In the second issue of the monthly magazine Soφie (a combination of Ellips and Beweging), there is an essay by prolific writer Dr. Willem J. Ouweneel (1944) under the provocative title ‘Should it always be about sin?’¹ He writes that before he wrote the article on Twitter and Facebook asked what is the core of God’s great plan of salvation. He got what he thought were some cheap answers.
- ‘Cheap answers’ about God’s great plan of salvation
- Start with Genesis 1
- Replacement or restoration?
- Third possibility
- The great purpose of man’s creation
- The place of the Fall
- Long learning process
- Become like Jesus
‘Cheap answers’ about God’s great plan of salvation
These answers boiled down to this: In Genesis 3, man falls into sin, but thank God God gave His Son as a sacrifice, so that everyone who believes is saved. Ouweneel writes that this is of course true, see John 3:16. But the question is whether this problem of sin and its solution is the quintessence of God’s plan of salvation. Man falls into sin in a thoughtless moment and God then spends centuries trying to get things going again. A quick sin and an almost endless recovery. Is that what God’s plan of salvation is about, Ouweneel wonders.
Start with Genesis 1
Replacement or restoration?
How do Christians present the new heaven and earth: as a replacement, as a restoration or is there a third possibility? With replacement, Satan ultimately achieved a certain victory. The view that the new heaven and the new earth are a restoration of the old implies that man corrupted creation through the Fall and that God then needed thousands of years to fix things. In both cases, God’s omnipotence is at stake.
Oldest image of Augustine, Rome, 6th century / Source: Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Third possibility
Ouweneel comes up with a third option. He states that we should not start with Genesis 3, the Fall, if we want to understand God’s plan of salvation. According to him, we should start with Genesis 1, the creation story. Traditional Western Christians, when it comes to God’s great plan of salvation, start from the Fall, when they conclude that man is a ‘sinner’. But Jesus Christ came to die on the cross for our sins and therefore we may live forever. Thanks to church father Augustine (354-430), Western Christianity is all about sin and its solution. Things are different for Eastern Christians.
The great purpose of man’s creation
The Eastern tradition begins with Genesis 1, the story of creation. They do not start with the conclusion that man is a sinner in need of redemption, but that man is a creature of God who needs to be developed. Ouweneel writes that God’s entire plan of salvation consists of fulfilling the great purpose of man’s creation. Against this background, Ouweneel distinguishes three parts in genesis 1 (and 2):
- Man was created to rule over God’s creation (Genesis 1:26, 28). Before the Fall, man was given dominion over created things. Ouweneel writes that God’s great purpose is first and foremost to bring this rule of man into full reality, and the Bible calls that ‘kingdom of God’. Jesus Christ, the second Adam (or second man), is entrusted with dominion over creation. Jesus Christ will reign as King. It is Jesus who rules all creation as Lord and King and we will reign with Him.
- Man is made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26f.). Man is God’s image bearer. To fully realize this is the second purpose of creation. Through the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit), God wants to sanctify us and transform us into an image bearer of God. “You shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), cf. 4:24; Ephesians 5:1; 2 Peter 1:4). Or image bearer of Christ – the Word of God made flesh – who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4). Christ is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). We are readable letters from Christ, the text of which is written in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).
- God created man as male and female, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). “And the LORD God said, It is not good for the man to be alone: I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). The man is only complete or complete with his complement, the woman. In the kingdom of God, next to the ‘last Adam’ there will stand a ‘last Eve’, that is the Church, which is his bride, his body (see 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 5:25-31; Revelation 19:6- 9).
In this three-part portrait there is no mention of sin or the solution to the sin problem. Ouweneel emphasizes that the purpose of God is His Church and the church consists of image bearers of God or of Christ and these will exercise dominion together with Christ for eternity (cf. Revelation 22:5).
The place of the Fall
According to Ouweneel, the place of the Fall in the picture sketched is this:
‘Thanks to’ the Fall, God is on his way with creation to a world that would never have been possible without the Fall, not even for God. The Fall is an essential part of the history of this world on the way to its end.
God hates sin, as He makes clear in the Bible. So God did not will or plan the sin (fall). However, it has not ‘taken Him by surprise’ either, because nothing happens without Him. Augustine said that what happens against God’s will does not therefore happen outside of His will. God did not will the fall into sin, but he did allow it and put it at the service of His plans. God did not stage the Fall, man’s fall is his own responsibility. But God does use this event to bring man to a higher level, which could never have been achieved without the Fall. The image of God is shaped and realized in man through a long and difficult learning process, in which the Fall plays an important role.
Ouweneel states that human history does not begin with a holy, righteous man. If that were the case, there would have been no development in salvation history, but a restoration of the old situation. Well, that doesn’t help. Nothing is gained from that. History begins with an innocent person, who is at the same time as ignorant as a newborn. Adam was a tabula rasa , a blank slate. He didn’t know how to blow or blow anything. He could not fall back on a collective or a personal history of learning experiences. He was naive and completely ignorant.
Long learning process
By eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (note good and evil), he came to know evil and thus also good. These two things can only be known in contrast through a long learning process. Seen in this way, salvation history is the necessary learning process through which man will be filled with God’s perfection (cf. Ephesians 3:19). This is so much more than Adam and Eve lost in paradise. God does not return things to their former state, but we are lifted to a higher plane. The new creation is an elevation of the old creation, as Ouweneel makes clear. The history of salvation is not circular, with which one returns to the starting situation, but is like a spiral that ends in a perfect world in which man has knowledge of good and evil and is what Adam was not, namely holy and righteous. In this way a situation is reached in which man can no longer fall into sin again. So it is not about a restoration of Genesis 2, because paradise was only a shadow of what will become reality in the consummation.
Become like Jesus
Salvation is about so much more than ‘sin and grace’. Ouweneel puts it this way: ,We need to approach the matter much more positively. God is concerned with Christ – not just about what Christ has done as our Savior, but about who Christ is as a person, and then also about Christ as reproduced in the believers., This mainly concerns the question of how Christ takes shape in us (Galatians 4:19). According to Ouweneel, justification and sanctification do not first and foremost mean ‘absence of sin’, but Christ in us and that of course implies absence of sin. Romans 8:29 says that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. Our end goal is to become like Jesus. On the way there we are as someone who carries the glory of Jesus with him. In and through Jesus Christ we may reach full maturity. We may increasingly reflect his image.
Note
- Dr. Willem J. Ouweneel: Does it always have to be about sin? Soφie, 1st volume no. 2 – April 2011.
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- Psalm 8 – What is man that you remember him? (Messianic)
- Jesus kept the Law and was without sin: so what?
- Messiah (Moshiach) both God and Man in Old Testament (OT)
- Messianic psalms point to person/office Messiah (Jesus)