A sinful Earth needs a savior
I was a little foggy when I wrote about my intrigue with the concept of a sinful earth. As I was driving to our new offices, I realized that I had forgotten to mention the main point of a sinful earth: we are all in need of a savior, including the earth and all of creation. That savior is Jesus Christ. I don’t think pondering on the fact of a sinful earth means much if you don’t remind yourself that it is yet another sign of our need for Jesus. It also gives even more weight to John 3:16 -
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
David B. Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, writing on the sinful earth in the Opinion Journal puts it very well, “Yes, at the heart of the gospel is an ineradicable triumphalism, a conviction that the victory over evil and death has been won; but it is also a victory yet to come. As Paul says, all creation groans in anguished anticipation of the day when God’s glory will transfigure all things. For now, we live amid a strife of darkness and light.”
My pastor and Mr. Hart refer to Paul’s writing in Romans 8: 18- 25:
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
Explaining away horrible disasters, death and destruction by pointing to a sinful earth would be cold and uncaring if I did not mention that we also are to care for each other in prayer and material support.
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