What is Christianity - Pt 2 Noble Ruins

I hope you’ve heard about Palmyra. The city, in present-day Syria, has an extensive and distinguished history. It is mentioned as long ago as 1500B.C. That predates the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt and their conquest of the Promised Land. Like much of the Middle East, Palmyra came under the control of the successive super-powers that overran the area, introducing different religions to its citizens. However, its wealth came from its merchants trading along the Silk Road. Massive building projects such as the Great Colonnade and the Temple of Bel put the city on the map. These have ensured the popularity of Palmyra into modern times as an attractive destination for tourists and archaeologists. Until 2015 that is, when the so-called Islamic State took over the city and set about destroying the ancient buildings that glorified anything except Islam. Thankfully, Palmyra was retaken by the Syrian army in March 2017, but not before much of its history had been obliterated. We should not seek to erase the past but to learn from it. You see, human beings have much in common with those ancient ruins. There is a grandeur that can still be seen, but much has fallen into disuse and disrepair. As we investigate the nature of Christianity this is a major element we must build into the picture – what human beings are by design and what we have become by rejecting the Designer.

We began our investigation last time by talking about God. On our own we cannot know much for sure about God. But in the Bible God has given us a detailed and reliable account of who he is and what He is about. Simply put, he is the great reality we must all reckon with, without whom nothing else makes sense. He is three persons, so he has never been lonely; He is separate from all he has made and he is central to any proper life in this world. He is about rescuing a great number of us from a future that is horrific and unending. The Bible, which he has breathed out and which he has preserved from its inception to the present day, is about him more than anything else.

But the Bible, and Christianity too, is also about us. It describes us in three different stages. This article will examine two of these stages for they have much to say to you and to the people you rub shoulders with every day.

Human beings as we were created - grandeur and glory

In the psalms David poses the question

 “What is man that you [God] are mindful of him?” (Ps.8:4). 

In his answer he recognises that God has made man and that God has given him dominion over the earth. [When I say ‘man’ in this piece I mean ‘man and woman’, for it was out of man that God made woman – the two are complementary.] David’s answer works against several modern views of man. First of all, man is not a little god. Man is a creature and will always be a creature. This would seek to puncture the arrogance with which human beings often act. We are not at the centre of things. God is much greater than we are in every way. We were made to bring him honour. At the other extreme, contrary to the prevailing evolutionary view, man is not simply an animal. He was made on the same day as the animals, out of the same basic material. However, Moses tells us that God did something special and unique in order to create Adam. He came close to him and breathed His own breath into Adam’s nostrils so that he became a living being. Equally, in the creation of Eve, God again does something special by fashioning her out of one of Adam’s ribs. Most tellingly, Moses informs us that God made man, male and female, in His own image. The image of God in man sets us apart from the animals. In order to make clothing for Adam and Eve, God must kill a couple of animals. In order for Abel to bring God an offering, he must kill a lamb. But God forbids the killing of human beings precisely because his image is in us. What that image of God in man actually means has received many answers. The Westminster Shorter Catechism provides a good, biblical working definition, “God created man, male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, with dominion over the creatures” (A.10). This speaks of our minds, our character and our actions. An image normally refers to something physical, something you make, something you can see. However, God is spirit, so in this case the image of God is largely spiritual. Let us not forget, though, that when Jesus came in the image of the invisible God he received a physical body. The image of God has to do with relationship, with responsibility and with rule. All of this defines what we are by nature, through the creation of a loving, powerful God.

Adam was made to be related to God. He was never meant to be alone either in physical or spiritual terms. The family is not society’s solution for loneliness but God’s blueprint. The early Christian thinker Augustine understood this clearly in his often quoted comment “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you” (Confessions, p.2). Very near the beginning of John Calvin’s great and very readable Institutes of the Christian Religion he says,

“[M]an never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinise himself” (I.i.2).

That explains why many people today do not fully grasp what human beings are, because they don’t take God into consideration. They often seek to replace this primary relationship with God with a secondary relationship with one or more human beings. This relationship with God began in Adam’s mind as he met with God daily and learned more about Him, His creation and His plans. It reached his heart too, the centre of his being, as Adam realised how generous and comprehensive God’s care and opening up of Himself to Adam was. And it also influenced his will, motivating him to love and trust and obey and learn from God. Adam was a priest in his relationship towards God and towards his wife.

Adam had responsibilities before God too. Since he was made on the sixth day, the first full day he experienced on God’s earth was a Sabbath day, a weekly reminder of God’s crown rights over him, a day of rest and worship and a day of special blessing from God. People ceasing to set one whole day apart to spend with God and his church has cheapened and coarsened human life, has deprived them of blessing and has made them less able to appreciate heaven. God gave Adam tremendous freedom to enjoy His world, but He laid down one restriction. Adam was not to eat from one tree in the middle of the garden where God placed him. That was not open for negotiation. Adam’s relationship with God, which we call a covenant, depended on his keeping that one condition. As a prophet he was also to pass on the terms to his wife. If he did pass the test there would be greater privileges beyond. He would reach a place where it would be not just inadvisable but impossible to sin. To reflect the relationships within the Trinity, God also gave Adam a partner designed for him, for him to protect, to nurture and to love. These responsibilities involved Adam’s understanding, his own holy and righteous desires at the core of his being, and his willing obedience of God in all things.

God also gave Adam the right to rule the world he made. In the verses immediately following God’s creation of Adam and Eve in his own image, God says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish… over the birds… and over every living thing… on the earth” (Gen.1:28). For His own reasons God is not extending that rule to what he made on the first two days, the light and the heavens. However, Adam still is a king over God’s creation. Again, in an echo of God’s naming what he made, Adam is tasked with naming the animals. Human beings are not to strike out on our own, but instead to think God’s thoughts after him. I would argue that Adam was no primitive humanoid, but the most intelligent person before Jesus came. Our abilities to cultivate the land, to harness the power God has invested in His world and to appreciate the beauty of what He has made in art, music, literature and film come under the same rubric of exercising this rule responsibly. Again this rule involved Adam’s taking in with his mind what God wanted, his desire to do what God commanded and his willingness to submit to God’s wise decree. It is also the awesome role of married human beings, with God’s help, to produce more copies of ourselves in his image, and to instruct them in his paths. In that way we repeat God’s actions of forming and filling his world. To quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “What a piece of work is a man” (Act 2 scene 2).

Human beings in sin – dereliction and ruin

Much of the previous section is in the past tense for it describes a high glory that has been lost. Genesis chapter 3 is unique in world literature in outlining how God’s perfect world has become polluted. God told Adam that if he ate from the one forbidden tree he would die. Adam may not have understood fully what ‘die’ meant, since no creature had died before, but it involved a starting point, an ongoing process and a final state. Satan, a fallen angel hiding behind the talking serpent, tells Eve she will not die. She listens to him, doubts God’s word, doubts God’s goodness and severity; arrogantly assumes she can act for herself; gives in to illicit desires by playing with the sin; and she and Adam both succumb in weakness. This introduces a whole range of unwelcome effects – shame, as they realise they haven’t become God and aren’t even independent of each other; fear, as they hear God approach and they have something to hide now; and blame as Adam first and then Eve try to avoid the impact of God’s searing questions. Don’t we know these effects all too often in our own lives? Yet God, as he promised, sets about judging them. So quickly has the sin darkened their minds, has it twisted their hearts and characters from righteous to self-obsessed and has it perverted their actions too. Their relationship with God lies broken around them. Their responsibilities towards God and towards each other have been shattered. Their rule has been compromised too and will take place in an altered, hostile world. Adam’s roles as prophet, priest and king have all been ruined. Such is the breadth and depth of sin now that Moses must write in chapter 6,

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

As the first man, Adam has acted as the representative of all men and women. He is not a single coin, but more like the metal stamp that prints out all the coins. Once the stamp has been damaged every coin coming from it is damaged too. The condition of the covenant lies in tatters. Yet on such a dark day, as Genesis 5:1 and 9:6 testify, God’s image in man has not been entirely defaced. Adam and Eve have been sent away from Eden, but they have not been sent to hell. They have willingly and brazenly rebelled against their loving Creator, but their former glory may still be restored at a quite unbelievable price.

God’s unexpected and generous grace at the moment of strident sin must be the focus of the third part of our series.