At-One-Ment and Atonement
Ch.2: God’s Purpose Apart from Sin
Gen.1-2 and
Rev.21-22 are the only four chapters in the Bible that show us what God
intends and what he achieves apart from the taint of sin.
Here in these
bookend chapters of the Bible we discover God’s purpose in creating humanity
and this wondrous cosmos. Since Rev.21-22 show us God’s purpose fulfilled we
get our best glimpse of that purpose by beginning there. A biblical scholar and
a poet make clear why we begin at the end. Gary Anderson, the biblical scholar,
writes,
“Everything needs a purpose or a goal, even a
good story. And somewhat paradoxically
to understand how a good story begins we need to have some knowledge of the
whole comes to closure. Because the end
configures the beginning, there is a sense in which we can say the end comes
first. This idea has some rather
dramatic consequences for how Jews and Christians have interpreted
Genesis. They do not so much read it as
it stands as re-read it in light of its proper end or goal.” (Gary A. Anderson, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam
and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination. Westminster John Knox Press, 2002, 1)
The poet, T. S. Eliot, in Little
Gidding writes,
“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.” (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html)
Rev.21-22)
give us God’s “Big Picture,” the macro story, on what he’s doing and wants for
us and from us and how we are to understand how it all started (Gen.1-2) and,
consequently, how sin gummed up this divine purpose and the utter lengths and
many hells God had to endure and defeat to reclaim and restore his creatures
and creation for the good end he designed for them.
In Rev.21-22
we find all things in their matured, final, perfected forms. The world as God
wanted it and what he intended creation and his creatures to mature into. This
is where the whole story is going. Everything important to that story finds its
fulfilment here. And it’s that story I am calling At-One-Ment.
Consider the
picture of the New Jerusalem in Rev.21-22. T. Desmond Alexander writes, “This
New Jerusalem is a fitting climax to the entire biblical story . . . God has
graciously and patiently been working to create this spectacular city, where he
will dwell in harmony with humanity.” (T. Desmond Alexander; Dane C. Ortlund; Miles V. Van Pelt. The City of
God and the Goal of Creation (Kindle Location 165). Crossway)
This New Jerusalem is cubic-shaped. The only other
structure in the Bible so shaped is the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple
where God dwells (1 Ki.6:20). John wants us to see this city, which is the
people of God, his bride, the church, as a new creation-encompassing Holy of
Holies. The entirety of this new world will be filled with the unmediated
presence of God. And pushing back beyond the Holy of Holies in the temple or
the tabernacle we find ourselves back in that primal garden in Eden. That place
where God “walked” and where God met with his people (Gen.3:8). Gordon Wenham
writes,
“The description of Eden with its trees, rivers, gold, and so on
emphasized God’s presence there. Therefore it seems likely that it was not
unusual for him to be heard walking in the garden ‘in the breeze of the day,’
i.e., in the afternoon when cool breezes spring up and the sun is not so
scorching. Maybe a daily chat between the Almighty and his creatures was
customary. The term ‘walking’. . . is subsequently used of God’s presence in
the Israelite tent sanctuary (Lev 26:12; Deut 23:15 [14]; 2 Sam 7:6–7) again
emphasizing the relationship between the garden and the later shrines.” (Wenham,
Gordon John. Genesis 1-15, Volume 1 (Word Biblical Commentary) (Kindle
Location 4299). Zondervan. Kindle Edition)
Therefore it
is not surprising to find the Garden of Eden called God’s “first sanctuary.” (https://jbqnew.jewishbible.org/assets/Uploads/412/jbq_41_2_gardenofeden.pdf)
This, with a number of other indicators, convince most today that the stories
of what God is creating in Gen.1-2 is a temple, which victorious deities built
as signs of a triumph in those days, rather than the creation of a
spatio-temporal world. (derekzrishmawy.com/2012/12/07/9-reasons-the-garden-of-eden-was-a-temple/)
The Garden where God dwells and meets with Adam and Eve is, then, the
first Holy of Holies, an embryonic prefiguring of the worldwide Holy of Holies
in Rev.21-22. And the ad hoc altars, tabernacle, and temples which follow in
the biblical story are ever closer and clearer foreshadowings of the great Holy
of Holies to come.
This new
Jerusalem confutes the dualism bequeathed to us by Plato when John sees it come
down from heaven to the New Heaven and Earth and proclaim it God’s “home”
(Rev.21:3). There is no incongruity or incapacity of the material realm (the New
Creation) to host or mediate the spiritual realm. That this renewed and
renovated earth, earth as it should have been and has become. God and his
“family” will reside and live life together there forever. The great Old
Testament shrine, the Holy of Holies, God’s home entered only once a year by
one human, the high priest, has become an open sanctuary where God lives in
daily interaction with all his people!
The great
throng of people inhabiting the new creation are innumerable, “from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Rev.7:9),
thus fulfilling the exodus when God lead his people out of Egypt a “mixed
crowd” (Ex.12:38) of Hebrews and any other people who wanted to leave with
them. God’s family, his covenant family, has been fulfilled to the nth degree
here!
If there is no temple on this New Creation (Rev.21:22), but
the Lamb and the Lord God are its temple (as we have seen), and God’s covenant
purpose to have a family to share his life with forever is fulfilled in it,
God’s throne is also present (Rev.21:3; 22:1), symbolizing his rule over all
creation and history. God’s people, God’s rule, and God’s presence, the three
great trajectories of biblical thought are all shown completed and fulfilled in
this final vision of Revelation. (This is only a selective sample of the
connections between Genesis and Revelation. I recommend Michael W. Pahls, The
Beginning and the End (Cascade Books, 2011) and William J. Dumbrell, The
End of the Beginning: Revelation 21-22 and the Old Testament (Baker, 1985)
for further study.)
Trajectories
The biblical
story thus runs on the complementary and mutually reinforcing trajectories of
Presence, Family and Rule/Authority under the biblical images of Temple,
Covenant, and Kingdom. Here’s how I summarized these trajectories a few years
ago on my blog.
“In the beginning there was the Garden of Eden. God,
the great King, father to his creatures, was present to and in fellowship with
them on his good creation. We could call this the kingdom of God. He is
creation’s sovereign and his rule is undisputed. We could call this God’s covenant
with his human creatures, his family with whom he wanted to have fellowship.
Or, we could call it what the creation stories themselves call it, the Holy of
Holies of God’s garden temple where God, the Holy One, was present to and with
his creation.
“God placed Adam and Eve in the garden to be his
priests, royal priests, in that they were children of the Great King. The four
rivers out of Eden watering the as yet uninhabited lands outside Eden suggest
God’s intent that these lands be inhabited and developed. And the boundaries of
Eden and the garden of God’s presence would extend and grow until the whole
creation was the temple in which God would dwell.
“In the last vision of St. John’s Revelation,
chs.21-22, we see pictures of this same reality now gloriously fulfilled. The
New Jerusalem descends from heaven to earth, becomes coextensive with the new
creation, and shares its cubic shape with only one other structure in the
Bible, the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple. God’s throne is there. So the
kingdom emphasis perdures. The covenant formula is declared fulfilled. So the
covenant, family, emphasis persists as well. But it is the temple imagery that
dominates both creation and consummation.
“I suggest that in the first two and last two chapters
of the Bible, where we get a look at what God wanted and what God achieved, the
only four chapters free of the distorting presence of sin, temple imagery best
captures God’s ultimate intention for his creation. Kingdom and covenant
imagery, implicit in creation, explicit in consummation, are the “delivery
system” (as it were) of this divine purpose. Covenant carries forward the
family emphasis, God the father. Kingdom carries forward the authority and
power theme, God the King. But both serve the purpose of realizing God’s
intention to live in intimacy and fellowship with his creatures on his creation
forever. And where does God live? A temple.
“Biblical theology, I believe, should be governed by
this temple imagery and God’s intention revealed through it. Kingdom of God and
covenant are necessarily associated with this theme – God wants a family and he
has the power and authority to do what he intends. But neither is the “thing”
that ties the biblical story together. Temple, his desire to be present with
and to his people, is. This divine intention is the deepest ground of God’s
“incarnational passion” found through the Bible. So, temple is the Bible’s
chief theme with kingdom and covenant being its necessary adjuncts.”[1]
Three questions arise out of these
trajectories and the course of their fulfillment from Gen.1-2 to Rev.21-22
which give direction to the reorientation our thinking and mission need.
-What has God
done for us?
-What is God
doing among us? And
-what is God
doing with and through us?
Typically in
the West we have answered these questions through the filter of the
individualistic inward spirituality that sees salvation as escape from the
material realm (the Platonic legacy). From this perspective we interpret
-what God has done for us as Christ
dying on the cross for our sins,
-what God is doing among us is
nurturing a personal (that is, individual) relationship with us, and
-what God is doing with and through
us is preparing us for heaven and moving us to “save the souls” of others for
heaven as well.
Our problem,
in this way of thinking, is that we have sinned (i.e. broken God’s law), for
which God has provided the sacrifice of his Son to resolve. We enjoy a
“personal” (inward, individual) relationship with God in our hearts and anticipate
an eternal future somewhere other than earth (i.e. heaven) often conceived as a
bodiless, immaterial existence (spiritual).
Hopefully, our
look at those four pesky chapters (Gen.1-2; Rev.21-22) is enough to allow you
to see that this way of thinking is not biblical. We are creatures who have
broken God’s heart by rejecting his calling for us to be royal priests in his
creational temple. Nevertheless, in love he continues to pour himself out
seeking to woo and win us back to him. Our relationship with God is communal
and his goal for us and through us is to live in fellowship together here as he
always intended.
These
questions, then,
-What has God
done for us?
-What is God
doing among us? And
-what is God
doing with and through us?
force us to
reconsider how God’s actions reflect on God’s atoning work of restoring and
reclaiming creature and creation for his divine design, At-One-Ment, shape the
passions, priorities, and practices of faithful living.
A more
detailed look at the unintended consequences of our usual way of rendering the
gospel for our world is up next.
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