Heaven Is Not My Home – Chapter 2
Creation and Responsibility
Marshall reframes the question posed in chapter one by stating, “for Christians, the question, ‘Why are we here?’ is instead, ‘Why did God make us?’.” And from this starting point, Marshall gives a brief retelling of the Genesis account. While this is becoming quite familiar to me personally as I have been reading similar writings (Creation Regained for example), I never fail to get excited about reading Genesis 1. Primarily because I always seem to learn something new, I slightly different emphasis each writer makes – and Marshall doesn’t disappoint. He points out something I found quite interesting in that when God created man, it was the first time we were told not only what God did, but why he did it. The answer to the why has such profound implications for our understanding of what it means to be a Christian and also how to live as a Christian. Marshall states the answer to why is “to make humankind ‘to be our image and to rule’ over the earth.” (p 18) We were created not only as God’s image-bearers but with the express order to care for God’s good creation. That is in our design!
Marshall next takes on the task (though ever so briefly) of explaining the semantic range of the biblical word “world”. He does this primarily in response to the understanding many Christians wrongly have of the “world”. As I stated before, this explanation is quite brief but he does manage to cover a range of definition for “world” from “the sinful aspects of the world” to “geography or territory” to “the created order” (p 20). The point being two-fold: 1) There is no reason to avoid being engaged in the world, in fact we are created for that purpose. 2) There is no contradiction between the Apostle John saying both, “Do not love the world…” (1 John 2:15) and “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” (John 3:16). As God’s image bears, we need to follow his leading in dealing with the world. He rejects the sinful world that fallen humanity tries to create but He loves the world he has made.
