The work done by a doctrine of creation

It can be easy for the doctrine of creation to function merely as a backdrop - establishing a baseline, as it were, to make it easier to see the effects of the fall.  Yes, God made the world, and yes, it was good; but that's all in the past, and this side of Genesis 3 what matters is just pulling souls out of the wreckage before the whole thing goes up in smoke.

But a robust doctrine of creation - of the view that God made all this stuff and that it is therefore good, because it bears the mark of its Creator and serves his purposes - is so much more important than that.

Doctrinally, you can't make sense of Jesus without a sound doctrine of creation.  The idea that God the Son took on flesh makes no sense except in a scenario where God the Maker is still concerned for the stuff he has made.  The emphasis on stuff that pervades the gospel accounts - the physical healings, the miracles of food and wine, baptism and Supper - is inexplicable without a God who has not turned his back on his creation, or had second thoughts about the sheer physicality of the thing.  And then the resurrection - why all the insistence that it was with a real body that Jesus appeared after his crucifixion?  Why the eating of fish, the barbecue on the beach?  This is all such earthly stuff for the risen Son of God to be involved with, don't you think?  I wonder if a lot of the aversion which some people have to the idea of incarnation and resurrection actually comes from a sense that it just isn't spiritual enough for their idea of god.

The Christian hope also depends on our doctrine of creation.  Jesus rose in a physical body, and will return to raise our bodies and to renew the whole physical creation.  It is a new heavens and a new earth we're looking forward to, not an ethereal floaty existence as disembodied spirits.  Because God loves this creation he has made, he will redeem it.  All creation groans together in anticipation of that glory; it's a shame if Christians aren't excited at the prospect.

Ethically, there are a whole range of issues which Christians will tend to neglect without a firm doctrine of creation.  Environmental stuff, of course, but it goes a lot further than that.  I'm sure some of the debate a couple of decades ago about the right balance between evangelism and social action sprang in some measure from a deficient doctrine of creation: a sense amongst some that what matters is souls, not bodies or social systems or politics.  But if God is the Creator, all those things matter.

Most recently I've been thinking about how lack of a decent doctrine of creation makes our witness and evangelism harder.  It's easy for Christians to become interested only in 'Christian stuff', to the neglect of the world around.  Whether it's the person who can talk intensely about Christ and the need to be saved but has nothing to say about sport or art, or the person who sees value in reading theological tomes but has never enjoyed a good novel - it all serves to make Christianity seem anti-creation, anti-stuff.  Our lives are impoverished if we go even a little way down this road, and then who will want to join us in our impoverishment?

So anyway, God looked at everything he had made and saw that it was very good.

As a father has compassion

Preaching Psalm 103 yesterday, the big thing that struck me was the contrast between the frailty of humanity and the eternity of God:

As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.

The contrast is clear: God is from everlasting to everlasting, man is barely from one day to the next.  He is the enduring Lord, they are a flash in the pan at best.  We might ask, with another Psalm, what is man, that God should be mindful of him?

But according to Psalm 103, the response of God to humanity is not disdain.  One might reasonably expect this.  That is how the gods of the classical pantheons tended to view humans, and of course Aristotle thought that god would be completely unaware of such trifles as human beings - too caught up in his own perfection to be bothered.  (It would in fact constitute a loss of perfection for god to cease contemplating his own perfect self and take note of something so mundane as a human being).

Not the God of Israel.

As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

And in the full biblical witness to revelation, we see what that compassion means.  The Psalmist notes that God the creator "knows our frame" - he knows how we're made.  Of course he does, as creator.  But it's more than that.  In his compassion, God the Son has actually taken on that frame, and lived it from the inside out.  He has not just felt for us in our brevity and weakness, from a distance.  He is not condescending (in a negative way); he has condescended, to be one of us.  His compassion has extended so far, the distance from heaven and earth (the same distance which, according to the Psalm, marks the span of his great love).

What a great God we have, that for us he should become a feeble man!

Weakness

Great to have Dan Steel from Magdalen Road Church preaching from 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 for us yesterday.  Lots of weakness in the passage.  The message looks weak and foolish, the people who believe are weak and foolish, the ministers of the gospel work by apparently weak and foolish means.  We would love it all to be stronger, more impressive - but as Dan pointed out, that's because we're glory thieves.  We want the gospel and the church to be (and be seen to be) strong, so that we can be confident in ourselves.  Instead, we are forced to be confident in God.

The logic of Paul's position shows that this is God's choice - it is deliberate.  God chooses to use 'weak' things so that we are forced to rely on him.  It might seem as if God is deliberately keeping us weak.  But the deeper logic is that it could not be any other way.  God must use 'weak' things and thus force us to rely on himself - because he is the only source of strength.  If God had given us a 'strong' message, called a 'strong' people - well, we would have ended up weak.  Weak.

Strength doesn't come through intermediate things, not really.  God does not and cannot impart strength through a message or a method which detaches us from himself.  The reason the gospel gives strength is because it highlights our weakness and binds us to God.

Elsewhere Paul tells the Corinthians that because of the Lord he can say 'when I am weak, then I am strong'.  This is so, because God's grace is perfected in weakness.  At various points I have wanted this to mean something like: when I am weak, it is only temporary, because God will shortly provide new strength.  But it isn't that.  It isn't that at all.  Right now, in my weakness, I am strong - but the strength isn't in me.  I am strong only because in my weakness I am forced to lean on God, the only strength.  God is strength, I am weakness.  I am strong only in so far as I am wholly dependent on him.

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.  It is the waiting, the waiting on him, that brings strength.  The strength never becomes something in us, something we can bank for later; we can never get to a point where we need wait no longer.

So I guess the overall need that we have as churches and as individuals is to be so desperately weak, so thoroughly committed to the weak proclamation of a foolish message, that if anything is going to happen it will have to be God.  It will have to be him.