The Creation and Mandate of Man

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And unto every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. (Genesis 1:26-30)

 

Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Man"

These verses have four very important theological and social implications. First, the creation of man was a direct act of the Godhead. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all present and active throughout the process of creation.

Secondly, God chose to make male and female in both the image and the likeness of Himself, giving humanity a special relationship to God. These are not necessarily physical attributes (although god is described as having certain body parts, such as “the hand of God”) as they are spiritual. The soul of man, being created in God’s image, has the unique capability of embodying God’s communicable attributes, such as rationality, reason, intellect, will, and emotion. Man was also originally created in the likeness of God by embodying God’s moral attributes, such as righteousness and the ability to have relationships. These moral attributes, however, have been lost as a result of the fall, but can be re-gained through faith in Christ alone. Since every human being is created in the image of the Godhead, every human being is special to God. Therefore, we should recognize that every human life is sacred. From the unborn baby, to the woman with mental retardation, to the young man with quadriplegia, to even the elderly man with dementia, every life is special and significant to our creator.

Third, God has put man in charge of the earth, its resources, and its creatures. Man has been given the right, by the Creator, to use everything in the earth for his own benefit. However, even though God has given man dominion over the earth, man should not abuse it. We should be wise regarding our earthly environment, striving to eliminate pollution and harmful waste that destroys God’s creation, while at the same time knowing that we are not sinning when we consume the plants and creatures of the earth.

Finally, man is called to multiply his kind. God has given man the “cultural mandate” to reproduce without shame.

These implications mean that all men and women, regardless of race and social class, have been directly created by God in His own image and likeness. Since man is God’s representative on earth, man has been put in charge of the earth and its resources. Man also is commanded to reproduce in order to keep charge of the earth.

 

 

 

In the Beginning...

 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."

-Genesis 1:1-2

It is impossible for us, as finite human beings, to imagine a time when there was no earth, planets, space, or even time itself. But that is the image that Genesis 1:1-2 gives us. Here we see the only thing in existence: the Triune God.

The Bible begins with a very dogmatic sentence: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." At the beginning of time, it was God who both physically and literally created the heavens and the earth. This creation was a physical work of God because we read a few verses later that by His direct word the universe was created (v. 3). This creation was also literal in that these verses are not metaphors, analogies, or any other figure of speech. This is a narrative of a true event in history. It happened just as we read. We know this because of God's use of repetition throughout the first chapter. For example, each day's creation begins with "And God said", and ends with "And there was evening and morning".

During this time, the earth had no shape or contents. Our finite minds want to make a representation of it, but that is impossible because the earth had neither shape nor color (v. 2). John Gill, in his Exposition of the Entire Bible, writes that the creation "was a fluid matter, the watery parts were not separated from the earthy ones; it was not put into the form of a terraqueous globe it is now, the sea apart, and the earth by itself, but were mixed and blended together; it was...a waste and desert". Although we can only surmise what the earth looked like at this point, we do know that there was darkness all around, according to chapter two.

We also know that the Trinity was present in creation as well. In verse two, the Spirit of God is pictured as hovering over the newly created waters. Later on, the Trinity is active in the creation of the first human beings (1:26-28). Furthermore, in the first chapter of John, the apostle writes that the Son Himself was present and active in creation. John goes to great lengths to show that, not only was the Son present, but He is actually God and that "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being" (John 1:3). It sounds repetitive, but that is John's point. Just as Moses, the author of Genesis, used repetition to show the creation of the world by the direct act of God, so too does John use repetition to show that the Son, Jesus Christ, was present and active in creation.


It is comforting to know that no part of creation has escaped the attention of God, the Spirit, and the Son. And not only did these Beings create the universe, but they were, and are, present in the activity of the earth.

David Brainerd and Jerusha Edwards: A Colonial Love Story

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 

(I Corinthians 13:4-8, 13)

             

First Corinthians 13 has become so cliché to our modern Christian lingo. It is often quoted, but rarely interpreted correctly. Faith, hope, and love are all virtues that we as humans display on this earth. But when, as believers, our faith and hope in Christ has been realized, only love will pass on into heaven. We will continue to demonstrate love as we worship our Lord at His feet.

But can this love endure all things while here on earth? Can this love endure trials, tribulations, and persecutions? What about death? Does our love truly abide after death? David Brainerd and Jerusha Edwards seemed to believe so. These were two young believers who exemplified this type of love. 

David Brainerd was a single 29 year-old who had started a mission to the Delaware Indians of New Jersey. Born in 1718, Brainerd was the most unlikely of missionary candidates. Although he was a very handsome man, Brainerd was skinny, pale, and suffered from a chronic illness, which we now know as tuberculosis. He also battled ongoing bouts of depression, which assaulted his mental spirit. He was plagued more with internal weakness than with the physical. In his depression, he struggled with the sufficiency of God’s grace for him, and wondered why God would die for a sinner such as him. 

Brainerd attended Yale, but was expelled when he criticized one of his tutors by saying that “he has no more grace than a chair”. This added to Brainerd’s depression, especially since a recent law forbade anyone to be appointed as a minister without a degree from Harvard, Yale, or a respectable European school. 

But Brainerd felt stronger than ever that the Lord was leading him to the mission field. He rejected opportunities to work in a mission field of relative ease with people of his own skin color, accepting instead the call to work with American Indians. 

Brainerd’s first mission work was with the Housatonic Indians of New York, where he established a school and began working on a translation of the Psalms. Later, he began working with the fierce and violent Delaware Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 

But David needed a respite from his missionary work. Lately, he had grown more ill than usual. He needed a break. It was during this time, in May of 1747, that David Brainerd first arrived at the home of Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts. 

The spring of 1747 was a very busy time for the Jonathan Edwards household. Sarah Edwards had just given birth to her tenth child, and the household was bustling with young children. As mother to this large family, Sarah was the overseer for farming, cooking, clothing, washing, cleaning, punishment, and education. Historian George Marsden notes that Sarah Edwards was “the embodiment of the Puritan ideal of industry”. 

In addition to caring for the household, Sarah also opened her home to travelers and visitors who came to learn from her husband. David Brainerd’s arrival seemed like an added burden because he needed constant care and attention. 

Jerusha Edwards, Jonathan and Sarah’s seventeen-year old daughter, took on the task of caring for Brainerd. Not much is known about Jerusha, except the fact that, much like her parents, her goal in life was to serve in self-less submission to God’s will. Her father wrote that she was very close to the Lord, especially at such a young age. She admired Brainerd from the start. She knew that he would endure any hardship to bring the gospel to the Indians. Thus, Jerusha viewed Brainerd as the embodiment of her spiritual ideal. She took it upon herself to care for this very weak young man. 

The only prescription that the doctors had prescribed to Brainerd for his illness was fresh air, which he partook of through regular horseback riding. After spending weeks in Northampton at the Edwards home, David left on a horseback ride to Boston, over 100 miles away. He was accompanied by Jerusha, who said she was “to be helpful to him in his weak and low state”. The trip normally took two days. David and Jerusha spent four days traveling. 

Upon arriving in Boston, Brainerd again became deathly ill, and Jerusha feared for his life. The doctors said that he could die any day; however, he seemed to recover just a few weeks later. The trip back to Northampton would again be taken very slowly to ease travel for David. 

David continued to have brief daily horseback rides until finally he was just too weak to continue to do so. By early September, David was confined to bed. Jerusha continued to care for him daily, despite the fact that she was not well herself. 

By October, David Brainerd had taken a turn for the worse. Jonathan Edwards wrote that on Sunday, October 4, Brainerd was near death. Jerusha Edwards entered Brainerd’s room and David “looked on her very pleasantly and said ‘Dear Jerusha, are you willing to part with me? I am willing to part with you…though, if I thought I should not see you and be happy with you in another world, I could not bear to part with you. But we shall spend an happy eternity together!’” Five days later, on October 9, 1747, David Brainerd died at the age of 29. Jerusha was most assuredly by his side at death. 

Jonathan Edwards gave Brainerd a very simplistic funeral service, as David would have wanted it. However, Edwards preached a magnificent funeral sermon entitled, “True Saints, When Absent From the Body, are Present With the Lord”. Edwards emphasized that these saints are not in a temporary holding spot awaiting the Lord’s return, but are immediately with the Lord after death. Perhaps this brought comfort to Jerusha’s grieved soul. Edwards seemed to have emphasized this point with his daughter in mind. 

Just four short months later, Jerusha Edwards died of an acute fever, after having only been ill for a week. This illness was most likely the result of her selfless care for Brainerd. Her father, of course, conducted the funeral, noting that Jerusha “was like a flower that is cut down”. Borrowing the theme from Job, Jonathan compared a cut down flower as a “fit emblem of a young person in the bloom of life, with amiable, pleasant, and promising qualifications, not only with a blooming body, but mind also; with desirable natural and moral endowments.” Jerusha had been the child that was most like her father. Thus, her death stung Jonathan in particularly. He noted her moral virtues in the funeral service, hoping that other young people would learn from her example. He said that Jerusha “declared in words, showed in deed, ever more ready to deny herself, earnestly inquiring in every affair which way she could most glorify God.” 

Jonathan Edwards, remembering the words David Brainerd had spoken to Jerusha while on his deathbed, buried his daughter next to Brainerd. He was confident that they were both presently with the Lord and in the company of each other. But he wanted to ensure that their bodies would rise together at the resurrection. He seemed to understand that the love of David and Jerusha would endure despite death. He seemed to recognize that love is eternal. 


The love with which David Brainerd and Jerusha Edwards showed each other was based on the altruistic love of Christ. Jerusha Edwards risked her health to care for the one in which she not only admired, but also loved. Brainerd recognized and appreciated the love with which Jerusha showed him.

If only the two had lived. They could have married and raised children with the zeal that they both had for the Lord. But that was not God’s sovereign plan for the love with which they displayed. It was His plan that the love of David Brainerd and Jerusha Edwards, with a foundation set on the love of Christ, would endure spiritually. The love of David Brainerd and Jerusha Edwards would never end.

Sources

"David Brainerd." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 01 July 2013. Web. 13 Jan. 2013.

Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003. 318-30. Print.

"Missionary Biography: David Brainerd (1718-1747)." Bethany College of Missions. 3 Aug. 2010. Web. 13 Jan. 2013.

The True Meaning of Christmas

God came down to earth and was incarnated,
Taking the form of those whom He had created.

He was born to save His people from their sin.
Through Adam, death had been imputed to all men.

In our sin, we did not acknowledge Him.
In our weakness, our eyes had become dim.

Away from righteousness, humanity ran.
God despised the works of man.

In His humility, He was made low
So that, to the mercy seat, His people may go.

He took my sin and shame.
Now, in the eyes of God, I am without blame.