The Destiny of Creation (Part 5)

Many today consider creation and history to be nothing more than a random walk through time—in Shakespeare’s famous phrase, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Others see a struggle for survival, reproduction, and evolutionary advance. Still others, influenced by Eastern religions, see a cycle, the Lion King’s Circle of Life, endlessly repeating itself and finding meaning only in the repetition.

But the Bible’s story of creation is different. God’s story is not a cycle, it is not random, and it is not evolutionary. Rather, it is gracious. God’s story has a destiny, a goal, precisely because it began with a purpose—the display of the glory of God. And despite our sin, God has been leading creation through history’s long march to the destiny he has prepared for it. That destiny has everything to do with Christ: the heir of creation and the one by whom and for whom all things were made.

NEW CREATURES

To begin with, it’s through Christ that we are made new creatures.
God never abandoned his original plan. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea, and that will happen as the earth is filled with image bearers who truly and accurately reflect God’s glory. Only now, because of our sin, we need to be re-created in order to fulfill God’s plan.

Though Abraham’s family was set apart for God on the outside, inside their hearts were—and our hearts are—corrupt and deadened by sin. They continually broke God’s covenant and blended in with the world, just as we would still do had God left us in our natural state apart from Christ.
The history of Israel, just like our own personal history, points to our need to have stubborn, sinful hearts replaced by hearts soft to God’s word and God’s love.

This is what Jeremiah promised the Messiah would do in Jeremiah 31, and it’s what Jesus Christ has in fact accomplished. Through his word, the gospel, Jesus resurrects dead sinners in newness of life and makes them new creatures. So Paul writes, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come" (2 Cor 5:17). Elsewhere, he puts it this way:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph 2:4-10).

God’s grace to us in Christ does not come to us because we’ve decided we need new hearts and ask for them, any more than Adam asked to be created, or Abraham asked to be called by God. Grace comes to us through Christ because God loves us. Irresistibly, like a lover wooing his beloved, God changes our hearts, regenerating them, recreating our very nature; so that now, instead of hating God and running from him, we love him and turn to him in faith and repentance. As John said, "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Through Christ, we who have put our faith in him have become new creatures.

THE DISPLAY OF GOD’S GLORY

But not only through Christ and his grace are we new creatures. In Christ, we are once again the display of God’s glory.

We display God’s glory as we reflect his character as new creatures. Paul tells us that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. When we demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit rather than the fruit of the sinful nature, when we love our enemies, when we forgive just as God forgave us, we display the glory of God. These good works don’t save us. Rather they demonstrate our salvation; they display that we have been made new. If we don’t see the glory of God in the transformed lives of our church members, then we have some hard questions to ask about our ministry as pastors and leaders. Gospel ministry results in lives that display God’s glory.

But it’s not just our changed lives that display this glory. In our union with Christ by faith, we are reconciled and joined to the One who is "the image of the invisible God," "the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being" (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3). We become his body, the church. And though we come from every tribe and language, every color and race, we are united in him as a single people of God, a single race, a single nation. The confusion and curse of Genesis 11 are removed in Christ.

In Christ, we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others (Rom 12:5).

Through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus (Eph. 3:6).

In Christ, the church displays God’s glory, as the divisions of this world count for nothing, and all that counts is a new creation (Gal 6:15). This is why we should want our churches to be as ethnically diverse as our communities. We want our churches to be places where we don’t need anything other than Christ in common in order to love one another. We don’t need to have the same jobs. We don’t need to have the same backgrounds. We don’t need to have the same educational attainments. We don’t need to have the same skin color. We don’t need to have the same taste in music. All we need is the new creation. All we need in common is Christ. That’s not a political goal; it’s a gospel goal and a New Creation reality.

CREATION’S GOAL

But even that does not exhaust the destiny of creation. For together with Christ, we are creation’s goal.

The church is more than Christ’s body. Together with believers from every age since the beginning of the world, we are also Christ’s bride. It’s not by accident that the last image of an unfallen world in Genesis 2 presents the intimacy of a husband and wife on their wedding day. I think we were given that last snapshot of an unfallen world, because that is the picture of creation’s end. God has been leading creation toward a wedding all along. In Revelation 21, the apostle of love writes,
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God…. He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."

Creation’s destiny is a wedding day.

The story of creation really is a love story, the story of a bridegroom who will stop at nothing, not even the cost of his own life, to win for himself a bride, and to present her to himself radiantly beautiful, spotless, and pure. The story ends with the bridegroom preparing a new home for the new couple—a new heaven and a new earth. Unlike Adam with his bride, this bridegroom promises that he will exclude everything from that new home that might spoil or detract from their love.

In that place, there will be no more crying or pain, because there will be no more sin and evil. Only love will be there, as Christ and his bride display the glory of God’s redeeming grace, and the angels watch in awe.
We’re not there yet. But we will be. Are you living for that day? Will your story be included in that story? It can be. God’s grace is sufficient and the call of his love is irresistible. Pray that you will have ears to hear God’s voice of love in Christ. Pastor, pray that your people will have such ears. Do not rest content until you are sure that the only voice they hear from your pulpit is that singular voice, the matchless voice of love.

Michael Lawrence is associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and is the 9Marks lead writer for biblical theology.
November/December 2006

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Topics: Biblical Theology, Theology