Synopsis
On the last pages of your Bible, in what seems to be the final book of Scripture we will ever receive before the coming of the Lord to bring the final redemption of the creation, in the final pages of Revelation, we are treated to a description of a city. That city, the new Jerusalem, represents the Church.
The big reveal at the end of mysteries is the redeemed people of God, and that is fitting for what the Church is. The Church is the most important institution in creation. By the Church, I do not mean the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church. There is no man defined institution that encompasses the entirety of the divinely defined institution. The basis for its existence is neither a legal document nor an agreement among men. The Church’s charter is heavenly and it is the centerpiece of creation.
That is a bold claim. For the centerpiece of creation, the Church can seem silly and pathetic at times. In worldly greatness, even the magnificent cathedrals and basilicas of what may seem like a lost golden age are now abandoned when it comes to the purpose for which they were built. The awe inspiring Hagia Sophia has now been a mosque for centuries. But still, in the minute places where true and living faith in Jesus is found, there is a burgeoning glory that not even the most magnificent of the angels can match.
The Purpose of Creation
To understand the importance of one aspect of creation, the Church, we must first understand the purpose of creation.
Creation does not exist to serve any need of God’s. God is entirely self-sufficient. Parts of creation have more direct purposes to serve the needs of other parts of creation, but the ultimate purpose of creation is to reflect the character of God. There are ways in which we are designed to reflect the character of God by being like him, but that is limited and lesser to the primary way that we reflect his character. The primary way that we display God’s character is in his interactions with us.
In creating creation God shows who he is as Creator. In creation, God’s ability to create beauty and majesty are made manifest. Creation shows the wisdom of God in its good design. Creation exists to admire and point to God that we may admire him. Creation is all about God, and for creation to turn away from him voids its fulfillment of its purpose.
Delighting in the goodness of creation without regard for it as a gift of God, while it does not utterly destroy its value, does infinitely degrade it. In idolatry, the infinite delight in God that we were to receive through creation is degraded to the fixed value of creation itself, which is now dead to the purpose for which it was created, and thus what was made to lead us to life now leads us to death. Idolatrous delights, even absent any other sin, are empty in a way that we in our flesh do not recognize because, without the new birth given by the Spirit, we simply do not know any better.
If creation does not worship and point to God, then it is worthless.
This purpose is good and it is sufficient. Creation is good. Praise God for the many good things he created. Admire his workmanship.
Creation does not simply point to God as Creator though, but also as Redeemer. An unfallen creation would be good. There are good purposes that an unfallen creation could serve, but God created creation with a deeper fulfillment of its purpose in mind. What we have discussed thus far is only the superficial fulfillment of its purpose of creation.
Essential to the deeper fulfillment of the purpose of creation is its failure to live up to a superficial fulfillment of its purpose. We know this, at least in part, because Paul says in Ephesians 3:9b-10 that the Church is central to the purpose of creation:
the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
Creation would not exist were it not for the Church, and the Church would not be the Church without redemption, and redemption could not occur without the Fall. The Church, the redeemed people of God, require redemption, which in turn requires the Fall.
For anyone who ponders the Gospel long enough, this should be on some level obvious. The Gospel is simply too beautiful to truly be Plan B.
The first creation itself has always testified to a deeper fulfillment of purpose. Some might claim that the family is the most important institution in creation. You could make a case for that in the old creation. The family is often described as something like “the foundational unit of society.” There is some truth to that, but the family is a dying institution. Not only as a consequence of dysfunction in society, but by God’s design. So long as the old creation continues, the family will continue, of necessity. But the foundation of the family is marriage, and our Lord himself said, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage…” Marriage is an ordinance of the first creation that points to the inauguration of the second creation, where it will be abolished. Marriage points us to the union between Christ and the Church. Marriage, the foundation of the family, has always testified to its own deprecation. The “foundational unit of society” is but a shadow to point to the Church, of which Christ is the head.
Now, after a statement like that, we must take a quick detour to cut off a critical error that could grow out recognition of this reality. Your highest obligation is not to the Church, but your own household. A requirement for elders and deacons is that they manage their own households well. The first responsibility of every person is to their own household. In 1 Timothy 5:8, Paul says that if a man does not provide for his family, he has denied the faith. No one should take the supreme importance of the Church or the deprecation of the family as a license to prioritize the Church over their family. Putting the Church before your family will put you outside the Church.
The Church is a Canvas
I said earlier that the Church is the centerpiece of creation. It is the centerpiece of creation because Christ entered into creation to be its head. It is the centerpiece of creation because Christ died for it. No other institution or body has such claims.
Do not mix the order of these things up though. Christ did not die for the Church because she is important, she is important because he died for her. The Church, more than any other part of creation, is a canvas for displaying who God is.
The Church does not emanate its own greatness, but reflects the greatness of God. The importance of the Church does not stem from what she has done, but from what God has done for her.
The Gospel, in which the Church is a central figure, displays God’s character more deeply than anything else.
All of creation reflects that God is Creator and what he deems good to create. All of fallen creation reflects that God is Judge and his sense of justice. Only in the Church and what God has done for her can we really see his justice and his mercy.
One thing we would not have without Christ satisfying God’s wrath against the Church’s sin, is a view of the impartiality of God. He had no place to spare even those he would call his own. Still wanting to save them, he cast their sin on his own Son, and did not even spare his Son. No one can ever say that he would spare his Son if he bore guilt, because he bore guilt in innocence and God did not spare him. It can never be said that God is a corrupt judge. In what God has done for the Church, we see that his justice is truly impartial.
God uses the Church to display the full richness of his glory. This infinite glory is the hope of all creation. If God did not have infinite glory for us to delight in, eternal life would be a curse. We might spend eons entertaining ourselves with creation, but after a trillion trillion years, would we not despair that we have grown tired of everything there is? If the Church is the greatest canvas of God’s glory, then it is truly the most important thing in creation.
The Church Signals Creation’s Freedom
When God created Adam, he placed him over “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.” When Adam fell, all that was under him also fell. Creation was conscripted into Adam’s rebellion, and bore the curse of death with him.
Look at Romans 8:19-20:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
The futility spoken of here sounds much like the vanity of spoken in Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s protracted lament of the pointlessness of life in the face of death. Whether this futility is simply God’s curse on Adam from Genesis 3:17-19 (“cursed is the ground because of you”), or it is the fullness of death given to prevent an unending cancer, there is a futility that will no longer be needed upon the completion of the Church. There is also corruption that the futility exists to alleviate. The word corruption here has a meaning of mortality.
Here we see creation awaiting the fullness of God’s people. The revealing of the sons of God, that is the Church, marks the full end of Adam’s rebellious dominion over creation. We, in Christ, now have a new Adam who’s obedience brings life. His kingdom and dominion have been established, but he has not yet deemed it time to fully subjugate his enemies. Christ has his enemies at his mercy and he can take them at any moment. But his people are not yet complete. At the completion of his people, Christ will strike death dead and creation’s bondage to corruption will end.
The completion of the Church does not cause the renewal of creation, but God has made the completion of the Church a precondition for said renewal.
Going back to the final pages of Revelation, we can see the hope of creation played out.
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”