What was the providence of God toward man in the estate in which he was created?
The providence of God toward man in the estate in which he was created, was the placing him in paradise, appointing him to dress it, giving him liberty to eat of the fruit of the earth; putting the creatures under his dominion, and ordaining marriage for his help; affording him communion with himself; instituting the Sabbath; entering into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience, of which the tree of life was a pledge; and forbidding to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death.
Leaving the angelic host in the previous question we now turn our attention to the lesser natured creature who in many respects is not less but more, much, much more. The passage that is pivotal in this assessment, Heb 2:6-8 says of Jesus, “You have made him for a little while lower than the angels”. This indicates the profound situation and the nature for which God would humble Himself. It may be that the nature of mankind is lesser than the angels but God has set His love upon humanity and not for angels.
Our human nature must be understood in the context it is framed within the Genesis accounting or we will end up saying stupid things which unfortunately have become commonplace today. The important passages for our purpose are:
Genesis 2:8 “The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.”
Genesis 2:15–17 “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely. but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
The attack on this history, context of creation and mandate, has not been miniscule. The fallen host of heaven and their counterparts in wicked mankind have relentlessly attacked this revelation as fable, fiction and albeit “good”, but naive and fanciful dreams. From “science” to “philosophy”, to other forms of devilish twisting, these creation narratives must be doubted, say wicked men, in order to make room for their prideful rebellion, an effort to escape the pending judgment we should all fear. The wicked toil but will not prevail. There will be persistence towards these wicked goals. This has remained steady in all of time.
Instead of refusing the creation narrative, Christian ought, indeed, must embrace the biblical history for which our entire future and present is dependent. Our future, and present, is none other than the goal of the past, specifically the garden in which we were placed along with the mandate and purpose for our creation.
Genesis 1:26–29 – “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
Dr. G. K. Beale helpfully summarizes what mankind was created to be. “They were to reflect God’s kingship by being his vice-regents on earth. Because Adam and Eve were to subdue and rule ‘over all the earth’, it is plausible to suggest that they were to extend the geographical boundaries of the garden until Eden covered the whole earth. They were on the primeval hillock of hospitable Eden, outside of which lay the inhospitable land. They were to extend the smaller liveable area of the garden by transforming the outer chaotic region into a habitable territory.”
G. K. Beale – The Temple and the Church’s Mission.
In this respect the Garden of Eden scene is not merely the beginning point but it is a composite picture of the goal of history. God dwells with mankind (humanity) in a garden of hospitable wonder. They reflect Him and bear his image. Beale continues with this idea,
“Genesis 1:26–27 says four times that God made Adam in his ‘image’ or ‘likeness’, and Genesis 2 says God placed him into the garden-like sanctuary. Ancient kings would set up images of themselves in distant lands over which they ruled in order to represent their sovereign presence.” “In the light of the above, one can conclude that Adam’s kingly and priestly activity in the garden was to be a beginning fulfillment of the commission in 1:28 and was not to be limited to the garden’s original earthly boundaries but was to be extended over the whole world.”
G. K. Beale – The Temple and the Church’s Mission.
In this light, the goal of the garden makes more sense of the promise of land to the people of God, Israel. The promise of land was in this sense a reflection intended to take us back to the roots of our original goal in the garden. This promise was never small or limited. Possession of middle east dirt wasn’t the goal. It always had as its goal the enjoyment of heaven and earth in harmony. God’s promises are bigger than those that make a big deal about the middle east dirt.
The importance of our garden history cannot be overstated. Neglecting it, refusing it and twisting it is done to our eternal peril. The God of history templates all of history, from the origin toward the destination, arriving at the Alpha and Omega by giving us countless images that make little sense unless we remember the starting point. Christians do well to fiercely fight off the rabid dogs that would deny the creation origins and our garden context from which we fell.
The garden is the scene of God’s greatest promised blessing as well as our greatest crime. All of human history bears the marks of this origin, fall and consequent redemptive program of God. The figures given to be embraced by our minds and souls are briefly stated in these following scriptures:
Genesis 2:9 “Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Genesis 2:17 “But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
Following their sin,
Genesis 3:8 “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
Many mysteries are revealed and made more clear in these passages. As Calvin says,
“In fine, let us remember that the invisible God, whose wisdom, power, and justice, are incomprehensible, is set before us in the history of Moses {Genesis} as in a mirror, in which his living image is reflected. For as an eye, either dimmed by age or weakened by any other cause, sees nothing distinctly without the aid of glasses, so (such is our imbecility) if Scripture does not direct us in our inquiries after God, we immediately turn vain in our imaginations.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, chapter 14
Calvin encourages us by insisting on the telling of our creation origin from the infallible source of scripture. The Genesis account reveals the seedbed of all humanity’s woes and our greatest victory in the One Victor Jesus the Christ who is promised (the seed of woman) immediately upon our sad estate as creatures rebelling against the Holy God.
This critical history is faithfully given for the purpose Calvin ably suggests,
“Hence God was pleased that a history of the creation should exist—a history on which the faith of the Church might lean without seeking any other God than Him whom Moses sets forth as the Creator and Architect of the world. First, in that history, the period of time is marked so as to enable the faithful to ascend by an unbroken succession of years to the first origin of their race and of all things. This knowledge is of the highest use not only as an antidote to the monstrous fables which anciently prevailed both in Egypt and the other regions of the world, but also as a means of giving a clearer manifestation of the eternity of God as contrasted with the birth of creation, and thereby inspiring us with higher admiration.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, chapter 14
The garden of great blessing has become our sought after destination and expectation. From Garden to Garden is the arch of History. The intervening period known to us as life and history is the accounting of God’s remedy. From the very outset, trust was necessary and built into the plan via His promise. By faith and through trust in Him was our only Hope after we had ruined ourselves by the works of corruption, breaking the very first and whole law of God.
This law, “thou shall not eat” could not be remedied by a different choice once it was broken. The time for choosing a course was over. The bitter and brutal realities of our path were just beginning. Works of any sort would cease to be a fertile ground for God’s blessing (except if by one not sharing in our sinful pollution). The promise held in the tree of life would be banished from our parents as one of many consequences of our punishment and curse under sin and death. Our days would be marked by distance from the garden and expulsion from His presence we once enjoyed most abundantly.
The singular remedy, offered in the garden, must be affixed in our minds as quickly as the promise given to us by God Himself. God pronounced to the devilish serpent and his wicked angelic animator that His seed would trample him underfoot. Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall crush you on the head, And you shall crush him on the heel.” Many millennia later this crushing will be realized. Along this path of redemption will be the restated promise. A promise made distinctive by its character of necessary faith and trust in the God who gave it.
“The distinctive feature of faith is here again that it stands over against “works,” that is, over against any trusting in its own strength or possibilities, and that it utterly entrusts itself to the divine work of redemption. For this reason in the antithesis of faith and works the term “faith” can be replaced by “the grace of God,” with which then the true ground of justification is designated as opposed to works.”
– Herman Ridderbos, Paul: an outline of his theology.
Much more remains to be said. This is the main objective and purpose in this endeavor – to discover the wonders of God’s grace by appreciating the depths we have been drawn up unto Him who first created us to bear His image.
Soli Deo Gloria
P.S. To learn to Rest we are in need to live out the entire week of God’s good week.
“With the same view Moses relates that the work of creation was accomplished not in one moment, but in six days. By this statement we are drawn away from fiction to the one God who thus divided his work into six days, that we may have no reluctance to devote our whole lives to the contemplation of it. For though our eyes, in what direction soever they turn, are forced to behold the works of God, we see how fleeting our attention is, and how quickly pious thoughts, if any arise, vanish away. Here, too, objection is taken to these progressive steps as inconsistent with the power of God, until human reason is subdued to the obedience of faith, and learns to welcome the calm quiescence to which the sanctification of the seventh day invited us.”
John Calvin Ch 14
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