Creation, Fall, Redemption
Creation, Fall, and Redemption is, if you will, the macrocosm of that which happens to when a person first repents and believes in the gospel, viz., Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification. We have already spoken of the “already but not yet” aspect of Christ’s Kingdom, which is to say (in that other set of trinities) that Christ’s Kingdom has come, is coming and shall come. Glorification is what takes place fully when Christ’s Kingdom has fully come, or, as we say, is fully consummated.
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To help us understand Creation, Fall, and Redemption please
picture an underground water pipe, or, even, dare I say, a sewer pipe. Creation
is when the pipe is first laid. It has the purpose of conveying its contents
from one end to the other. Sometimes a leak or a blockage occurs, such as damage
caused by tree roots or shifting ground. Picture this as the Fall. Then comes
the plumber to fix the problem. When all is finished, this is Redemption.
When God had finished creating Creation, He looked at it and
declared that “it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31). When God creates a new
creation, you or me, e.g., “Therefore, if
anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things
have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17), His “very good” declaration is applied to
the believer. That is what Justification means. To be Justified is to be in Christ; God the Judge declares you to
be “very good” in Christ, just
like He did at the end of the sixth day of Creation. The new creature is
declared by God to be righteous, i.e., to be right with God, justified by the
second Adam, Christ. This is simply a legal transaction. “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from
God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30)
Following this legal declaration (or simultaneously from
God’s perspective) the person who has been Justified has also been definitively
Sanctified, which same sanctification progresses until full consummation.
Notice that sanctification is not something that we do, but
the Spirit. Yes, Christians notice what He is doing in us, and by extension, in
the world: “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day
of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). “But this Man, after He had offered one
sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that
time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering
He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit
also witnesses to us…” (Heb. 10:12-15).
Think of the earth as
being progressively sanctified too. (Ps. 24:1). This is what we mean when we
say that the Kingdom has come (past tense), is coming (present tense),
and will come (future tense). Thus, both the “earthling” and the earth have
been set apart by God for a noble use, i.e., for glory (read, gift from the
Father to the Son as per Ps. 2:8; see also Rom. 9:23). Thus, Glorification has to do with
glory, the King’s glory.
To be fully consummated is to be Glorified. Sanctification is
to become what God has declared you to be. He looks at the new “very good”
creation over whom the Holy Spirit has hovered as it were, and the Spirit with
the Word speaks into the believer’s heart where He has lodged. “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image
of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom
He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified;
and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:29–30).
We need to be Justified, Sanctified, and Glorified, because,
like all of Creation, we too are fallen. When Creation had fallen, God judged
and redeemed it along those on the ark. He opened the windows of heaven and baptised
the household of Noah on the ark in covenant blessing, and by breaking open the
fountains of the deep, He fully immersed His old creation outside of the ark in
covenant curses for the wilful disobedience of humanity. As He did with Adam
and Eve in the old creation, so God blessed Noah and his household as He
reissued the Cultural Mandate. Hence, we see that the earth has been sanctified
by the Flood, the global Deluge. To be Sanctified is to be cleansed, as
pictured in covenant baptism.
In the following note the connections between covenant baptism,
progressive sanctification (i.e., “the mortifying of sin”), and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 167. How is our Baptism to be
improved by us?
A. The needful but
much neglected duty of improving our Baptism, is to be performed by us all our
life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the
administration of it to others, by serious and thankful consideration of the nature
of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and
benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein; by
being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking
contrary to, the grace of the Baptism and our engagements; by growing up to
assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that
Sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into
whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and
by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and
righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ; and
to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body.
God signified His covenant with His
new creation with a rainbow in the cloud (Gen. 9:12 & 16). Noah signified his
and his household’s redemption by sacrificing that which was a picture of
Christ’s promised redemption (Gen. 8:20).
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean
animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And
the Lord smelled a
soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground
for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil
from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done
(Gen. 8:20-21).
God’s Covenant of Grace was now
being administered on His new creation by Noah and his faithful descendants all
the way down till today. Those who are born of the Spirit are new creations. Again,
the micro (us, as new creations) pictures the macro (Creation) and vice versa.
Christ redeems both. The ark was a type of Christ. As everything in the ark was
saved from God’s judgment, so is everyone and everything in Christ saved from God’s
coming final judgment.
“The earth is the Lord’s, and all its
fullness, the world and those who dwell therein. For He has founded
it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters.” (Ps. 24:1-2),
“For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a
thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains,
and the wild
beasts of the field are Mine.” (Ps. 50:10-11), “Ask of Me, and I will
give You the nations for Your inheritance,
and the ends
of the earth for Your possession.” (Ps. 2:8). The baptised earth is progressively being sanctified and will
be glorified along with all believers after the final judgment.
Without the Fall there would be no
need of Redemption. Without the Fall we would not need to be Sanctified, set
apart and cleansed. But Creation was washed with water in Noah’s day, and we
are washed with water in our baptism. Glorification follows Sanctification.
However, because Jesus’s humanity is made of the same material as Creation, that
means that Creation is already being Glorified in Him. Therefore, as we await
the redemption of our material bodies, we have been, are being, and will be Justified,
Sanctified, and Glorified. Our acquittal on Judgment Day will prove that we
have been declared righteous, set apart and cleansed, and blessed and glorified
by God to His glory.
So, just as millions of dead things
became fossilised in sediment after the Flood, as horrible as it sounds, so
will that which does not belong to Christ and the new Earth. It will be
immersed in the lake of fire forever beginning on Judgment Day.
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Christ has removed all our sins. His
Father incinerated them when He poured out His wrath upon Jesus on the cross,
baptising Him with fire. His law-keeping righteousness is imputed to us, and
our law-breaking unrighteousness is imputed to Him. It is as if we had never
sinned, like we went from glory to glory, from Creation before the Fall to
Creation after Christ’s return. Says John Witherspoon,
The Apostle Paul, in his epistle to
the Romans, among whom he had never been in person, at great length establishes
the fundamental doctrine of the gospel that sinners are justified by the free
grace of God through the imputed righteousness of a Redeemer. To this doctrine
men do make by nature the strongest opposition, and are, with the utmost difficulty,
brought to receive and apply it. We may well say of it in particular what the
same apostle says of the truths of God in general, that “the natural man doth
not receive them” (1 Cor. 2:14).[1]
An interesting but pertinent aside
is, not that the American actress Reece Witherspoon is one of John
Witherspoon’s descendants, or that, “John’s mother, Anna Walker, could trace
her lineage through several pastors back to John Knox himself”, or that “In 1746,
he led a group of militia volunteers from Beith intent on fighting for King
George II against the pro-Catholic Jacobite uprising. Although Witherspoon was
not engaged in any military conflict, he was captured and imprisoned for a
short time in Doune castle.[2] The interesting fact is that Witherspoon, the Scottish
Presbyterian who was invited to come over to America to be a professor at what
became Princeton, he was the only clergyman to sign the American Declaration of
Independence – in defiance of King George III. He had a major influence on many
of the Founders, no less than one James Madison. The famous converted ex-slave
trader, John Newton of Amazing Grace hymn fame, wrote,
This work has always
been regarded as one of the ablest Calvinistic expositions of that doctrine in
any language. I hope you approve Mr. Witherspoon’s books. I think his Treatise on Regeneration is the best I
have seen upon this important subject.” John Newton (1725-1807) in a letter to Mr.
Cunningham.[3]
Back to the plumber fixing the
damaged underground water pipe. The water of life has been turned back on by
Christ and flows through our veins. Or, what about the time my old friend, (who
is now with Christ in Paradise), had to have a damaged and decayed portion of
his bowel removed. They simply cut out the offending piece of intestine, (and sent
it to be incinerated?), and rejoined both ends. He lived a healthy life for
many, many years after that. Being already glorified, my friend is awaiting the
redemption of his body and then he will be fully glorified. God speed!
All of us became disconnect from God
by the Fall. The Christian’s sins were removed with surgical precision by
Christ. We are now reconnected to God. He remembers our sins no more. It’s as
if the damaged part to our lives was never there, so good was the operation. All
our transgressions have been incinerated. Gone. Amazing grace!
