Our Creator’s commitment to this physical world

With the environmental concerns taking a predominant amount of attention, I thought this would be worth taking a look at. 1

1. The new creation includes the world we live in. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). If God’s eternal purpose was merely to fill heaven (a spiritual, disembodied realm) with souls, then why not start with that? If the physical world has no part in God’s eternal plan, then how do you explain the Bible’s conclusion when John reveals, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth…and I saw a holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven…?” The last chapters of the Bible describe the world as God intended it to be from the beginning. And clearly, the new creation includes the world in which we now live.

2. The Creator is committed to restoration.So committed to his physical world that to restore and redeem it, he sent his Son to be born as a real man in a real body to live a real life and die a real death (Luke 2:7; Luke 23:33-49).

3. God resurrected the body of Christ. Maybe the greatest demonstration of the Creator’s commitment to his created world is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (Luke 24). It was not merely the soul of Jesus that was resurrected—but his body as well. During the 40 days following the resurrection, Jesus publically modeled what a resurrected life would look like. He could be touched (Luke 24:39), he ate food (Luke 24:43), and he was recognized by those who knew him before his death.

4. Jesus ascends in physical form. Finally, consider Jesus’s ascension. When Jesus makes his kingly processional to return to his throne (Acts 1:9), he does not shed his physical body to do so. At this very moment, Jesus, who remains fully God and fully man, sits at the right hand of the Father (Colossians 3:1) and for all of eternity will never cease to be the human God-man, the Son of God the father whom we worship.

I’d also like to add that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and will be our judge to whom we must answer and to whom every knee shall bow, answering for our stewardship of His earth, especially created for mankind to abide with stewardship care. For example we were never to farm the land incessantly but allow it to rest one out of every seven years. Only the creator knows best, not Big Agricultural’s corporate conglomerates like Monsanto who seek to make increasing profits and who do not obey scripture. (Genesis 9:7, Leviticus 25:4)

John’s prophecy in Revelation points to a special reckoning by the Lord for mismanaging the beauty of the earth and its continued ability to sustain man: The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth. (Revelation 11:18)

1 Excerpts from Crosswalk