Reason Number Seven:
The environment was created by Christ and for Christ, is the inheritance of Christ, is held together by Christ, and is being reconciled to God through Christ.
Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to pay the debt for our sins, played an intimate role in the creation of the world and is responsible for its continuing existence. I often forget that Christ has job descriptions beyond being my Savior – though what a glorious role that is! While he saves and comforts and intercedes for us before God, he is also the power through which all of creation is held together, which in the beginning, was created by God through him.
The Gospel of John begins with this marvelous truth: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
All things were made through Christ - the Christ in whose name we pray and in whose blood we trust, also created. Without him, Scripture says, nothing would exist. We read this opening verse to a most beloved book of the Bible so frequently that we may have forgotten its full meaning. I am daily thankful for my salvation because of Christ’s death on the cross, but I rarely think of the vast reaches Christ’s power over all the world.
Colossians says of Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Again, it’s clear that it was through Christ that all things were created. Everything in heaven as well as on this earth, things we can see and things we can’t, the rulers, powers and authorities in this world. Everything.
Paul describes Christ as the firstborn over all creation. In the ancient world the firstborn was the heir, the eventual head and ruler over the estate. This is what Paul means to say about Christ in regards to creation. The creation is Christ’s inheritance. It is his to rule fully when his kingdom comes.
What was most startling to me, when I first studied this passage, is that little addendum, “and for him.” All things were made for Christ? A list of undesirable, unlovely things comes to mind. Bacteria was made by him and for him. Hurricanes were made by him and for him. We were made by him and for him. Animals and plants were made by him and for him. Every aspect of the environment was made by him and for him.
As if to make us stumble even more, we learn that not only was everything created through Christ and for Christ, but that he is before all things (has supremacy over them) and holds all things together.
What a radical change that is from my usual pattern of thinking. I walk around and assume that the ground is beneath my feet simply because it is. I breathe the air because I can (I do that without thinking at all). I react to things like disease as either bad luck or pure science. I regard food as a necessity and a pleasure. But none of these things are accidents or coincidences - they are purposeful, planned out by Christ, upheld by Christ, for Christ.
Do I ever give thought to the Creator of these things? The very ground I walk on should remind me that I am dependent on Christ continually upholding the universe. When, in my prayers and thoughts, do I acknowledge that my relationship with Jesus is even deeper than my salvation, but began the second I was knit together in my mother’s womb? When I was born my tiny body entered the earth he created and gasped in the air that he holds together. Do I think on these things?
There is still another aspect of Christ’s relationship to creation; Paul writes in Romans, telling us that God is reconciling the whole creation back to himself through Christ’s blood. How amazing it is that God created the world and everything in it through Christ, and then reconciles it back to himself through Christ.
This knowledge, that the environment was created by Christ and for Christ, is the inheritance of Christ, is held together by Christ, and is being reconciled to God through Christ, should profoundly affect our view of environmental problems.
Robert Letham, in his book The Work of Christ, addresses the issue in his chapter on Christ’s mediatorial kingship:
“At present we are alert to the pressing issue of the environment. If Christ is creator and sustainer of the universe, and if he is to remould it, then car exhaust emissions, ozone layer depletion, nuclear waste disposal, toxicity in the atmosphere and the widespread problem of garbage removal are matters of integral concern to the church and to theology. This world belongs to our Saviour, and we have been given custodial charge of it. We are responsible to him for how we use it. The problem of sin includes not only questions of personal morality but also careless use of Christ’s environment” (208).
Moreover, he writes, “no realm is out of bounds to the Christian faith.” Politics, business, family life, etc, “are to be seen from the perspective of the creation mediatorship of Jesus Christ” (209).
We would be wise to remember this exhortation. When we claim that Christ has no authority over an area of our lives, personally or corporately as the church, we are standing on sinking sand and disregarding the clear teaching of Scripture. “Since he [Christ] made it, to view the universe from any other perspective will result in distortion” (209).
As it has when Christians look at the environment and claim “Not Our Problem.”
~Lauren Merritt, The Christian and Creation
