What the Bible offers in the beginning is not a “works contract,” but a covenant of vocation. The vocation in question is that of being a genuine human being, with genuinely human tasks to perform as part of the Creator’s purpose for his world. The main task of this vocation is “image-bearing,” reflecting the Creator’s wise stewardship into the world and reflecting the praises of all creation back to its maker. Those who do so are the “royal priesthood,” the “kingdom of priests,” the people who are called to stand at the dangerous but exhilarating point where heaven and earth meet.
• N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began
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Genesis: Where It All Begins (4)
Human Vocation: Undone and Restored
In the context of the biblical story, the Adam and Eve are not portrayed so much the first sinners as he is the first failed saviors.
What do I mean by that?
Here is my overview on how I have come to read the message about humans and God’s creation purposes for them in the book of Genesis.
- Despite our common perception, the world we see in Genesis 1-2 is not a perfect world, devoid of sin and death. It is a good land, in contrast to a wasteland. It is ordered by God to provide for humankind and the other creatures so that they may flourish upon the earth and fulfill what God created them to be.
- God created adam (humankind, broadly in Gen. 1; the adam (earthling) and the eve (the mother of all living, as portrayed in Gen. 2-3) to live as his image in the world, that is, his priestly representatives). This was and is the human vocation.
- As his priestly representatives in the world, the adam was, within God’s blessing, to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Thus, the vocation involved not only flourishing upon the earth and taking care of creation as God’s stewards, but also actively engaging and overcoming evil.
- From the beginning then, God chose humans, those who carry his “image” in the world, to repair the world (something like the Jewish concept of tikkun olam). The original mandate for humans is that we should represent God in the world and to live within his blessing so that we might rule over an unruly world and overcome evil and its effects on the world.
- The Adam and Eve (and again, their names are highly symbolic), as presented in Genesis 2-3, were not the first humans, but they were the first representative humans to be called into this covenant vocation, that they might bring eternal life to the world (through the Tree of Life).
- The story of the Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden shows humankind’s failure to do that. They failed to exercise dominion over the creatures and subdue evil (as represented in the wiles and lies of the serpent).
- The Adam and Eve were thus exiled from Eden, thereby losing access to the Tree of Life for themselves and all their descendants, subjecting themselves and the world to the domination of sin, evil, and death. It is not that there was no death in the world before them, it is that they failed to subdue the elements of the unruly world that lead to death and bring life to the world.
- This story was meant to teach Israel, to whom God had given this same vocation. This is, in microcosm, what the story of Israel and her leaders is about. Placed in God’s good land, and called to be a kingdom of priests and a light to the nations, Israel failed to keep God’s commandments and was ultimately cast into exile. Israel, like the Adam and Eve, failed to live up to her vocation of bringing God’s life to the world.
- What the Adam and Eve could not do, what Israel and all her patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings could not do, Jesus (the second Adam, the new Israel) did. Through his death, resurrection and ascension, he exercised dominion over the powers holding this world captive. He subdued evil, restoring access to the Tree of Life for the whole world. “If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17).
- Those who are “in Christ” now receive a foretaste of this life and are restored to participate with Christ in fulfilling humankind’s original vocation: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). We read of the ultimate goal in John’s vision of the throne: “you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth” (Revelation 5:10).
Behind all consideration of our specific “callings” as individual human beings to live in this world and care for it and each other by doing our work well and loving God and others, there is a “big picture” vocation from the story of creation that only Jesus the Messiah and Lord was able to accomplish and win back for us.
Now, in Christ, like the first humans, we are called again to live in God’s blessing and life because Jesus exercised dominion over the powers of this world and subdued evil through his death and resurrection. Our “big picture” vocation has been restored. In Christ we once more enter into God’s creation mandate as we announce its restoration to the world. Jesus has made it possible for humans to live in this world as fully formed human beings and to repair the world. This is the life-giving good news we announce: Jesus’ victory and recovery of our vocation. In Christ, we can once again live in God’s blessing and bring his life to the world.
It will not be perfectly experienced until God intervenes in the end to restore all things and consummate the the new creation. But through Jesus-shaped lives, we begin to taste of the age to come.
Jesus’s followers themselves were to be given a new kind of task. The Great Jailer had been overpowered; now someone had to go and unlock the prison doors. Forgiveness of sins had been accomplished, robbing the idols of their power; someone had to go and announce the amnesty to “sinners” far and wide. And this had to be done by means of the new sort of power: the cross-resurrection-Spirit kind of power. The power of suffering love.
• N.T. Wright