By Dean Ohlman

According to the Bible, what is the purpose of the creation?  A useful answer to that question is expressed in four statements: 1) the material creation is a fundamental of our worth; 2) the material creation is a fundamental of our worship; 3) the material creation is a fundamental of our work; and 4) the material creation is a fundamental of our worldview.

1. The material creation is a fundamental of our worth.

Three Scripture passages summarize for us the Christian understanding of the worth of people: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). “For every creature of God is good” (1 Tim. 4:4). “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen—even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas” (Psa. 8:4-8).

The Bible makes it clear that the infinite God willed to create the earth and willed to make a finite creature in His image to have dominion over it as His steward.  Both the earth and the creature made to rule over it were declared by God to be good—indeed very good. This Christian understanding of mankind’s original material perfection is rare among the religions.  Most of the ancient religions, and modern Hinduism, consider the material world as something evil, or at the least, something to be escaped from. The philosophy behind the Hindu practice of yoga is in fact the necessity of “escaping” from the material body and blending in some ethereal, spiritual way with the Universal All, which transcends the material.  How different that is from the Christian understanding that the “All” is personal, and in Him we have our origin.  Further, He actually took the material form of a man, died in the material form of a man, rose again in the material form of a man, ascended to heaven in the material form of a man, will one day come back in the material form of a man, and reign forever in the material form of man as the sovereign over material human beings that He has taken into His family as children of God!

The familiar Christian doctrine of “total depravity” has often clouded the fact that while man in his fallen state is totally incapable of attaining personal salvation and is spiritually dead in “trespasses and sin,” the material form of man is the very good creation of God.  God’s ultimate plan is not that man’s body be discarded, but that it be redeemed—that it will become just like the body of the risen Jesus Christ: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:20-21). “So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption” (1 Cor. 15:42).

It’s hard for people to attain true humility even if we see ourselves as depraved wretches.  Harder yet is the better path to humility: seeing ourselves as the crown of creation, made in the image of God, esteemed by God, and the reason for the broken heart and atoning death of Christ.  That God would love sinful and fallen mankind so much as to send His son in the material form of a human being to die for us in order to be reconciled both body and soul to Himself is the essence of the gospel we are called to preach. As C. Steven Evans put it in Despair: A Moment Or a Way of Life? “Man is someone worth loving; he is in fact loved by a supremely worthy Being.  The true meaning of being a person is to love—and to be loved.”
    
 
2. The material creation is a fundamental of our worship.  
Another mind-bending truth about the material creation is what the Bible says about it as a reason for our worship: “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker” (Psa. 95:6). “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Rev. 14:7).  “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Rev. 4:11KJV).

These passages from Scripture provide us with a phenomenal understanding of the creation as a motivation to worship. They are perhaps pointed up best by the concluding chapters of the book of Job.  After Job and his commiserating friends plumbed the depths of their contemporary philosophy and theology about how and why God works the way He does, God finally stepped in to deliver the definitive and final word.  One would expect God to reveal the reasons given to the reader at the beginning of the book: Satan’s test of Job’s faith in God.  Instead, God rehearses the marvels of His creation.  When the wonders of the material creation are laid before Job by the Creator Himself, Job could only reply, “I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’ I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:2-6). Job “saw” God in the greatness of His creating and sustaining power, and he was driven to repentance.  And repentance is every true child of God’s first act of worship.

The psalmist moves us from repentance to awe: “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Psa. 33:6-9). Certainly the material creation ought to compel us to worship as it compelled the ancients.  However, it is critical to understand that the creation itself is never the object of worship. It is the Creator alone who is worthy of our worship. The apostle Paul described ancient civilizations that erred in this respect:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen (Romans 1:20-25).

3. The material creation is a fundamental of our work.  
Not only do the first two chapters of Genesis outline the creation of the heavens, the earth, and all living things, they also outline mankind’s role on the earth—dominion and stewardship: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Gen. 1:26-29). “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). These two verses are the heart of what has historically been called mankind’s “cultural mandate.”  Examined in the light of other Scripture, it’s clear that people are mandated to develop the potentialities of the earth in such a way as to bring honor and glory to God and reflect His attributes: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

Andrew Linzey expressed it like this: “We need a concept of ourselves in the universe not as the master species but as the servant species—as the one given responsibility for the whole and for the good of the whole. We must move from the idea that animals were given to us and made for us, to the idea that we were made for creation, to serve it and ensure its continuance. This actually is little more than the theology of Genesis chapter two. The Garden is made beautiful and abounds with life: humans are created specifically to ‘take care of it’” (Genesis 2:15).

Francis Schaeffer indicates the same in slightly different terms:  “Man has dominion over the ‘lower’ orders of creation, but he is not sovereign over them.  Only God is the Sovereign Lord, and the lower orders are to be used with this truth in mind.  Man is not using his own possessions. . . . When we have dominion over nature, it is not ours either.  It belongs to God, and we are to exercise our dominion over these things not as though entitled to exploit them, but as things borrowed or held in trust which we are to use realizing that they are not ours intrinsically.  Man's dominion is under God's dominion and in God's domain.” (From Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology).  

Even more elegant are the words of Jean Mouroux in, The Meaning of Man:

Man is linked with nature in the vital, moral, and religious orders; and with her he forms an organic whole which finds its meaning and definitive fulfilment in the glory of God.  But man alone is conscious of it.  He alone is able to present the world to God in thought and love and to glorify God through the world.  Thus he is bound up with nature, but only to rule, complete, and achieve it: he is “the animal that commands,” but commands in order to serve and do homage; and thus he is truly creation’s priest.  And fraternal nature, not unhelpful, but seeking, desiring, looks up to him who alone can fulfill her desire by giving her a soul and a voice wherewith to honor her God.

We sometimes make the mistaken assumption that work was the result of the Fall.  But the truth is that God gave us our work well before the sin nature took us over.  Now, under the curse, work is far more tedious and fraught with frustration.  Nonetheless, though the material world was cursed in order to discipline mankind and keep him from pride and presumption, the Bible never says the material earth is sinful—fallen. From the Scriptures quoted above we can logically assume that God still treasures and has compassion on all He has made (Psa. 145:9).  Therefore, as we do our work, we do it utilizing—and honoring—the material creation, and we love it as God loves it.

4. The material creation is a fundamental of our worldview.  
Christianity is unique in the relationships it ascribes to the three prime actors in the cosmos: God, people, and the other material parts of the universe.  These relationships can best be illustrated with a graph:

These relationships form a satisfactory framework for the biblical worldview: God’s ideal pictured for us in the Garden of Eden, which found people (Adam and Eve) in unbroken fellowship with God, their creator.  God, as Creator, was unquestionably in ownership of the earth (Psa. 24:1). Nonetheless, God, the Owner and Creator of the earth, entrusted the earth to the creature He had made in His image: man.  Mankind’s role as spelled out in Scripture was that of stewardship. This setting was truly paradise—the perfect picture of peace on earth. With all the relationships functioning and with God in lordship over all, we had the ideal environment pictured by the Hebrew term shalom.  The Bible simply declares this primordial scene to be “very good.”  In English, “good” is rather broad and nebulous in meaning.  The Hebrew word for “good,” however (towb), contains all these nuances: pleasant, agreeable to the senses, excellent, valuable, rich, prosperous, glad, happy, kind, of benefit, and morally right.  Now that’s truly a definition of Paradise!

Of course, we know that such a state did not last long.  After Adam’s sin, it crashed.  All the relationships were broken, and even though the material world did not lose its inherent goodness, God made it clash with the sinful purposes of people as a disciplinary and protective measure ensuring that mankind would not rise to proud ascendancy over the earth.  Yet he has tried.  And as a result the earth groans:

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. (Rom. 8:19-23)

This passage is one of the most hopeful texts in the Scriptures, for it foretells the coming restoration of all things spoken of by the prophet Isaiah and mentioned in Luke’s account of the Acts of the Apostles:  “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:19-21). Paul also refers to this glad time:  “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:19-20, NKJV).

Paradise will indeed be regained, and that Paradise is a promise not only for people who have placed their trust in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but also for the entire creation that was “subjected to futility” by God on account of the sin of Adam.

The entire material creation will once again experience joy.

One of the sad misconceptions of the conservative evangelical church has been the understanding that we are “aliens and strangers” on the earth.  In truth we should be aliens and strangers to the world — to the ungodly and rebellious world system ruled over by Satan.  This world system is going to be destroyed and its diabolical ruler vanquished for eternity.  And as a long and glorious celebration of our Savior’s victory, we are going to reign with Him for at least a thousand years more on this very earth which so many of us now abuse and malign.  When we attain our final and complete adoption as children of God, we will embrace a good earth healed from the curse where thorns no longer “infest the ground.”

It is unfortunate in a sense that Isaac Watts titled his carol “Joy to the World!”  He took his inspiration for his stirring lyrics from Psalm 98 that exults:

Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! For He has done marvelous things; His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory. The LORD has made known His salvation; His righteousness He has revealed in the sight of the nations. He has remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth; Break forth in song, rejoice, and sing praises. Sing to the LORD with the harp, With the harp and the sound of a psalm, With trumpets and the sound of a horn; Shout joyfully before the LORD, the King. (Psalms 98:1-6, NKJV).

Perhaps we ought to re-title the song of praise “Joy to the earth,” for that is indeed the very first line of the second stanza of Watt’s carol.

It is Satan and sinful mankind that blight God’s good earth.  The Genesis account of the Fall makes it clear that the earth did not sin; the creatures did not sin; the earth is not evil.  How ironic it is that the people of God today readily embrace so much of the doomed world’s political and economic systems that suppresses and abuses the gifts of the creation, and yet malign the earth—which will be restored.

From this time forward, let us sing this cherished Christmas song with a better understanding of its meaning: though sung as a celebration of the First Advent, it is in reality a description of the Second Advent.  What was promised at Christ birth may soon be fulfilled at His Second Coming.  Let us thrill at the wonderful harmonies woven by the composer of The Messiah, George F. Handel:

Joy to the world! The Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love.

The second coming of the Messiah is bad news for this world system, yet glorious good news for the earth and for those of us who will reign with Him upon it.  It is time that we imagine with C. S. Lewis the moment when “that hideous strength” of the enemy of God and man is finally wrestled into defeat and submission, and when all the elements, plants, and living creatures of a restored earth join in one grand united doxology with redeemed mankind in praise to our Savior and Creator, Jesus Christ: It will be the return of shalom.

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" (Rev. 5:13, NIV).

Note in that passage how John explicitly includes the entire biosphere: creatures in the sky, on the earth, under the earth, on the sea, and in the sea.  Imagine the scene: larks, dragonflies, rabbits, badgers, moles, trap-door spiders, Portuguese men-of-war, sharks, and sea stars all responding to their Savior-Creator and, in their own nature and manner, singing!  Who says Narnia is fiction?  Aslan is the coming Lion of Judah! Think of the joy that will fill the Hundred-Acre Wood.  Tigger will jump higher than ever and Eeyore, then the eternal optimist, will “bouncy-bounce” with him.  Earth will be Peralandra, and Never-never land will become Ever-ever land!

Having this understanding of the meaning of the creation, we certainly have motivation to celebrate its wonder—and the wonder of all its God-given elements.