What is the Solution?
Not only does God establish a covenant with all flesh that inhabits the earth, but He also claims complete ownership of the covenant, “…I establish my covenant…” First and foremost, the covenant God established was conceived within the mind of God and made known to man. Second of all, God made this covenant with all flesh of the earth so that He might be glorified.
Consider this. During both the daytime and the nighttime, the sun provides humanity with light, with warmth and with the aesthetic beauty that God created. By the sun’s provision, we are able to enjoy afternoon strolls, we are able to work during the day, we are able to spend the night writing and we are able to develop technology that ultimately owes its existence to the energy of the sun. We are able to grow crops, raise livestock and enjoy the never-ending beauty of the moon. Even after all of this, the sun does not merely provide light and the capacity of nourishment to human beings; though it is all we tend to focus on. The sun provides the same light and nourishment to all that exist within its realm of influence. Thus, the sun draws attention to itself, not to those on whom it shines.
In the same way, God draws attention to Himself through His interactions with mankind and with all creation. We as human beings are not the only ones who receive a portion of God’s grace, therefore we are not the center of all that God does. This thought seems to devalue the idea that we are God’s prized creation, and, to a degree, seems to portray God as a selfish individual. Naturally, these are problems that must be overcome.
Are we God’s prized creation?
Now, if God’s work is to the benefit of all creation and all creation, when acting naturally, praises God. Is it then possible that we are really God’s prized of all creation? To answer this, we must consider who the object of God’s love might be.
As we previously discussed, the object of God’s love is not God Himself. Because God’s creation naturally praises Him, God has no need to be selfish. This means that all of God’s work naturally benefits His creation. Therefore, the object of God’s love must be contained within His creation.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Revelation 21: 3-4 ESV
According to John, as he is exiled to the populated island of Patmos, God will live in perfection with His people. He will restore all of creation to the perfection it was created in, which means (according to Genesis 1:26,27) God’s people will be restored fully to God’s image. So, even though all of God’s creation naturally praises Him and is under God’s covenant with Noah, God’s affection belongs solely to mankind. He cares for all of His creation and His work benefits all of His creation, but His love belongs to Humanity; and humanity is the only part of God’s creation that has the privilege of receiving God’s redemptive love.
Francis Chan writes it this way from his own personal experience:
“Now hat I’ve had time to think about it. I would tell that student that if God is truly the greatest good on this earth, would He be loving us if He didn’t draw us toward what is best for us (even if that happens to be Himself)? Doesn’t His courting, luring, pushing, calling, and even “threatening” demonstrate His love? If He didn’t do all of that, wouldn’t we accuse Him of being unloving in the end, when all things are revealed?”24
God’s love for humanity seems to be what inspires every way in which God acts with His creation as a whole, even down to the initial creation of the universe. So, God’s love for humanity inspired His creation as a whole and continues to inspire all of God’s actions as we live today! The scope of God’s love and inspiration, in fact, is so great that before anything existed, God loved us and created so that we would exist to receive that love. It also means that, even though we are the object of God’s redemptive love, that love is not subject to our behaviors and our ideas. God remains the center and we, if we choose to live according to our natural purpose, live to serve and praise God because it is His love for us that caused Him to create in the beginning.
The solution
The solution, to the problem of anthropocentrism and to the programmatic discipleship we have grown so accustomed to, lies within a return to true discipleship. We must not redefine the goal of discipleship. We should not work to create a revolutionary new program. It is not even important that we add to the aesthetically pleasing nature of the postmodern, concert-style church auditorium. We must genuinely return to discipleship: not only as it was with Jesus and His disciples, but as it was when the Spirit of God taught Cain that he must rule over sin.25 Billy Graham once said that it was his goal to take the Gospel back 2,000 years, or to the time of Jesus Christ’s public ministry. Our goal should be to take the Gospel back much further than that.
We must deny our individualism within the body of Christ. All believers are to work as one body under the Kingship of Jesus Christ. We must disciple one another, both giving and receiving knowledge. We must be willing to invest our time. We have heard that discipleship is life-on-life. It takes more than a Sunday morning and a Wednesday afternoon to produce adequate members of the Church body and to become capable members of the Church body. It is an every day thing. We live and breathe as a community. I think, possibly, that one of the greatest things we could do for the Kingdom of God is to eliminate our discipleship programs and return to a complete lifestyle of one-on-one discipleship. In order for discipleship to work within our churches, we must forsake the hit it and quit it mentality of discipleship.