become gods ourselves is the ultimate form of temptation. That is the pride of life and it was pride that made the Devil fall from heaven.

Satan promises that god-like power to us. He promised Jesus all the Kingdoms of this world. Jesus came in humility, to do the will of His Father in Heaven, and then allow God to exalt Him in due time. Satan offered an alternative path to power and glory, one that did not require submission to God.

Remember the first time it dawned on you that your parents could no longer tell you what to do? That feeling of independence was intoxicating! There were probably things you suddenly wanted to do, not because you really wanted to do them, but because you now knew you could and because you also knew your parents would not approve. Satan wants us to feel that intoxicating power of being independent from our Heavenly Parent.

He doesn’t care how you get there, just that you get there. Because then you are separated from God, which was the intent of the temptation in the first place. The thing that separates us from God is not the Devil’s concern. It could be anything, even good things, can be used by the Devil to separate us from God. Life itself is just a series of choices between God and other things.

Vision of the Ages: The Message of Revelation

Preparing for the Future

Revelation 22.6-21

The final cycle of visions in the book of Revelation comes to a climax with the appearance of the New Creation. The old world has passed away and all evil has been removed. Only the people of God remain in the New Heavens and the New Earth, where they will worship God forever and see His very face. Unfortunately, some people have been excluded from this New Creation and are permanently shut out of the presence of God. After this vision fades we come to the formal conclusion of the book of Revelation, which is also the conclusion to the entire Biblical canon. The book ends with both a promise and a warning: Jesus is coming soon, but woe to those who are not ready to meet Him! The book of Revelation has told us much about the future. The end of this book urges us to prepare for the future that has been revealed in the preceding visions.

A New Creation is coming but the time to prepare for this future world is now, while we are still in this world. This New Creation has already appeared in embryonic form and if we want to be able to enter the fullness of God’s new world, we are going to have to belong to it now. The final words of Revelation show us how we can become a part of the future New Creation even while we live in this present world. This world is a staging area for the next world and what we do now will carry over into eternity, either for our eternal good or our eternal ruin and frustration. Life is serious business. If we miss what God is doing, then our lives will have been wasted.

Jesus is coming soon and so is the end of this present world order. The eternal state of things is rapidly approaching, and we must be giving what is eternal the priority in our lives over what is passing away. The present world order seems like it will last forever, and it is often difficult for us to think seriously about our own physical demise and eventual death. We may not live to see the passing of the natural order that is described at the end of the book of Revelation, but we will certainly all have to face our own passing away. Life has a way of distracting us from this eventuality. Even religion can make us too casual about the central issues of life.

The main business of the Christian life is preparing for the future. And we do this with a sense of holy fear because we know what is going to happen to those who are not prepared for what is coming. The Christian can look to the future with hope and expectation because the best is yet to come for the people of God. But we walk by faith and not by sight. The things that are revealed in these glorious visions in the book of Revelation have not yet appeared to our physical senses. It is going to take some grace for us to live in this present world while we make ourselves ready for the world that is coming. We must use the time that God has given us in this world to prepare for the next world. This is the true meaning of life. If we are ultimately excluded from the New Creation, then our lives in this world will have been lived in vain.

Time is going to run out and the world as we know it is going to end. That is the message of this text at the end of the book of Revelation. It is a fitting end to the Bible as well. Time is in the hands of God and He is guiding the history of the world and the future according to His purpose and will. God was there at the beginning when time began, and He will be there to bring time to an end. The Biblical view of time starts and ends with God. The book of Revelation says that God is the Alpha and the Omega. God is the Creator at the beginning and the Judge who stands at the end of time.

In contrast to the Biblical view of time, the pagan view has been cyclical and repetitive, like the cycles of nature. If all you have is the natural order to look at, then reality just seems to be an endless cycle of birth, corruption, and then death. The cycle just keeps repeating itself. This cyclical view of time is ultimately meaningless. The world is like a dog endlessly chasing its tail, going nowhere. If we have no further revelation, then this view of the world is reasonable. The cyclical view is even given some space in the Bible in the book of Ecclesiastes. Having been given great wisdom, Solomon made his observations about life in this world. He correctly saw how everything seems to just go through various, repetitive cycles. His conclusion was that life under the sun was ultimately meaningless. And it would truly be meaningless unless we have an additional revelation from outside the natural order.

            But there is another view of time besides the cyclical view. We know from the revelation in Scripture that time is linear: there was a beginning when God made the heavens and the earth, and there will be an end to Time when Jesus comes again and brings a New Creation. We do not learn about this from studying the natural world. Nature will only teach you the cyclical view and lead you ultimately to despair about life. The modern materialist sees no higher purpose to his life because all he believes is what he sees in the endless cycles of the natural world that eventually leads to his own demise. There is no hope found in nature. If we are to have any hope of anything beyond the endless cycles of birth, decay, and death then something will have to come from outside. The Bible tells us that there is something, or rather a Someone, who stands outside the confines of this world and has broken into time and history to bring something new.

            The Hindus believe in reincarnation, which is just an extension of the pagan, cyclical view of time. In that religion, it is taught that human beings experience a cycle of birth and death until a higher form of consciousness or enlightenment is achieved and the individual escapes the cycle to enter the impersonal state of Nirvana. In this view of life, there is more than one chance to get it right and escape the endless cycles of birth and death. If you happen to live a bad life, there will be another chance to better yourself in your next reincarnation. You do not have to get everything right the first time around!

            The Bible does not teach reincarnation. The message of the Gospel is much better and more hopeful. Our time in this life is filled with the goodness and grace of God who wants us to turn to Him and acknowledge Him as the source and ultimate meaning of life. We were created by a good and loving God so that we might come to know Him. This seeking after God is the whole purpose of our time on earth. And God is not playing a game of hide-and-seek with us. If we seek God, then we will find Him (See Acts 17.26-28). As the angel said to John, we must worship God because this is the whole point of our lives in this world as well as the world to come. Our time in this world is like a period of training or education. This life is preliminary. The startling implication to this is that it is possible to go through our time in this life and miss the point! One of the biggest lies out there is that our lives are our own to do with as we please. But the Judge is standing there at the end and He will make the final assessment of our lives. Sometimes wicked people seem to be getting away with their rebellion against God. Even wicked men seem to be happy and enjoying life, perhaps living long and luxurious lifestyles. But the feet of the wicked are set in slippery places (See Psalm 73) and time runs out for every man. Time is God’s limitation for sinful man. “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment.”

The book of Revelation sees the end fast approaching. When Time has finally melted away all that will remain is the fixed state of the eternal order. This is what the text means by this rather unusual statement: “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.” In this world the concrete is still wet, so to speak, but it will be set when Time comes to an end. Those who wash their robes will enter the eternal city of God. But those who remain defiled by sin will remain forever outside in alienation from the life-giving presence of God. We are called upon to think about this final state of things and where we will be when eternity sets in. If we are needing to change, the time to begin that change is now.

,            The new world is coming, and we must be made fit to enter it. But “flesh and blood will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” In our natural state, we are not ready to live in the New Creation. The new world that is coming has been prepared for a certain kind of people and we must become the kind of people who can live in this new world. This means that a change must begin while we are still in this world. The change must be something more than superficial. We must somehow be changed from people who are alienated from God and hostile to Him to people who are in fundamental agreement with His nature. We must be changed from people who ignore and even avoid God to people who love and seek after God. We must become people who glorify God and serve Him as He deserves if we want to be a part of the New World Order. Somehow our disorderly, misdirected hearts must be put right before we can enter the New Creation.

            A person who is not prepared to live in the world to come would not even be able to enjoy it. A person who has only lived in alienation from God to suddenly be thrust in the presence of the God that he or she has been diligently avoiding would not be at home in “heaven” at all! The eternal bliss of the Redeemed, on the other hand, will be to finally be in the presence of the One they have been seeking. “The pure in heart shall see God.” But does God not love us just as we are, even in our sinfulness and alienation? Yes, but God also loves us too much to leave us in a state of alienation. He wants to make us His children; sons and daughters who reflect His glory and share His nature. God is not just after a certain kind of behavior but a certain kind of person. He wants to share Himself with us for eternity. We must become the kind of people who want what He wants. Otherwise, heaven could never be heaven.

             It is not uncommon to hear someone talk about heaven as a place where all our dreams come true and we get the things we want. But this is a misleading half-truth. Heaven is not just a state of mind, it is a real place that is eventually going to break through the veneer of this world. Will we want heaven when it breaks through? It is going to require a complete transformation. You must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God. There will have to be a change of affections and loyalties. And these changes will certainly put us at odds with this present world order. We must become strangers and aliens in this world so that we can have citizenship in the world that is coming.

There is still a part of us that is attached to this present, evil world. This Old Man belongs to the Old World, and he wants to stay attached to it perpetually! But we have also received something from the New Creation. The Holy Spirit of God has already been sent to dwell in believers and orient them to the New Creation. And if we have received the Spirit of God then we are truly children of God.

Something from eternity has broken into our time and space. There has been an invasion preceding the final victory. In Jesus, Heaven invaded earth and set up a kind of colony or beachhead. When Jesus began preaching He declared that the Kingdom of God had landed, and He invited everyone to orient themselves to this new world order. Another way of looking at this is to say that Jesus came to bring eternal life. The eternal has invaded and is spreading its influence throughout the world. We are invited to come and participate in this new life. “Let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” Eternal life means that the future has broken into the present.

            People become confused about this offer of eternal life. We often think of something eternal as that which lasts a long time. But eternal life is a qualitative description of something. This is a certain kind of life, not just a life like we have here that lasts a long time. In fact, eternal life is a very different kind of life from the earthly kind of life that we know and have experienced. The only kind of life we have known is a natural or a biological kind of life. But there is another kind of life in the universe, and that is a Divine kind of life. All biological life was created by the Divine life. But the biological life that was created must not be confused with the kind of life that God Himself possesses. The world is alive, but it does not share in the Divine life that is found only in God Himself. You and I are alive, but if left to ourselves we will not share in the Divine Life. But what if that Divine life were to appear and be offered to mankind? What if those who had only known the natural or biological kind of life were able to partake in the Divine or eternal kind of life? When this natural world and all its biological life finally runs out, the only kind of life that will remain is the Divine kind of life. That is the future that is being prophesied in the book of Revelation. Those who partake of this eternal kind of life, this Divine kind of life, belong to that future time and will remain after the heavens and the earth have passed away.

            There are several signs that this coming Age is already breaking through. There are people walking around in this world right now who already possess this Divine kind of life. This Divine kind of life can be seen in the lives of people who have a desire for God and for a kind of life that puts God at the center of everything they do. Eternal life is fellowship with God. We do not have that final, face-to-face kind of fellowship that is going to be there in the world to come. In our present state, we could not handle that kind of life. The eternal life comes to us in a kind of preliminary form, being mediated to us through such things as baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In these sacramental acts, the future is mediated to us in the present and we can receive a kind of life that will never diminish or fade away. The saints belong to the future because the future life lives in them. Becoming a Christian is the closest thing we have to time travel! When the Church gathers for worship it is possible to sort of slip out of time and touch what is eternal. In our hearts or our affections, we already live in the world to come, even though our bodies and the rest of the created world have yet to be redeemed.

            Eternal life is a gift. We cannot earn it, but we must receive it. Likewise, we cannot make the new heavens and the new earth. But we can prepare for it. We are not passive spectators in what God is doing but active participants. If we are going to eventually end up in the presence of God, then we must come to know something about Him now. We primarily come to know God through what He has revealed in Holy Scripture. Therefore, we devote ourselves to Scripture. If we are going to end up in the presence of a holy God, then we must begin in this world to purify ourselves from everything that God would find offensive. This means pursuing holiness and forsaking all worldliness, idolatry, and sin. There are some things we cannot take on this journey. This is not a kind of detached, mystical escapism from this world. On the contrary, Christians are those who give the most meaning to this life, not as an end of itself, but as a kind of prelude to an even greater life. That is why the saints are always the most joyful people. They have something to really live for. We are running towards a heavenly prize and fighting for an eternal crown of glory. Christians never live aimlessly but are always thinking about the goal that is ahead and striving to reach it.

The Church was sent out into the world to be a witness for Christ and His Kingdom. The Church is like a neon sign pointing to what God is doing in the world. It is the people of God who get to invite other people to come and be a part of the New Creation. Not even angels have this great commission of preaching the Gospel to every creature! Since the Church has this commission, it is imperative that she is ready for the work.

            We cannot give what we do not have. One of the great hindrances to the Gospel is the Church itself. How can the Church be the harbinger of a New Creation if she is dominated by the Old Order? The only glimpse that people in the world can get of the New Creation that is coming is what can be seen now in the Church. The Church does not dispense salvation, but it must tell people where the water of eternal life may be found. And it must be evident that the Church is partaking of that life-giving water herself. We share what we ourselves have tasted.

            The Church is the steward of Christ until He returns. And then we must give an account to the Master for how we have managed His goods. The Church must remember that the Master is coming soon. And we must all stand before His judgment seat to give an account of our deeds. The book of Revelation ends on this sobering note. What are we going to do with what Christ has given us? Here at the end of the book of Revelation, and the end of the entire Biblical revelation, it should be clear what we are to be doing as we wait for Jesus to return. The Lord has given His marching orders and we have no right to refuse. 

            Only the Church knows what time it is in the world. We are living at the end of an Age and the beginning of a new world. The only thing that really counts is the New Creation. Everything that is old is disappearing and will soon be gone forever. In the modern world, people often wonder if the Church will last when it is the world that is obsolete and about to pass away.

            There is both a warning and a promise in this message. The warning is for those who chose to live only for the present while ignoring the future that has been revealed to us. But the promise is for those who want something more than this present world has to offer. It is only when we get a glimpse of the future that God has prepared for His people that we will be able to let go of the present world. We will not be eternally homeless. Like Noah and his family on the Ark, we will pass through the flood of God’s judgment and come to rest on the mountains of Ararat to find a new world awaiting us.

            Unless we are ready to enter the New Creation, all our activities will be null and void. The world rushes madly into the future with a million things to do. But only one thing is needful. We are busy and concerned with many things. Some of these things involve religion and ministry. These things are also vain unless we are ready to meet the Lord when He comes. Jesus is coming soon! That is the final word from Heaven. But what does “soon” mean? How many generations of believers have scanned the heavens looking for signs of His coming and waiting for Him to appear? Now more than ever we must hear the cacophony of scoffers mocking the Lord’s promise to return. We do not know when He will come. He means for us to be ready for Him whenever He comes. “The sands of time are sinking, the dawn of heaven breaks.” Either our lives in this world will end, or He will come for us in the clouds. Either way, we are destined to meet Him someday. May we be ready for that glorious day!