Before the Dark Times

This is a series of brief devotional articles on The Orthodox Catechism (“OC”), a Particular Baptist document written by Baptist pastor Hercules Collins in 1680. Read the series.

We aren’t supposed to be the way we are. That’s a fact that unbelievers often misunderstand about the Christian story. They ask, “If God is so good, then why is there so much suffering?” Well, the answer is that everything is broken everywhere all at once. God made our first parents good, but now we’re all cracked in different ways. We aren’t the way God meant us to be.

Question 6: Did God create people so wicked and perverse?

Answer 6: God created them good¹ and in his own image,² that is, in true righteousness and holiness,³ so that they might truly know God their creator,⁴ love him with all their heart, and live with him in eternal happiness for his praise and glory.⁵

The basic storyline of scripture is “creation + fall + rescue.” This means (a) God created everything good, but (b) our first parents ruined themselves and this world because of Satan’s instigation, and (c) Jesus is the one the Father has sent to rescue us and our world—to re-create paradise in a renovated creation. Our question/answer here parachutes us to the near beginning, before everything went so very wrong.

We were righteous. We were holy. Our first parents truly knew God their creator—a relationship that scripture expresses in epic tones with the image of God walking to meet with them in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). They loved him because there was no sin to hinder their fellowship. In fact, they were in perfect relationship with him. Things were good. Things were perfect.

The Christian story is about God getting us back to that time. As the “creation + fall + rescue” story plays out, we see God moving closer and closer to us as his covenants change the shape of our relationship with him.

• First, God makes a special relationship with Abraham to make him the fountainhead of a great people from whom the Messiah will come to bless the world.
• Then, God rescues Abraham’s people from slavery in a foreign land and brings them to their new home. Before he sends Moses to lead the people to safety, God reveals his personal name for the very first time (Ex 3:14). Now the people aren’t calling on the generic God, but a personal God whose name they now know.
• The old covenant re-creates that personal fellowship from the garden in a crude way. God is “with” his people inside the tent, and in that sense will “walk among” them (Lev 26:12). That isn’t the same thing as what our first parents had in the garden, but we’re getting there.
• The new covenant abolishes that old arrangement in favor of a more direct relationship based on the Son’s perfect atonement. There is now a heightened indwelling of Father, Son, and Spirit. It brings us even closer. Now there is no temple in Jerusalem, because we (individually and together) are a temple. God is “with us” because he lives within us.

All these are steps towards the new paradise in Revelation 21-22, when the great “re-boot” is complete and God’s people will be with him forever—renovated inside and out in a restored creation.

But way back in the beginning, things were different. A lot that would happen hadn’t yet happened. But God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that we might be made new again.

In our next question, we ponder what original sin is and what it means for all of us.