Unthinking Heretics
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen 1:26-28)
Our Current Problem
In the midst of a global conflict (1942), Dorothy Sayers had this prophetic word for the entire Body of Christ. “…the business of the Church is to recognise that the secular vocation (from Latin, saeculum, “belonging to an age”), as such, is sacred”. Given that we all are constantly in cosmic spiritual conflict (Eph 2:2; 6:12; Col 1:13 etc.), it is indispensable to the maturing of the Church that our eyes be opened to the secular calling of the vast majority of believers. (In opposition to secularism which is hostile to Christ.) For example, a Christian friend runs a ministry called “Marketplace 98%”, indicating that the mass of Christians will never be called to church-related ministries. The current Western Church’s misemphasis on “training for ministry” as some form of “full time service”, like becoming a pastor/chaplain/youth worker/music director or a “missionary” is a successful scheme of Satan (2 Cor 2:11) to subvert the progress of God’s kingdom. We have become so pastor-centred that we are positively medieval. Our problem is the ancient non biblical error called cosmic dualism.
Cosmic dualism, with its split between the Church and world, sacred versus secular, is the dominant mode of our congregations and ministries. Like the ancient heresies, we have practically speaking denied Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:1ff.). Let’s “test all things” (1 Thess :19-21) on my bold assertion. When was the last time you heard a sermon on the importance of ordinary everyday work, or saw the elders of your church pray for those entering the marketplace? This gross deficiency must be quickly rectified, lest “Church” as we know it lose real hope of “making disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). We must heed the words of theologian and Dutch P.M. Abraham Kuyper, “In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, ‘That is mine!’ An authentic Christian worldview on work awaited Luther’s rediscovery of the “priesthood of all believers” which upheld work as a form of worship. Today we must expand the Reformers crucial insight through a new revelation of the Temple of God. Jesus is the key to authentic “working with God” (2 Cor 6:1)
A House for God
The Lord declared, “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting-place be? 2 Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being? declares the Lord. ‘These are the ones I look on with favour: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.” (Isa 66 :1-2). This is a description of Jesus’ life from total humiliation to highest exaltation (Phil 2:5-11). From his occupying a home like us all (John 1:38), to his declaration of cosmic sovereignty, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”” (Rev 22:13). God’s first house was not the Solomonic Temple (1 Ki 8:41 etc.), but his residence in Eden, where he “walked in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8). The scope of God’s original commission for the work-life of Adam and Eve was to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:16-28). Their task, with their descendants, was to Edenise the planet (Isa 45:18; Ps 115:16). As living images of God they were called to “fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Hab 2:14). Given divine global dominion (Gen 1:26-28), Adam was God’s vice-regent, and through the command to “work and guard” Eden he was commissioned to work as the priest of creation (Gen 2:15). (That Adam was a priest is clear from the later texts about priestly ministry in the tabernacle which use identical language (Num 3:7-8; 8:25-26; Ezek 44:14 etc.)). The new house created by the Lord to replace the fallen residence of Adam, is the resurrection Body of Jesus, a temple “not made with human hands” (Mark 14:58). This is the space of kingly and priestly ministry to which all Christians are called as revealed in Revelation (1:6; 5:10). We are the anointed “kings of the earth” (Rev 21:24, 26) who bring the glory and honour of redeemed humanity into the city of God. This is how the escalated blessings of Christ will in the End “fill all things” (Eph 4:10; Eph 1:22-23) through the Spirit-filled “toil” of his Church (Col 1:28-29).
Participation In Christ
All work in Christ, “secular” or “sacred”, is the highest possible calling of a Christian. Such work is an indispensable dimension of our union with Jesus as exalted High Priest and King (Heb 3:1; 1 Tim 6:16; Rev 19:15). Jesus humbly worked with his hands for most of his life on the way to supreme exaltation (Mark 6:3; Phil 2:9-10). Our call is to join his journey. Dorothy Sayers puts this memorably, “No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever came out of the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth. Nor, if they did, could anyone believe that they were done by the same hand that made Heaven and earth”. All this work was done by Christ as our representative Head. To work with the Lord is a glorious call, where by lowliness and obedience we share now in Jesus’ cosmic intercession and universal rule (Acts 10:36; Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25). When Adam was faithful at the centre of God’s cosmic temple he was the pinnacle of the divine sphere of blessing in order to do good works expressing his covenant with God as his Father (Luke 3:34). Where Adam failed this standard, it has been completed and perfected for us in Christ (Heb 2:8-10). Through Jesus we are called to do good works in Christ’s escalated sphere of blessedness (Rom 9:5; Eph 1:3). In grace “we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph 2:10). So Paul exhorts the Early Church, “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.” (Tit 3:14)
Conclusion
Secularism will continue to grow in the world whilst popular revivalism disembowels the truth of the scale of God’s work redeeming “all things” (Acts 3:21) in Christ. This is the cost of our unconscious contemporary heretical cosmic dualism. We have forgotten that Jesus never forgot his days as the carpenter from Nazareth. Our call to work is sacred before the Lord, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,” (Col 3:23), for it is a call of a “Holy Father” to make us holy (John 17:11, 17). If the God who must be “worshipped in Spirit and truth (John 4:24) “shows no partiality” (Eph 6:9); how can it be that a doctor/academic/businessman who joins a congregation will receive more attention than a new tradie. This is gross blind cultural sin (2 Pet 1:9). Until we live like a new wineskin we cannot expect to see the fruit of the new wine (Matt 9:17), no matter how much we pray for revival! God is “not mocked” (Gal 6:7) by our disobedience to the global dimensions of the mandate of Jesus to disciple the world (Gen 1:26-28; Matt 28:18-20). Enlarge your vision of redemption in Christ, the consequences of your work/good deeds will fill the world. You were created for this. (A contemporary might urge us unthinking heretics, “Get a life!”) As Tim Keller put it, Genesis 1:28 means not only “filling” the world through procreation, but through holy work filling the world through civilisation and the recreation of culture. “The only Christian work is good work well done….It is the duty [call] of the Church to see to it that the work serves God, and that the worker serves the work.” (Sayers) Anything less than this cannot save the world in Christ (Rom 12:1-2).