CITY V COUNTRY

                                                                    City v Country

Brisbane (image from Web)

         City dwellers have better access to hospitals, health facilities and shopping malls etc. However, unlike country dwellers, city dwellers would never think of leaving their cars and houses unlocked. The television show ‘Midsomer Murders’, set in the beautiful English countryside notwithstanding, cities would seem to have higher crime rates.

God, the Creator, planted a garden ‘eastward in Eden’ (Gen. 2:8), created Adam (Gen. 2:7), entered into a covenant with him as the head of humanity (Hos. 6:7; Rom. 5:12); made a wife for him from his rib (Gen. 2:22), and issued the ‘Cultural Mandate’: ‘God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground”’ (Gen. 1:28). Thus, Adam and Eve were commissioned to produce offspring and extend the country garden to the ends of the earth to God’s glory. What could go wrong? ‘Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness’ (1 John 3:4). Adam sinned by breaking God’s covenant with him, and instead of the country garden expanding throughout the world, lawlessness spread with humanity.

Image from Web

On my way from Brisbane to Hobart, as I drove through Eden in New South Wales, I saw a sign, ‘Eden Sawmill.’ It created a picture in my mind of Adam cutting down trees and building things to the glory of God – as per the ‘Cultural Mandate.’ Solomon building the temple at Jerusalem illustrates this. God supplies the raw materials and we humans reflect our Creator by being creative with them. Beauty is in the eyes of God. He is the Beholder. Sin distorts. Therefore, we must follow the manual, the Bible. ‘So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God’ (1 Cor. 10:31).

Contemporary Christianity has reduced the ‘Cultural Mandate’ to mere pietism and quietism, i.e., the saving of sinners. As important as salvation is, this is a kind of neglect of ‘the weightier matters of the law’ (Matt. 23:23). It is remedied by viewing the post-Fall ‘Great Commission’ together with the pre-Fall ‘Cultural Mandate.’ The same God who gave mankind the raw materials in the country garden to make things to His glory, gave Noah the wood to build the ark, gave Solomon the supplies to build the temple, also supplied the Romans with wood to make a cross. Jesus was taken outside of the city and into the country to be crucified.  ‘A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”)’ (Mark 15:21-22; cf. Lev. 4:12, 16:27). ‘And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through His own blood’ (Heb. 13:12).

Image from Web

        So, Adam was ejected from the country garden. Jesus, ‘the last Adam’, was ejected from the city. However, we are back to the country garden with the death and resurrection of Jesus. ‘At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden’ (John 19:41a).

City or country?  There’s both for following Jesus! And it’s with Him that the ‘Cultural Mandate’ and ‘Great Commission’ meet. It ends with the country garden and the city united (Rev. 2:7, 20:2), the Garden City of the ‘New Jerusalem’, the ‘Jerusalem above’ (Rev. 21:2; Gal. 4:26). ‘Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city’ Rev. 22:14).