Creation: God’s Purpose – The Law of God and Public Policy

Creation: God’s Purpose
The Law of God and Public Policy

God’s purposes for creation must be observed.

Forever, O LORD, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast. By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants. Psalm 119:89-91

We are looking at the teaching of God’s Law with respect to the creation and how we must use it. God, we remember, loves His world—so much, in fact, that He sent His only Son to die for it so that it might be set free from its groaning in sin into the liberty of the sons and daughters of God (John 3:16; Rom. 8:19-21).

The creation is not “nature,” common usage to the contrary notwithstanding. That is, creation is not a mass of “stuff” and “things” waiting out there, without identity or purpose, for man to assign some meaning and place to it. God made the creation, and He made it to serve His good purposes. In His Law, as well as throughout His Word, He is careful to remind His people that they are called to be stewards of the creation so that it can fulfill its divinely appointed charge (cf. Gen. 1:26-28; Ps. 8).

The overall design of God is to glorify Himself, that is, to make His presence known so that His goodness, beauty, truth, and blessings reach to all His creatures, and a circle is completed as praise and thanksgiving return to Him. In this design, the creation plays a large and important role.

God is continuously revealing Himself and His goodness in the things He has made (Ps. 19:1-4). He is determined not only that His glory should be revealed to men through His creation but that it should be known by them as well (Hab. 2:14; Prov. 25:2). All the creatures and things of creation are God’s “servants” toward that end. Human beings make proper use of the creation when they employ it to bless the world and for the glory and honor of God. From the beginning of the Law of God, He made it clear that man’s duty over the creation is to “work and guard” it (Gen. 2:15) so that it can continue to develop, flourish, and thus serve the purposes of God for good, as He originally intended (cf. Gen. 1, the many uses of the word, “good,” to describe God’s work).

That this was God’s intention in giving the land of Canaan to Israel is clear throughout His Law. The pagan peoples of the land had, by their idolatry and other wickedness, forfeited the right to enjoy the benefits of the creation (Lev. 20:22-26). They were to be ejected and replaced by Israel so that the good provision of God could continue and abound, without being attributed or devoted to false deities and abominable practices.

God promised His people that He would cause the fields and skies and forests and hills to bring forth plentifully so that they might know His blessings (Deut. 28:1-14). When this happened, God warned His people, they must not fail to glorify Him by turning away from His Law. Only by continuing in obedience to the Law would justice and love obtain among them and they would be a witness to the surrounding nations of the greatness of God, as we have seen. Israel’s faithfulness in using the creation for God’s glory and abiding in His justice would draw the nations to seek the Lord and to glorify Him (Mic. 4:1-8).

Creation in all its parts fulfills its purpose as a servant of God when it is used in ways that bless men and honor God. Blessing comes in more than material ways, such as providing beauty, provoking to wonder and worship, inspiring art and science, and granting insights to the divine being and will. These larger ends—man’s blessing and God’s glory—must be considered in all our use of the environment, from the way we maintain our own property to the public policies we enact for the larger environmental concerns that affect all human beings and all creation.

The creation is not ours, but God’s (Ps. 24:1; Ps. 50:12); its creatures are not our servants, but His. He determines its proper meaning and use as creation and not merely nature. Thus we must be careful in all our use of the creation to approach it with the mind of Christ and use it for the purposes of God in blessing the world and glorifying the Creator.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.