Real Restoration: The Story Thus Far

Story

The conflicts that will define the Story — the story of God’s activity among men — are now laid out for the reader —

* Satan vs. God by means of mankind. Satan seeks to drive a wedge between God and man by tempting man to sin.

* Man vs. his fleshly nature. Adam, Eve, Cain, and eventually everyone in the world is overcome with sin because men continually submitted to temptation, becoming evil and violent.

* Husband vs. wife. As described in the last post, strife in marriage is one of the curses of Genesis 3.

* Man vs. nature. Another of the curses is that it will be harder to make a living from the land. Nature was created to serve man, but after sin entered the world, nature would be much less cooperative. But we should also understand that once Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they would not longer care for the land as they had before.

* Man vs. man. Cain killed Abel. The people before Noah were violent toward one another, and that violence was not cured by the Flood.

* Nation against nation. Mankind could not be united in a single nation, because man was too sinful. But the cure was in some ways worse than the disease. The world became divided and at war with each other.

* Man vs. God. God gave unspeakable grace to Adam and Eve, to Cain, and to Noah, and yet the sin problem wasn’t solved. Mankind continued along its sinful path.

And so the question is posed: How will God gain the victory? If generosity, mercy, the purging of evil people, and a united mankind won’t overcome Satan and sin, what will? And will the solution involve any of these same elements? If so, what must God add to the mix to overcome mankind’s brokenness, his readiness to sin?

The text at this point not only tells us what the conflicts are, but defines victory. If God were to succeed in making everything right, what would be required?

* God’s defeat of Satan.

* Man freed from temptation.

* Healthy marriages.

* Man in harmony with nature, man caring for nature and nature being productive for man.

* Right relationships among individuals.

* The re-uniting of the nations in submission to God.

* Man in right relationship with God.

Sounds a lot like Revelation, doesn’t it? And that’s God’s mission.

The rest of the Bible will tell us much, much more about the mission, and how God intends to accomplish it, but the mission — the conflicts to be resolved in the Story — are spelled out very early in the text.

On the nature of man

Now, it’s important to realize that the scriptures present mankind as created sinless and yet capable of sin. Mankind isn’t inherently evil, nor is mankind inherently righteous. Rather, mankind is conflicted, with a continual war between a desire for God and a desire for sin. Consider, for example, Cain. When he was punished by God for murder, Cain’s complaint was “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence” (Gen 6:13-14). Even after committing murder, Cain was desperate to remain in the presence of God. And yet, God told him,

(Gen 4:1 ESV) 6 The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

God counsels Cain that he must learn to resist temptation — and that temptation can be resisted. He doesn’t have to submit! Man — even Cain — is capable of righteousness. But we’re broken. As Scot McKnight says, we’re “cracked eikons,” that is, we’re made in the image of God (eikon in the Greek), little pictures of God, but we’re flawed. We just keep breaking. We don’t have to, but we do.

Of all philosophies (and, of course, Christianity is much, much more than a philosophy), the scriptural view of mankind is the most realistic. The scriptures don’t idealize the heroes of the Bible but rather present people as they really are — capable of great heroism and yet also capable of great sin. Whether it’s Noah, Abraham, David, or Peter, the scriptures show us real people, that is, people who struggle against sin and sometimes lose — and yet who manage to remain in right relationship with God.

You see, God’s mercy and grace allow us to stop pretending to be something we’re not, and so free us to do better. (If that makes any sense.)

On the nature of God

The starting point for all serious Bible study is the nature of God — not what it means to be “spirit” but what sort of person is God? And in the early chapters of Genesis, we see that God is capable of wrath (the Flood, for example) but also great mercy and great generosity. God doesn’t take away free will, but he goes to great lengths for the sake of mankind, seeking to preserve and build on what good he can find.

It’s important to ask, therefore, why God acts as he does. Why show mercy to Cain? Why spare Noah and not just wipe everyone out and start all over? Why divide the nations at Babel rather than destroying them? More importantly, why begin a process with Abraham to fix everything? Why should God care whether we cracked eikons are broken? Why bother to make repairs?

We all tend to just assume that God acts to fix us because we need fixing, but obviously there is more to than that. The answer, of course, is that God loves us, even though we don’t look all that lovable from the text. We certainly don’t deserve the love we receive.

We often prefer to argue about why God destroyed so many in the Flood — rather than why he saved Noah and his family. We start with the assumption that we deserve God’s generosity — but that is just not true, and that false assumption badly distorts how we read the text. And so, I think the better question is why he saved anyone at all.

It’s not fully revealed until the New Testament, but one of God’s purposes is to restore us back to his image. He wants us to be in his image and likeness — as we were always meant to be. And the reason is certainly that he loves us and wants what’s best for us. And therefore, we have to consider that his efforts to restore us to his image are not so much for his pleasure as for ours. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be love at all.

Mission and the nature of God

We can now revisit the conflicts to be resolved, and see them in terms of God’s work to restore us to his image.

* God has the power to defeat Satan. When we are restored to God’s image, we will, too.

* God has the power to resist temptation. When we are restored to God’s image, we will, too.

* God isn’t married, and there will be no marriages in heaven. But marriage exemplifies the nature of God as a single being composed of multiple persons. Marriage and sex within marriage are a foretaste of heaven itself — at its best. And while I don’t know the details, somehow or other, when we’re with Jesus, male and female will no longer strive and mankind will enjoy relationships even better than marriage — a relationship modeled on the Trinity’s own internal relationships.

* God created nature to be in perfect harmony with man, and at the End, this harmony will be restored.

* Mankind will be in perfect relationship with each other — just as are the members of the Godhead.

* The nations will be rejoined and language will no longer be a barrier to right relationship.

* Man will be in right relationship with God — just as are the members of the Godhead.

Therefore, the mission of God is to make us like the Triune God. There is depth here that we can’t even imagine, but we can see the broad outlines.

Just as good parents raise their children to be like themselves, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are working at great personal cost to repair us so that we’ll be like themselves and enjoy a relationship much like the one they enjoy.

(John 17:20-23 ESV) 20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,  21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,  23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

And here’s a key thought — the goal won’t be perfectly realized until the end of time, but before then, it is being partly realized. The mission doesn’t begin with the end of time. It began with Abraham, but the victory was won at the resurrection.

It’s like D-Day. The Allies landed, established a beachhead, and had many months of brutal, deadly fighting ahead of them. But once the Germans let them establish a beachhead, their victory was assured. Therefore, we honor D-Day more than we honor V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day).

We now live between D-Day and V-E Day. The war isn’t over, and the blessings of victory haven’t been fully realized, and yet we know that we’re on the side of the Victor. And God invites us into the fray — because to be one with God is to share in his purposes and mission.