Jonathan Wilson Archives - Made SacredMade Sacred

There is a sneaking suspicion that lurks in the back of most of our minds.

A suspicion that colors the way we look at ourselves as well as the world around us.

It is the suspicion that sin has completely undone the goodness of Creation.

It is the suspicion that sin has broken our world and our bodies so thoroughly that there is nothing left to it but the ugly.

And if we view Creation through these dark lenses, we will treat it with contempt and shame. Even more, we will increasingly view the world, including our own bodies, as though they have nothing at all to do with God.

We will fall in line with our culture’s idea that we can live perfectly well in this world without ever thinking about how to consider with our lives the glorious reality of God’s Creation.

Without beginning our salvation story with Creation itself, without including in the gospel the amazingness of God-in-flesh, we are left with a hollow salvation, one that does the bare minimum to get us through the gates rather than one that accomplishes abundance upon abundance of redemption.

When God the Son died and resurrected, He redeemed not just our souls, but our physical bodies and the entire material world around us as well.

The stuff of creation is what God the Son redeems through his becoming flesh, bearing our sin, enduring death, and rising to life. When we have a truncated doctrine of creation, we have a truncated understanding of salvation. ~ Jonathan Wilson, theologian and author of God’s Good World

Romans 8 speaks of creation in the same terms it uses to speak of men. It speaks of creation as waiting to be redeemed, as yearning to be set free from bondage, as groaning as it waits in the exact same way that we groan as we wait for our own redemption.

We groan indeed. We groan as we labor through the pain of childbirth, we groan as we struggle to live life well and fail over and over to obey, we groan as we age and approach death.

We are a part of Creation and we groan and wait and hope right along with all of this material world for the return of Christ and for the redemption and perfection of all that we know.

And we would be a bit more successful in living our lives more beautifully if we would continue to consider the ways in which Creation should guide us toward or away from different patterns of life.

The glories of Creation and the ways in which God continues to interact with Creation have the possibility of helping us to understand how a “well-ordered life in the body presents opportunities for glorifying God and enjoying Him forever by participating more fully in the glorious giftedness of Creation”. (Ken Meyers of Mars Hill Audio Journal)

There is not room in a blog to explore such huge ideas in any depth at all. I only hope to spur on thought and seeking and exploring. Share with me what God shows you?

Art credit: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise by Benjamin West

It is often difficult to be generous. It is hard to give freely of our time, our resources, our hearts.

It is often difficult to trust. It is hard to open ourselves to others, leaving ourselves vulnerable to betrayal.

It is often difficult to see the abundance that is in God, and perhaps this is why it is so difficult to give it all away.

The widow whom Jesus noticed giving up her last coins in the temple could see this abundance. She saw how beautiful and full living in God’s life could be. She saw what we must open our own eyes to see: that we can only be generous and trust God with our lives when we see that our life in God, this kingdom of God here on earth, is abounding in life and love and joy.

Yes, we live in a broken, fallen world, but we don’t have to wait for the end of all things for God’s rule on earth to begin. Something occurred in creation when Jesus was raised from the dead. Something began at the resurrection that begins to bring God’s new life to this earth here and now. Paul speaks of us, among other things, as a new creation in Christ. I am not a theologian, so I do not pretend to understand how this happens or even exactly what is occurring.

Yet perhaps part of what this means is that we are called to bear witness to the perfect life in God, the perfect life of Genesis 1 & 2 and Revelation 21 & 22. We are called to live life in a way that bears witness to the perfection that we as well as all of creation will become, and perhaps simply living a witness kind of life is the way in which we are right now bringing God’s kingdom to fruition in our world.

When we act, as followers of Jesus Christ in the world, as if the limitations of this world set the boundaries for how we can act, then we are…failing in our witness to the cosmic redemption that has been accomplished in Jesus Christ ~ Jonathan Wilson, author of God’s Good World: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Creation

So let us live lives full of generosity and trust, opening our eyes to the abundance of life around us. The very same abundance that is ours in a witness life in Christ.

Art Credit: The Widow’s Mite by James Tissot

Made Sacred

Thoughtfully engaging life and culture as a way of loving God and loving others

Category Archives: Jonathan Wilson

The Goodness of Creation

There is a sneaking suspicion that lurks in the back of most of our minds.

A suspicion that colors the way we look at ourselves as well as the world around us.

It is the suspicion that sin has completely undone the goodness of Creation.

It is the suspicion that sin has broken our world and our bodies so thoroughly that there is nothing left to it but the ugly.

And if we view Creation through these dark lenses, we will treat it with contempt and shame. Even more, we will increasingly view the world, including our own bodies, as though they have nothing at all to do with God.

We will fall in line with our culture’s idea that we can live perfectly well in this world without ever thinking about how to consider with our lives the glorious reality of God’s Creation.

Without beginning our salvation story with Creation itself, without including in the gospel the amazingness of God-in-flesh, we are left with a hollow salvation, one that does the bare minimum to get us through the gates rather than one that accomplishes abundance upon abundance of redemption.

When God the Son died and resurrected, He redeemed not just our souls, but our physical bodies and the entire material world around us as well.

The stuff of creation is what God the Son redeems through his becoming flesh, bearing our sin, enduring death, and rising to life. When we have a truncated doctrine of creation, we have a truncated understanding of salvation. ~ Jonathan Wilson, theologian and author of God’s Good World

Romans 8 speaks of creation in the same terms it uses to speak of men. It speaks of creation as waiting to be redeemed, as yearning to be set free from bondage, as groaning as it waits in the exact same way that we groan as we wait for our own redemption.

We groan indeed. We groan as we labor through the pain of childbirth, we groan as we struggle to live life well and fail over and over to obey, we groan as we age and approach death.

We are a part of Creation and we groan and wait and hope right along with all of this material world for the return of Christ and for the redemption and perfection of all that we know.

And we would be a bit more successful in living our lives more beautifully if we would continue to consider the ways in which Creation should guide us toward or away from different patterns of life.

There is not room in a blog to explore such huge ideas in any depth at all. I only hope to spur on thought and seeking and exploring. Share with me what God shows you?

Living Generous

It is often difficult to be generous. It is hard to give freely of our time, our resources, our hearts.

It is often difficult to trust. It is hard to open ourselves to others, leaving ourselves vulnerable to betrayal.

It is often difficult to see the abundance that is in God, and perhaps this is why it is so difficult to give it all away.

So let us live lives full of generosity and trust, opening our eyes to the abundance of life around us. The very same abundance that is ours in a witness life in Christ.