This series of studies is an exploration of what it means to be the people of God in the world that God made. We who believe are not individuals doing our own thing, free to live our lives in whatever way we like. Those who have been redeemed by Christ as slaves of Christ, bought with a price, whose lives are not their own. Nor are we living in a hostile world. This is God’s world, and despite all that is wrong in the world, it remains God’s possession and God rules over it as sovereign Lord. But what does this actually mean for us in our everyday lives? That is what we are here to discover.
What does it mean to be God’s people?
Many Christians have little grasp of what it means to be God’s people, but this is one of the central themes of the Bible. In the Old Testament God set out his plan to call a people to be his own. He chose Abraham from among the pagans to be the father of a new nation. Abraham was led to Canaan, the land in which the new nation would be based, and from his descendants came the people of Israel. This nation was called to be a nation of priests, the ones who would be the witness for God in the world of the new life that he was bringing about for those who would leave their rebellion and place their trust in God. But the priests themselves rebelled, and as a result, God chose from among the Israelites only the tribe of Levi to be his priests. But the whole nation was still commanded to be the witness of God in the world. The laws they were given were to enable them to live as God had intended all people to live, laws which would ensure that their society would be wise and just to all. Those laws provide a picture for us of what a just society would be like; in the context of the times and their geographical situation. We cannot live by those laws today, but they can teach us what a just society would be like: a society that cares for the poor and the widows, the sick and the aged, the foreigners and the workers, the land owners and the tenants, the borrowers and the lenders. We too can have a just society, if we also would study the laws that God has given to portray to us what that society would be like.
The nation of Israel eventually brought forth the great high priest, Jesus Christ the righteous, and the message of redemption and reconciliation went out to all the world. No longer was it necessary to become a member of the people of Israel in order to be one of God’s people. Since the publication of the gospel, God’s people incorporates all those of every tribe and nation and language and culture who will acknowledge him as sovereign over all. The dominant image changes in the New Testament from the people of God to the Body of Christ. But that does not mean a change in the plan of God. It is simply a different way of expressing the same reality, and even in the New Testament we still find the image of the believers as God’s people. The essential feature is that whether in the Old or the New Testament, who we are and what we are called to do is a communal calling and a communal task. We are not simply left to go our own way after joining with God’s people. There is an agenda that God has for his people, and if we wish to belong to that people then we have to follow God’s agenda.
Why is it that we are so weak and ineffectual when it comes to being God’s witnesses in the world? We have chosen our own agenda, rather than following God’s. We think that what God wants is more people in church, and that his goal is to build up the church with ever greater numbers. We could not be more wrong. That is not God’s goal, at most it is a by-product of God’s work in the world. It is important to have a strong and vibrant church, but if we set out to achieve that, then we will not reach that goal, for that is not the goal that God has set before us.
What then is the goal of God’s people? It is to display before the world a totally new way of living, a new community, a new identity, which is not derived from our own concocted ideas about what life is all about. No, it is a way of life, a vision for life, which comes from God himself. That way of life is not an individual way of life, but a communal way of life. We cannot be God’s people if we are not prepared to be a people, a community with a distinctive, unmistakable and unique character and identity.
We often think that the goal of being a Christian is to be saved from hell so that we will eventually go to heaven to be with God forever. We need to be saved and have our sins forgiven as the means of entry to heaven and escape from hell. But this is in fact to miss the point altogether of what it means to be a Christian. There is not one single verse of the Bible which states this, it is an idea we have put together for ourselves and foisted onto the Bible. Unless we can clear away some of the misconceptions about what it is to be a Christian, then we will not be able to see what it is that the Bible is saying to us.
What is the purpose of being a Christian? It is to be a part of God’s people, the holy nation, a kingdom of priests, so that God’s love and goodness can be displayed in our lives for all the world to see. It is so that we can be released from the power of sin and death which holds us in bondage, in order that God can accomplish his original purpose in us. That purpose is not for us to "get blessed" and have a wonderful time in church. No, God’s purpose is for us to care for the creation he has entrusted to us, and to develop and explore it so that in every corner of the world, God’s glory can be seen in and through what he has made, and what he has enabled us to make of it. The purpose of being a Christian is that God’s glory can be seen in us. It is not for our benefit, it is not so that we can have a good time, nor it is a means of rescuing us from hell so we can have a good time in heaven. We are Christians because God cannot achieve his purposes for us unless we repent and become once again his obedient servants, acknowledging his sovereign rule in our lives and obeying him in everything that we do. Your rebellion is not keeping you out of heaven, it is keeping heaven out of you! We are called to repent because the sovereign Lord, the God of heaven and earth, who made us for his own pleasure and purposes, is displeased with us because of our rebellion against him. How can we accomplish God’s purposes in the world if we insist on doing our own thing? God wants to work in and through us to do amazing things, and instead we grovel around in the dust insisting that our own ideas about life are much more interesting and relevant. Not true! What God has in store for us is far more exciting, more mind-expanding than anything we can devise!
But we can’t do it alone. We weren’t meant to do it alone. As we will see, it is impossible to serve God in isolation. The basis of our Christian life is to be part of the community of God’s people, and we cannot avoid being part of God’s people if we want to be Christians. There is no such thing as a Christian in isolation. They just don’t exist. We will see why as we proceed.
What does it mean to say this is God’s world?
Our world belongs to God. We say this in full knowledge that the world is at present not subject to God, and that the forces of darkness are evident in many parts of the world. Warfare, famine, strife, prejudice, immorality, all these things give proof of the fact that God is not recognised by a great many of the world’s people.
Many Christians also see the world not as God’s possession, not as God’s good creation entrusted to the care of human beings as God’s stewards, but the dominion of the devil. We all too often see the world as the enemy’s territory, and think that we will not really be safe from the devil and the powers of darkness until we are in heaven. There are some who hold the idea that demonic forces lurk around every corner, waiting to trap us and take possession of us. We speak of spiritual warfare in such a way as to imply that God and the devil were fighting each other to see who could win the greatest number of people to their side, and every convert or backslider is a win or a loss for our side in the numbers game.
But that is not at all accurate if we examine the Scriptures. There we see the great battle between God and Satan developing through the ages, the struggle to win the hearts and minds of God’s people, with apostasy, revival, new dedication, a loss of faith and regaining trust in God, despair at a seemingly unwinnable situation, joy at defeat of the enemy, climaxing at the point where all God’s resources are poured into the conflict at one decisive point; where it becomes a win or lose situation, where there is no back-up plan, no further resources to commit. When is that decisive conflict? The rise of the Anti-Christ? At Armageddon? When Christ returns to the final battle?
No, we see all this happening in the crucial battle which took place at Calvary. There God sent in his greatest weapon, placing all his resources on one man, trusting that this would decisively win the conflict and guess what, it did!
So then, we can now say with confidence, this is God’s world. He is in control. There is no struggle to defeat the enemy, for the enemy has been defeated at Calvary. The struggle we wage is a mopping-up operation against a defeated enemy. We know how the battle will end, with the final overthrow of Satan and all his followers.
This is God’s world, it does not belong to Satan, it does not belong to us. This world has been entrusted to our care, but it is not our world. Satan has influence and power within it, but that influence and power is illegitimate. God did not give this world over to Satan as his domain; Satan has seized control from its proper rulers: human beings, you and I.
We read in Genesis 1:26 that God made humankind in his own image, to rule over the earth and all the creatures in it. The world was placed in our care, and we are to govern it on God’s behalf. All that we do is for the sake of God; our work in this world is to look after God’s creation for him. We were entrusted with all God made, in the confidence that we would care for it, work with it, develop and explore it, discovering what we could do with it, in such a way that God’s glory would be revealed through all that we do. We were to bear the image of God, that is, to be as wise and loving in our rule over all the earth as God himself is.
But we betrayed that trust! Instead of obeying God and working as his stewards, accountable to him for all that we do, and following his commandments in everything, we have gone astray and sought to make our own rules for life. We have rejected our rightful king, and his wise and loving laws for our lives, and have set ourselves up as kings in his place, concocting our own laws which, because they are formulated in rebellion and arrogance, are not wise and loving but distorted, brutal and oppressive.
And instead of finding freedom from authority, we have found instead tyranny and oppression. We have fallen into the hands of one who is not a wise and loving Lord, but one who like ourselves is rebelling against the only True God. We have fallen into bondage to the powers of spiritual darkness, not because God is unable to protect us from them, but because we chose to reject God and his loving care for us, and having abandoned the protection of his love and goodness, we have fallen prey to the enemy.
As a result of our own bondage, the whole creation has also become enslaved. When we fell into sin, we did not only fall captive to the law of sin and death ourselves, all the creation placed under our control fell into captivity as well. As Paul says in Romans 8:19-24:
The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
So then, the whole creation waits for its redemption, and in that redemption of the creation we too find redemption of our bodies. What does it mean for our bodies to be redeemed? It means that we will not longer be subject to sickness, disease, deformity, weakness, frailty, and death. We will be set free from all these things, never to suffer them any more. When will this happen? At the return of Christ when we shall be raised from the dead, then we shall be granted glory, immortality and incorruption, and the whole creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay, so that once again it will be a fit dwelling-place for us and for God himself, who is so delighted with the world that he has created that he will come down from heaven to dwell with us here forever! What a day that will be!
God has not abandoned his creation to the devil. He is not engaged in some cosmic belt-notching crusade to see how many he can win to his side. He is working to ensure that his victory over the devil, and over the powers of death, and sin, and hell, which took place through the death and resurrection of Christ, will become the power at work in all the world. This is God’s world, not ours, not the devil’s, but God’s alone. We can have confidence then that anything we do in this world, whatever it is, can draw on a power greater than that which is at work in the world around us.
What do we mean by the "world"?
We need to consider what we mean by the "world." To talk of this earth as God’s world means that the world and everything in it was created by God and is dependent on God. The world belongs to God as his possession, and it is God who keeps the world in existence by his power. But evangelical Christians have traditionally used the term "the world" to mean activities which are ungodly, something for Christians to avoid. But looking at "the world" in this way introduces confusion into our understanding of Scripture. There are three ways in which the term "world" is used in the New Testament. It refers to
The world as God’s creation, both the earth on which we live, and the people God created to live here, is to be loved and cherished. But the world as a spiritual principle of opposition to the righteous rule of God over his kingdom is to be resisted in the grace of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. The "world" that is condemned in Scripture, is not God’s creation, but the system of darkness which has arrogated to itself the power and authority which belong only to God. The world in this sense is the institutionalised rebellion of sinful human beings and all that pertains to them.
However, to condemn as "worldly" involvement in any area of human society, such as politics, or film-making, or pop music, is to misinterpret the Scriptures. The "world" does not mean areas of human life which Christians should avoid, rather it is the spirit of alienation from God which resists His rule over every area of life, and the whole of the created order. To be "worldly" in the strict Biblical sense is to submit to the spiritual powers of darkness which dominate this world’s affairs. It does not mean being involved in God’s creation, being active in human society, which is frequently taken to be the meaning of being "worldly," because of the confusion from the different senses of the term "world" in the Scriptures. To see involvement in God’s creation as "worldly" and hence something for Christians to avoid, is to exclude many areas of life from the Lordship of Christ, and denies the cosmic scope of God’s redemption in Christ.
The Word of God guides us in our inescapable involvement in every area of life, and calls us to renew it through the redemption won by Christ. The Scriptures give us a perspective by which we are to live in every area of life. Therefore separating ourselves from some activities under the illusion that they are intrinsically "worldly" is to deny that the world God made is still his creation, and to fail to see that the redemption of Christ encompasses all that he has created. God has not abandoned his creation, and is working to redeem it through Christ; having won the victory on the cross that redemption is now being worked out in everything. The creation is God’s world which is being redeemed and renewed into a Kingdom of God. The work of Christ and the Spirit is to lead all of Creation back to obedience to the Father so that his Kingdom will be the only kingdom. When the final victory is won, the rule of the kingdoms of the world is returned to its rightful king, thus transforming that kingdom into what it was meant to be: the obedient response of the creation to its Creator.
To talk of "the world and everything in it" as God’s creation is to include everything that exists. We have a strong tradition in the west to think of God’s creation only in terms of what can be investigated by natural science. Things like families, love for our neighbour, music, art, jokes and riddles, elections and bureaucracy, and many other features of our life, are not considered part of God’s creation. But we misread the Scriptures if we imagine that creation refers only to the so-called "natural" realm, such as the earth, sun, moon and stars, minerals, plants and animals. When God spoke His Word which brought into being and structured every creature, that word established the creation order which embraces all God’s creatures in an inescapable web of interrelationships. The creation order shapes not only the "physical" characteristics of creatures, but their relationships with each other, their abilities, tasks and callings.
We are created with relationships and abilities as part of who and what we are, and it is with these relationships to other creatures and the abilities that God has given us that we shape our lives, including all the things mentioned above. These things are all part of God’s creation order, they are possibilities he has provided for, and which we shape into the actual structures of daily life. Something of this is revealed in Psalm 8:
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little less than God, and crown him with glory and honour. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands, you have put all things under his feet. (Psalm 8:4-6)
Here we see that God did not create humankind in isolation, but with a specific task and calling in relation to the rest of creation. Adam (and his descendants) were created to care for the earth and its creatures. This task was not added after he was created, but is intrinsic to his very being. When God revealed the creation mandate to Adam and Eve, he was not telling them of something they could do, but was telling them who they were: God’s stewards, the ones who care for the creation. To be human is to care for God’s creation, and to care for God’s creation is to find fulfilment as human beings.
Even though humankind has fallen into bondage to the power of sin, we are still God’s creatures, formed in relationship to the whole of creation. And even in sin we are still what God has created us to be, stewards of creation, although we are corrupted by sin. We still carry out our appointed task, although we now do this in ways disruptive of God’s design.
It is important to note that God’s creatures and their relationships cannot be separated. Things are created by God in relationship to each other. Relationships are not added as we go through life. Instead, God has created us in relationship with other people and with the world around us, and with himself. These relationships which already exist are shaped and developed by us, but they are not created by us, they are created by God. This applies also to our relationship with God: everyone has a relationship to God, but that relationship can be shaped by faith, by fear, by rebellion or by indifference. The preaching of the Gospel is a call to have our relationship to God renewed by the Holy Spirit so it is a relationship of love and trust. Our responding to the Gospel does not establish this relationship: it acknowledges it.
So when we become Christians, we do not have a new relationship with God, we actually have renewed our existing relationship, so that we are no longer living in rebellion and rejection, but in faith and trust. Even when we were sinners God loved us; the relationship never ceased. We were always God’s beloved creation, even when we were sinners. Our relationship with God was distorted and broken, but it was still a relationship between the Creator and his creatures. When we repent and believe, all things are made new; once again we come into communion with our creator and Lord, instead of rebelling against him and rejecting his love for us.
So then, how can we live as believing people in a secular world? We can do this only if we are prepared to acknowledge the sovereignty of God over the whole of life. All that we do, all that we are, all that we put our hands and minds to, must be submitted to the one and only rightful King, performed in his way, for his service and for his glory. There is no other possible way in which we can live and still profess to be Christian people. We cannot serve other gods, we cannot live in accordance with any other law or principle than that of Christian faith. We are called to live at all times and in all places as Christians. That means that we will be distinctive in the way we live, in the principles on which we base our lives, in the goals and purposes for which we work. We are not here to serve our own purposes, but the purposes of the one who sent us. Only in so far as we are living in submission to the one true King can we have any effect in the world, for only those who are serving the King have his blessing and power to perform their tasks.
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