Fig leaves and Spiderwebs

But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” – Genesis 3:9

Did the Lord need to ask this question? We could see this as the Divine Parent addressing the misbehaving child with a rhetorical, “What have you done?” On one level, God calls man to become aware of his state, make his confession, and begin his return to right-standing. God needs to and does ask all of us this same question. Beyond that, however, sin creates what appears to be an impenetrable wall between God and man. In some sense, apart from Christ, man is hidden from his Creator.

God cannot “see through” sin. He does not lack the power, but it runs across the grain of His Being. It is like interference. Sin always involves some kind of deception. To deceive is to hide or obscure truth in some manner. If we think about it, the whole idea that we will tell people things we ourselves do not believe or that we know to be untrue is rather fantastic. That deception can at times appear the wise or reasonable path shows us how twisted we are. Most of us do not approve of being lied to, but we have fewer qualms about lying to others – from the peace-keeping “No, Honey, your butt doesn’t look big” to the desperate “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes.” Hiding behind falsehood is almost the definition of humanity.

If there is any flaw in The Screwtape Letters, it is that ol’ Screwtape seems to reveal more than a devil should, even among his colleagues. Lewis was aware of this, but he had to pull the curtain back a little. To tell the truth in the negative you still have to tell the truth. In his foreword, Lewis described what he wanted to avoid: But the really pernicious image is Goethe’s Mephistopheles. It is Faust, not he, who really exhibits the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of Hell. The humorous, civilized, sensible, adaptable Mephistopheles has helped to strengthen the illusion that evil is liberating.

Far from liberating us, evil is a lock that disguises itself as a key, a predator that looks like prey. Evil hides by its very nature, and the follower of evil is swallowed up and hidden within sin’s dark belly. We recall God’s words to Cain: If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.. Deception is pictured as a wild beast that will turn on and devour its master if we fail to keep it beaten down.

It is not that God does not see evil taking place. Our sins are not hidden from Him. No one is getting away with anything in the dark. Rather, because the sinner is cloaked in sin, God no longer sees His own image and likeness. He does not rain down judgment upon man but upon sin. Of course, if one is “in sin” when the smack-down comes, the effect is pretty much the same.

The one Man of whom the Father never lost sight was the Son – not until the Cross when the Son was enveloped by the darkness of the sin of all humanity. Christ’s obedience and perfect righteousness, even when engulfed by evil, shattered the big lie once and for all. Sin was turned inside out. And sin's captives were set free -- dumped out like reprieved kittens from a tow sack.

Sin no longer hides us from God. We need no longer take sin as a covering for our nakedness: Their cobwebs are useless for clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make. As Paul said, …[W]e do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. We are clothed with Christ and hidden in Him.

This is the Way the World Ends

The world was constituted first in Adam, well pleasing to God and obedient to Him. It was man’s world, and in man it was summed up. In man the world fell into the darkness of selfish pursuits. Man became materialized in spirit and dragged down so as to become worldly and sensual. The world is man’s world in his fall from God. – from Alford’s Commentary as quoted by E. M. Bounds in Winning the Invisible War, emphasis added.

The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted astutely. For the sons of this age are more astute than the sons of light in dealing with their own people. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of the unrighteous money so that when it fails, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings. Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much. So if you have not been faithful with the unrighteous money, who will trust you with what is genuine? And if you have been unfaithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own? No household slave can be the slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves to both God and money. – Luke 16:8-13

The world exists in and through man. The planet and its nonhuman inhabitants preceded man physically, but, as Gagdad Bob might say, man preceded the world. As stated in his sidebar, Robin’s CREDO is a quote from St. Francis, “Don’t change the world; change worlds” – which also wraps it up without using tape.

Man was meant to serve as a steward under the Lord and rule over His cosmos. The parable Jesus relates in the first seven verses of Luke 16 tells of an unrighteous manager who had not been doing right by his employer. The manager learns that he is about to be dismissed from the master’s service. Not being that enamored of begging or physical labor, the conniving steward decides to use the employer’s resources to create a golden parachute. He calls those together who owe the master a portion of their production – either because they were tenant farmers or because they borrowed to put in their crops. Whatever the debtors owe, the manager significantly reduces the amount. The debtors are naturally grateful, and the deceptive manager can probably now depend on getting some help from at least a few of them once he is turned out. The gratitude of the debtors is understandable, but what seems odd is that the unrighteous man’s employer actually congratulates him on his astute maneuverings, though the employer has suffered a considerable reduction in his potential income. I wondered if maybe the boss didn’t figure it was worth it just to be rid of him.

Adam ruled his world until his fall. At that point, the world of man came under the dominion of Satan. Man became, not a king, but a slave. When Christ came into the world, He did what neither the devil nor the prophets could have guessed. He didn’t take the Adamic world out of Satan’s control. He created a new one in Himself. And, actually, this new world existed prior to the Cross. As soon as Jesus began to gather disciples, the new world – which He called the kingdom – was open for business.

The problem remained that man was enslaved to the old world and to Satan. Try as they might, the followers of Jesus in His earthly ministry could not really enter the kingdom. They could see it in Christ. They could believe it, just as the Old Testament saints had by faith. But they remained in chains, married, in effect, to the devil in Adam. In fact, if you go a little further in Luke 16, you will read that the Pharisees were listening as Jesus said, “You can’t serve God and money”. Luke says that hearing this, the Pharisees scoffed because they thought wealth was not just good to have but a sign of God’s blessing for their supposed righteousness. The Lord responds to them in verses 15-18:

And He told them: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly admired by people is revolting in God’s sight.

“The Law and the Prophets were until John [the Baptist]; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is strongly urged to enter it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter in the law to drop out.

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and everyone who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

Okay, so Jesus slaps down the mocking religious elites by telling them that the things they value make God sick. Then He talks about the change that has come and how people are trying to enter the kingdom, though they are hindered by the unyielding requirements of righteousness under the law. At the end, we get what looks like a non sequitur. Does Jesus just gratuitously throw in a bit of teaching about divorce and adultery? Where did that come from?

Paul helps us out in Romans 7:1-3: Since I am speaking to those who understand the law, brothers, are you unaware that the law has authority over someone as long as he lives? For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband. So then, if she gives herself to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law. Then, if she gives herself to another man, she is not an adulteress. The Lord is no adulterer.

Again, man is meant, or was meant to rule his cosmos as a steward under God. It was never intended that man should rule apart from God or be ruled by the world. To release the world is one thing. Man has tried that. All the great religions have striven to renounce the world to some degree and live in peace. Yet as long as man is in Adam, united in a covenant with the devil, the world can legally maintain its hold.

So, what to do? Should the devil be killed? Should the world be destroyed? That would break the hold, right? I suppose, but, first, the Lord is no more a murderer than an adulterer. Second, to destroy the world and/or Satan, God would have to destroy man. Remember, the world with Satan as its necessary antipode (lest it be merely a plane), is derived through man. Adam is tied to Satan. If Satan goes down, we all go down with him, in Adam. We’re stuck – but for Christ.

This is the unique and exclusive power of Jesus. Jesus is Man, the Second Man to be exact. He’s in the world, sinless, not under the curse, untainted by Adam’s fall. If He is willing to go to the Cross and die, though death has no legal power over Him, then the world ends. By identifying Himself with Adam’s race, the Incarnate Christ can take all into the grave. When He is raised, He can bring all with Him as well. Death has severed the marriage bond to the world and its prince. The Law no longer stands in the gate keeping the new man from the kingdom.

Man is transformed. His world is thus transformed. The kingdom has indeed come and is accessible to all in Christ, the Last Adam. The remnants of the old world remain, still deceiving, still enthralling, still empty and unsatisfying. At some point the last of worldly will be gone – the world will pass away and the kingdom will be all.

Not with a bang,
But a whispered,
“It is finished.”

Dust in the Wind

So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life…”

“… In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” -- Genesis 3:14, 19

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. – Luke 22:31,32

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind -- Kansas

After the Fall, God enumerated the curses upon His creatures, beginning with the serpent, then Eve, and ending with Adam. Though he was the highest order of creation, the sovereign under God, Adam was, we might say, animated dust. We are dust in the wind – that is to say, dust carried by spirit. As enamored as some of us are with the claymation part of ourselves, it is merely a vehicle that will very soon pass away.

The devil, as personified by the serpent, feeds on that very aspect of our existence which is temporary and transient. If we can keep that in mind, we will see that the process, though it may be painful, is not catastrophic. Our true existence is untouched by the fangs of the serpent. As Jesus makes clear to Simon Peter, the devil is allowed only to sift us. In the end, what appears to be loss is similar to the “loss” suffered by wheat when the chaff is removed. Our authentic self is revealed, and we move into our kingdom position.