13 Original Intent

Why would God create beings capable of rejecting Him and stealing His property?

In this post, we will consider the intent of God in His original creation. It is holy ground and our sinful, defiled souls can barely grasp the depth of what He has purposefully revealed to us in His Word. Nevertheless, He asks of us to take this yoke upon ourselves and learn of Him. So let us do so in prayerful submission to His Holy Spirit.

"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 

Genesis 3:15 KJV

Glen Marx succinctly summarizes this fundamental declaration of God:

“This promise (Gen 3:15) sums up the heart of God. He desires for humans to win back the life, liberty, and property we lost in the Garden, but it requires faith and a willingness to be engaged in the battle.”

Glen Marx, The Roots of the Kingdom; The Origin of Good and Evil according to the Scriptures; p. 185

Theologians call Genesis 3:15 the 'proto evangelion' or first gospel because it is God's unconditional promise to restore the earth back to its original intent through the seed of the woman. We live in the last days before this promise will ultimately be fulfilled. This gives us a unique perspective to explore the manifold wisdom of God that has shaped human history. We can see how successive generations of human souls are challenged to simply trust in God's goodness to overcome evil.

Our history is instructive. We cannot merely be told who God is, we must experience Him. The enemy of our souls does not want us to discover the goodness of God. Rather, he wants us to doubt that God's love and grace are real, or to the degree that it is seen, it is not intended for us personally. 

These persuasions are immediately lost however in the person and work of Jesus Christ who is that promised seed. His offer of salvation is not just to the world at large but "He is that true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world". (John 1:9) It is indeed a battle for individual minds and hearts to deny persuasions of the evil one and embrace the truth. That truth reveals God's perfect plan for restoring His Kingdom on earth and invites each soul to become an heir to it.

In that battle, human governments were instituted by God to act as a restraint on evil. However, they are all eventually co-opted by spiritual wickedness in high places. They descend into the darkness of superstition and are used by the evil one to prevent men from seeing the truth.

The American experiment is an attempt to re-establish the freedom of mankind to exist under God's natural law and restrain the tyranny of man's laws imposed by those principalities and powers of spiritual darkness.

Thomas Jefferson, like many of the founding fathers of America, were heavily influenced by the writings of John Locke. He was an English physician and philosopher who wrote in the late 1600’s about the fundamental rights given to us by God that they called ‘natural law’. 

These natural law rights included life, liberty and property. When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he changed the word ‘property’ to the phrase, ’pursuit of happiness’. There has been much speculation and debate as to why he made that change since he did not clearly state his intention.

Historians point out that pursuit of happiness in those days has a ‘thicker’ meaning than our ‘thin’ meaning of trying to be happy through the acquisition of things or ‘happy’ experiences by whatever means. To them it meant the actual practice of happiness which included the often unpleasant struggle to secure for each person the right to sovereignly possess themselves, and not be in fear of having their personal property, life or liberty seized by an unscrupulous and tyrannical government. 

This declaration acknowledges that there are many threats to these rights, and that governments are instituted among men to secure them, not take them away as the British crown was wont to do. So the phrase, ‘pursuit of happiness’ was not meant to convey an individually hedonistic pursuit, but rather an understanding that the present enjoyment of social order required that individual property rights are protected if there is to be a secure and just society. (Property implies individual sovereignty)

So these men came to this declaration with the inherent understanding of natural law that declares a violation of personal property is a violation of the property owners sovereignty. This natural law is the product of God’s original intent at creation. 

When we come to the Garden that God planted, there is the recognition that everything in it belonged to God. Creation itself is a product of His sovereign will. It is His personal property (Gen 2:8) created to express His Divine attributes. There were no threats to His Sovereignty until God risked it all by creating beings with free will. 

Why would God risk it all?

God exists as an infinitely loving being. For love to have any meaning, it must involve a conscious choice of free will agents. i.e. the choice to love God or to reject Him. Since God is infinite love and love must have an object, it stands to reason that the object of infinite love must likewise be infinite. Men and women were created to be infinite beings and channels of God’s infinite love to all that He created.

In this post we have considered God's original intent at creation. His 'natural law' is intended to secure men the liberty to pursue Him. It is God's intention that we should have the liberty to experience His goodness and become channels of His infinite love to all of His creation.

In the next post, we will consider the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth and how it was co-opted. More importantly, how God's will is to restore the Kingdom for the blessing of mankind and the glory of God.

smc