But We Do See Jesus

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

There is a place where someone has testified:

‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them,

a son of man that you care for him?

You made them a little lower than the angels;

you crowned them with glory and honour

and put everything under their feet.’

In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Hebrews 2:6-9

It sounds great, but it doesn’t ring true. The apparent upshot of Psalm 8 – that men and women are crowned with glory and honour, that we are given dominion over creation – simply doesn’t match our experience. At the same time as the psalm calls us to have a high-enough view of ourselves, it also provokes us to have a realistic view of ourselves.

Though formed in the image of God, our representation of his rule and authority in the world is distorted. To be sure, threads of beauty, compassion, and productiveness are woven into the fabric of our existence; but so are threads of darkness, disease, and disorder. In our more honest moments, we don’t need to go further than ourselves to be confronted with the twists and turns of the human heart. We walk tall, but fall short.

Plus, on top of everything else, death so clearly thwarts human dominion in the world, and no-one has found a way through that barrier.

Except, as the writer to the Hebrews tells us, there is one human being who has fulfilled the destiny for which we were made. Jesus, himself made lower than the angels, who because of his suffering and death on behalf of others, has now been crowned with glory and honour, and reigns over all things, breaking even the power of the devil and death itself (Hebrews 2:14-15). We don’t yet see God’s final plan for humanity and creation completed, ‘but we do see Jesus’. The rule of Psalm 8, which so easily eludes us, has become a reality in him.

It is sometimes suggested that Jesus has completed the command to rule first given to our first parents, and so it no longer applies to us today. But, if anything, his dominion over all things makes the creation mandate even more significant. As Christians, we are being remade in the image of Christ, restored under Christ’s lordship to what was lost in Adam and Eve so as to bring glory to God in all we do!

Precisely because we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour, whatever realm the Lord has placed us in – whatever family, job, school, course, church, and hobby – we can bear fruit in it, as men and women made and then remade in God’s image to represent and reflect the glory of his grace in all the earth.

From Dust to Glory

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

What is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honour.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

you put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,

the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,

all that swim the paths of the seas.

LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8:4-9

The presence in the current paperback book charts of Human Universe by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen, and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, is a small indication of our continued fascination with issues of human identity and purpose.

Like David, here in Psalm 8, we’ve been asking the question ‘what is mankind?’ for centuries. And from David comes the encouragement that we will answer it best in the context of praise for the greatness of God.

But here’s something we might not expect. The majesty of the Lord – his glory – is reflected in human beings who are themselves ‘crowned with glory and honour’ and given dominion over the works of God’s hands. This affirms what Genesis 1:28 says, when God calls men and women to the tasks of ‘filling’ and ‘subduing’ and ‘ruling’, to extend the blessings of Eden to the whole world.

Cultures surrounding Israel told stories of people being made as slaves of the gods, with the language of ‘image’ applied only to kings. In Genesis, however, all human beings are created in God’s image, giving men and women a status and responsibility not found in other worldviews. We are made from dust, yet made for glory. Compared with the immense greatness of God, we are tiny specks; but in God’s good design for all things, we matter. God declares his creation to be very good, but chooses to cultivate it through the activity of human beings created in his image.

An incredible identity aside, God’s first great commission provides a basis for the whole of life – for family, for ecology, for work, for economics, for culture. And it applies to all people. We do any number of ‘mundane’ things every day – looking after children, going to work, cooking a meal, weeding the garden, walking the dog – not because we’re Christian but because we’re human, designed to represent something of his oversight in spheres that lie within our influence. Of course, that we are such stewards raises all sorts of questions about how we do this appropriately. Still, these are the ways in which we, this very day, embody God’s gracious rule in our various activities, in relationship with others, and in a way that reflects God’s own loving hand – that his name might be majestic in all the earth.

Beginning in the Right Place

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants

you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

Psalm 8:1-4

NASA recently released what was quickly hailed as the largest picture ever taken – an image of the Andromeda Galaxy, a near neighbour of our own galaxy. Each tiny dot in the image is a star – an estimated 100 million of them – each of which could have its own planetary system. It takes a mere 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to reach Earth from the Sun, but it would take 2.5 million years for light to reach us from Andromeda.

And yet, all of it, the psalmist declares, is formed by God’s finger tips – like the delicate, up-close work of an expert carver or sculptor.

David asks the age-old question about the nature of humanity – ‘what is mankind?’ – but he doesn’t begin with us. Nor does he give a theological or philosophical treatise, or offer a course in biology, sociology or anthropology. He starts in the right place, and in the right way, in wonder and praise. So it is that the psalm begins, and ends, with God: ‘LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!’ And humanity is understood within the frame of God’s own glory. In a psalm which celebrates the royal dignity of men and women comes the reminder that we rule on behalf of God only insofar as we acknowledge God’s prior rule.

And with submission goes worship. For David, this includes children and infants, whose praise establishes a stronghold against God’s enemies – those who don’t and won’t submit to God. Somehow, the way God responds to foes and cynics is by putting praise on the lips of those who are apparently helpless. There is mystery here, to be sure, but it resonates with what the Bible says elsewhere: what seems to be weak overcomes the strong, what appears to be of little consequence overwhelms the mighty.

So, before David asks the question, ‘what is mankind?’, there is already an indication that the answer will challenge the dominant cultural narratives about humanity.

What we were made to be is still threatened by hostile powers – not just militarism, but racism and sexism, exploitation and addiction, fear and hate. Scripture speaks of an alternative power at work – in creation and redemption, in praise and worship – often operating through the seemingly weak and apparently insignificant, but who overcome evil in the name of the Lamb.