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Created to relate to God

II Cor 5: 16 – 6:2

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 13 Aug, 2006

OVER THE next few weeks I want to look at three primary relationships: with God, with each other and with our world. Today I want to look at relationship with God, the most important one.

CO-RULERS

When God created everything that exists, he created human beings to be in relationship with himself.

The very first mention of humans in Genesis is in Chapter 1, where we read,

^{GEN 1:26} Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

If we are made in the image and likeness of God, then we are made for relationship, because the essential nature of God is relationship.

The Bible tells us that God is love. If he is love, and if he never changes, he must always have had an object for his love, because love is only ever relational.

The whole doctrine of the Trinity is tied in with the concept that love is God’s essential mode of being. The Father loves the Son in the context of the Spirit.

But that love is never restricted; it is never merely God’s property, unshared with his creation. He loves his creatures. He loves us.

But he did not create humans only so as to love us. He also created us to represent him.

We cannot be effective rulers of the creation apart from God.

Ian McHarg, an American Town Planner, wrote a book called Design with Nature. It is partly a critique of Christianity’s impact on the environment and partly a methodology for land use planning with minimal impact on the environment. He says that Christianity has allowed people to dominate the natural world instead of encouraging us to live in harmony with it.

McHarg was partly right.

We haven’t taken our role seriously enough. When God appointed us to subdue the earth and rule over its creatures, it was always by delegated authority.

In other words, God’s purpose was for us to act as his representatives as we governed the earth.

In the ancient world, an emperor would appoint kings in the various lands he conquered, but it was the duty of those kings to rule in the interests of their sovereign. It was their responsibility to care for the land and the people so that the economies would expand and the nations grow, and the Emperor get a good return. Woe betide any king who laid waste to the land he was appointed to rule!

But people armed with the word and devoid of the Spirit have done just that.

We rule in relationship with the Maker and Shaper of the creation, not as independent beings. That is why the Bible makes it clear that the world is suffering because human kind has parted company with himself.

As we read in Romans 8,

¹⁹ The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Where McHarg got it wrong was his assumption that we humans are not as much bound in the crash of the creation as any other part. We fell, it fell. We — all together — are powerless to do anything other than what we do, because we are out of touch with God.

But that is only part of the whole picture.

God did create us for relationship with himself. God did create us to be co–rulers with himself. God does feel pain and sadness to see how badly we have failed in that relationship.

A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP

We need to understand that this relationship is designed to be personal. Even when we see God giving human beings dominion over the creation, it would be easy to think of this as being like the maker of a computer programming the computer so that it controls and guards the operations of a factory while he is away.

Our God is not like that.

If you turn to Genesis 2: 4–7, you see a more detailed account of how God created humans:

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens — ⁵ and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground — ⁷ the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

In Chapter 1, it is God who creates. In Chapter 2, it is The LORD God. It is unfortunate that we have followed the Jewish practice with the Name of God. In Chapter 1, it is God with creative power; but in Chapter 2, it is God with a Name. In the Hebrew, Chapter 1 talks about elohim; in Chapter 2, it is yahweh elohim — yahweh who is God.

Here is God with a personal name, a name that means, I am who I am. The Jews would not pronounce that name, because it is a name we all should keep holy.

But knowing a name, in Middle Eastern society, meant relationship. It meant knowing the person. Ancient kings took an official name so that only their family knew their real name. The kings of the past had no interest in being in relationship with their serfs. They didn’t want a slave calling out, “G’day, Ashurbanipal, old mate!”

But God takes that risk with us. He lets us know his name. He lets us know what kind of God he is. He lets us into the secret, into his life, into relationship.

And that is why, after the fall, it is so sad that the relationship is broken, that God has to search for the people, because Adam and Eve had disobeyed him and had broken the relationship. We read,

^{GEN 3:8} Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

^{GE 3:10} He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

There was no relationship any more. And whole religions have been built on the idea of a limited God, incapable of entering into relationship with his creatures.

THE BEGINNING OF RESTORATION

But God has also always aimed to bring us back into relationship with himself. Our God is bigger than any system which would deny him relationship. You have heard the saying, “If God seems far away, guess who moved?” God is not reluctant to be in relationship with us: it is we who run from him.

In Exodus, we read all the requirements for construction of the tabernacle, the forerunner of the temple. We read about the atonement cover for the covenant box. They called this box, The Ark of the Covenant, or The Ark of the Testimony — it’s the same word in Hebrew: b‘rith. God specified a covering made of gold for that box.

^{Exodus 25:17} “Make an atonement cover of pure gold — two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. ¹⁸ And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. ¹⁹ Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. ²⁰ The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. ²¹ Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the Testimony, which I will give you. ²² There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites.

Atonement is a strange word. It means “at–one–ment” — the state of being at one with God, the breaking down of enmity and separation.

Above the stone tables with the law engraved on them was the atonement cover. In some translations of the Bible it is described as The Mercy Seat. God’s mercy, God’s atoning love, is always above the law — not opposed to the law, but superior to it.

And it is over the Ark of the Testimony that God meets his people.

Our God is no aloof God. He is no absent manufacturer who takes no further interest in his creatures.

Our God is passionate about us.

ATONEMENT IN JESUS

But it is in Jesus that we see most clearly how much God loves, how unceasingly he pursues us, to win us back to himself.

John 3:16 is famous. In it we read,

For God loved the world so much that he gave his unique Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Martin Luther said that he was always glad that it said, “God loved the world.” He said that, if it had said, “God loved Martin Luther so much that he gave his son,” then he would have always worried that there might be some other Martin Luther somewhere else, and that it didn’t really mean himself. But, when it says that God loved the world, then that automatically included Martin Luther and everyone else.

I often quote Romans 5:8, because it expresses so clearly what God has done in Jesus:

God commends his love to us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,

Here we read that God loves us. It wasn’t that we loved God, and that made him favour us. God initiates. We love, because he first loved us.

We also read that God commends his love. Some modern translations use the more common word, God demonstrates his love. To demonstrate is only part of what it means to commend something. It’s a good translation, but not a complete translation. When you commend something or someone, you put that person or thing forward in the hope that other people will take action about that person or thing.

When I was at High School, I demonstrated how explosive benzine vapour can be when it is mixed with air. Although no animals were harmed, I don’t really want anyone to do what I did.

But I used to like lighting skyrockets when I was a kid, and I would have been happy to demonstrate the practice and commend it. Done correctly, it can be fairly safe.

God not only demonstrates his love, but commends it. He wants us to see it, to understand how good it is, and to use it.

He also gives us a measure of his love: the way we know what his love is like is when we see that Jesus Christ, God the Son, died for us. God adopted human flesh, human existence, so that he could go as far for us as any human being possibly could — that far and even further!

Recently there has been an item in the news about two men climbing a mountain. One fell into a crevass,and was dangling from a rope tied to the other man. The man at the top was not on a solid place, but was essentially hanging onto the ice with an ice axe and the spikes in one of his shoes. He could not get a firm enough footing to be able to pull his friend up, and his friend was dangling in a way that he could not pull himself up either. They hung there for hours. Eventually the dangling man told his friend, “You only have one choice: cut me loose. It’s better for one of us to die than for both of us to die.” The man at the top kept trying, but in the end he saw that that was the only chance.

He cut the rope, and his friend fell to his death. One man died so the other could live.

Jesus, the only truly good man, the only truly just man, died for us all. He let himself die. He chose death, so that we sinners could live.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God is passionate about a relationship with us.

AN APPEAL FOR RELATIONSHIP

So Paul explains his ministry like this:

^{2COR 5:16} So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

^6:1 As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. ² For he says,

“In the time of my favour I heard you,

and in the day of salvation I helped you.”

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.

The most basic relationship of all is with the God of the entire universe, who has made himself known to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

You know the words of that old hymn,

On the cross he sealed my pardon

Paid the debt, and made me free.

It is still true.

This is truly the time of God‘s favour; it is precisely the day of salvation!

Come to Jesus right now — he will save you: right now!

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)