Reason Number Six:
The creation is intrinsically linked to the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit each have a role in the creation, sustenance, and redemption of the created world.
Christopher J. H. Wright has written two outstanding books: Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament and Knowing the Holy Spirit Through the Old Testament. I highy recommend both of them to any reader. They have immeasurably increased my understanding of the Old Testament, the person of Jesus, and the person of the Spirit. The first chapter of Knowing the Holy Spirit is titled “The Creating Spirit,” in which Wright details the Spirit’s powerful work in the original creation and his ever-continuing sustaining work in creation.
Wright points out that there is a negative tendency among many religions, Christianity included, to think that only that which is spiritual really matters. This thought traces back to Plato and the Greeks who believed that the body was merely a cage for the soul, and the soul could only be pure apart from the body. In their estimation, all physical creation was evil, at the worst, or at least insignificant. Christians however, ought to know that the physical is being redeemed along with the spiritual, and that the two do not exist apart from one another (Rom 8:16-24). We do not look forward to a permanent spiritual heaven apart from our bodies, but to the resurrection of our bodies and life in a new creation (1 Cor 15)!
Wright addresses the false belief among Christians:
“Against all such minimizing and trivializing viewpoints, the Bible affirms creation, affirms the whole of creation, and affirms that the whole of God, including his Spirit, is involved in it origin, sustenance and future. Our God is the God of the whole creation. He made it, he sustains it, he loves it.”
Wright continues that this Biblical worldview must affect our lives. It affects in particular our view of ecology.
“If all life on earth is sustained by God, and loved by God, then there are more ways of grieving the Holy Spirit than just lack of personal sanctification,” he writes. He suggests that maybe we have never thought of ecology as we rightly should. “I am constantly surprised at how many Christians have no interest in ecological issues or even in Christian efforts to care for creation [...]. They know about such things as destruction of habitats, draining of wetlands, burning of forests, pollution of the atmosphere, rivers, and oceans, global warming, loss of species, etc.” Worse, he writes, some have such distorted views of future events that they promote using up the creation as fast and recklessly as possible!
Here’s the hard Biblical truth that arrested my attention:
“And yet they say they believe the Bible, the same Bible that tells us that the earth was made by God the Father, is sustained by God the Spirit and will be the inheritance of God the Son; the same Bible that tells us that God loves all he has made, that the Spirit gives life to all and that God has reconciled to himself all things to himself by the blood of Christ on the cross.”
The Father made the creation, the Spirit gives life to the creation, the Son will inherit and rule the creation. Many of the children of the Father, reborn by the Spirit, who call themselves followers of the Son, ignore the creation and scorn those who care. I agree with Wright, that this sad disparity grieves the Holy Spirit.
I began this series to address the Christian ecological attitude: “It’s Not Our Problem.” Brothers and sisters, it is our problem. If it is the concern of God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, it is ours.
