A TICKING CLOCK?
Humans didn’t arrive by chance. The former atheist,
Anthony Flew, finally admitted, as he listened to atheists like Richard Dawkins,
it is “comical” to think we arrived by chance.
Humans didn’t create themselves! Enough said.
We’re here because God in holy love and out of the
infinite fountain of his life-filled life he chose to share life with us. In
making a choice to create us God chose to be our God; he chose not to be God in
solitary existence; he chose not to be God without us. He chose to bring into
being a human family to which he would relate as a Holy Father to his children.
He didn’t create us to exist independent of him. He
purposed more than existence; he
purposed life for us, life in fellowship with him. What he
purposed for us couldn’t be experienced by us apart from him. He didn’t create
us as a clockmaker creates a clock, winds it up and then walks away to leave
the clock ticking its own way toward oblivion.
Seen in that way “life” would be existence but it wouldn’t
be what God purposed; it wouldn’t be the destiny for which he made us.
We couldn’t tell from reading Genesis—Malachi that God had
purposed to bring into being a glorious and deathless human family but in
Jesus, who brings Genesis—Malachi to fullness, we have come to know about “life
and immortality” (2 Timothy 1:10).
In and through Jesus, the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45
and see Romans 5:14) we learn what God’s eternal purpose was that was hinted at
throughout the early ages.
What would thwart that glorious and generous purpose would
be the free human rejection of God’s intention and that rejection of God could
only and would only result in death. But God’s creative purpose took that into
account and in Jesus he purposed to deal with the sinful rejection and by his
resurrection destroy the resultant death.
No lovely couple has a child just so they can receive
praise and honour even though it’s true that fullness of life could not be
enjoyed if mutual honour and respect is not offered. God didn’t purpose life
for a glorious human family just so he could be praised and honoured forever.
He didn’t need service or praise—he didn’t create us to fill some lack he
experienced. Our life was/is a generous gift; he gives to us grand and profound
possibilities as a loving couple does to a child they loved into existence. Because
God purposed that the creation would come to its fullness in the glorious and
immortal Jesus in whose image the human family will live (Colossians 1:16;
Ephesians 2:10 and compare Romans 8:29-30) the future is assured. Not only is
it assured, it will be inexpressible wonderful (Philippians 3:20-21) and my
Ethel will experience it in its fullness.