Joy to the World (part 2)

In Genesis 3:17-19, we read God's proclamation to Adam of the curse that is a result of his sin.  "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Adam was originally created and placed by God in the Garden that he might tend it.  Work existed before the Fall and it was good.  We might struggle to understand this today, but that is because the very nature of work, just like all of creation, was dramatically changed as a result of Adam's sin.  What once was wholly good, became hard and painful and frustrating.  But this is not where the story ends.

As previous hymns in this series have suggested, God's plan of redemption is not just for the people he has created, but for his creation as a whole.  Often in the Church, we think of the ultimate goal of the Christian life as the escape from this world (to heaven).  But the Bible actually teaches a different thing.  It tells us in Revelation 21:1-3 that ultimately it is not we who will go to be with God in heaven, but rather, it is he who will bring heaven with him as he comes to be with us.

You see, Christ came to redeem his creation, that his redeemed people might eternally inhabit it.  One of my seminary professors, Michael Williams, has written, "To suggest that the sin of man so corrupted his creation that God cannot fix it but can only junk it in favor of some other world is to say that ultimately the kingdom of evil is more powerful than the kingdom of God.  It makes sin more powerful than redemption, and Satan the victor over God."

This Advent, let us remember that Christ came not only that I might be forgiven of my sins, but that I might one day live free of sin altogether.  And he came not to get rid of this creation, but ultimately to restore it to its original functionality, beauty and grandeur.  As Dr. Williams often said in class, God doesn't make junk, and God doesn't junk what he's made.  So it is that throughout Advent, and the rest of the year as well, we look forward to the great day of restoration when the words of the hymn will be realized,

No more let sin and sorrow grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse was found,
Far as the curse was found,
Far as, far as the curse was found.

Previous posts in this series:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)
O Little Town of Bethlehem 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Holy Night
Joy to the World (part 1)