In Romans 8:18ff Paul reminds us of the bigger picture of redemption. The universe was created by God, it was fine-tuned for life. In Genesis 1 we read about God instilling everything with order. This is what imagery of the creation account is conveying: the God who orders, who fine tunes everything perfectly. It was a perfect mechanism. But the key cog to this wonderful mechanism was human beings, the children of God. Only if humans functioned rightly would the rest of the mechanism function well. God gave his children—humankind—the responsibility to “rule over the earth”; to “fill the earth and subdue it”. In other words, our mandate was to keep God’s order on earth and to bring out the full potential of what God had made. So, while the earth was good; it was not fully realised, it remained to be subdued. There was work to do. And humans were given the responsibility and the ability to do that work. Humans, however, rebelled against God, and the moment they did, everything went haywire. As soon as they put themselves in conflict with God, human beings came into conflict with each other and their environment. So, everything became a conflict. And so, we live in the mess we made. But God is reinstating his children now, and wherever this happens, things change. You are an agent of change in your environment (work, social, etc.). The full reinstatement of God’s family on earth will mean the full redemption of the planet. That is yet to come. In the meantime, we change our environments bit by bit.
Think about where there is conflict around you and pray that you might be an instrument of peace.
Read Genesis 1:26-28 along with Romans 8:18-21
