Why Does God Care for Us?
Why Does God Care for Us? by Rev. L. John Gable
December 9, 2018
As we continue our study of the Apostles’ Creed it might be helpful for us to understand when and why this confession was first written. As they say, “context is everything.” To be clear, the so-called “Apostles’” Creed was not really written by the apostles at all, but it does reflect the essence of their preaching and teaching, and in that it is a concise statement of basic Christianity which came into being largely in response to teaching that was “not” basic Christianity, anything but.
Bear in mind as the early church grew and believers began to spread throughout the Roman Empire it quickly became evident that new converts were hearing very different versions of the Gospel message depending on where they lived and who their primary teacher was. Given that there was as yet no “New Testament”, those who were preaching and teaching had no commonly agreed upon body of beliefs as to who Jesus was or what it meant to be one of His followers, so those living in Alexandria were being taught something different than those living in Jerusalem, or Athens, or Rome. So it is quite understandable that some of what was being taught was not “Christian” at all. Hence the need arose for an orthodox, universal, “catholic” statement of Christian belief which led to the formation of the Apostles’ Creed in the mid to late 2nd century between 160-180 AD, primarily in response to the heretical teaching of a fellow named Marcion.
Marcion was a native of Pontus, a region near the Black Sea in Asia Minor, modern day northern Turkey. He was the son of a bishop and a successful businessman and entrepreneur in his own right. However, his ideas about Christianity were so peculiar that his own father excommunicated him, and rightly so. Undaunted, he set out for Rome, the then center of Christianity, and began preaching and teaching convincingly, albeit wrongly, such that an estimated half of the Christians there adopted his line of thinking.
Briefly, many of Marcion’s ideas arose out of a strong emotional response to his own life situation. He lived in a bleak land, so adopted views that were hostile to the notion of the “goodness” of creation. His relationship with his own father prompted him to reject the view of the loving Fatherhood of God. As a businessman he was suspicious of any of his competitors, many of whom were Jewish. And most markedly, he refused to accept the concept that God was the creator of the earth. His reasoning was “How could a “good” God create the likes of mosquitoes, crocodiles and vipers, and make the processes of birth and death so vile?” (Faulty as he was in his reasoning I think he might have been on to something with those mosquitoes!)
Using ideas first introduced by Plato, Marcion considered the Judeo-Christian God to be a “demiurge” or a lesser energy, a blundering craftsman who created an inferior product called “creation”. He refused to call God “Father”, and believed that Jesus proceeded from a higher, unknown power, who came to earth to rescue us from the power of this “demiurge”. Marcion was essentially a dualist, believing that anything physical was evil and anything spiritual was good, even to the point of teaching that Jesus was never really human at all, but only a spirit in human likeness. And in an attempt to erase anything Jewish from this newly found Christian religion he rejected the entire Old Testament and advocated that Christians need only read the letters of Paul and his own “edited version” of the Gospel of Luke.
Now we may shake our heads in wonder at how this kind of teaching could ever take hold, but it did and it is a good reminder to us still today to be on-guard against teaching in any form that is not based on the clear witness of Scripture. The teaching of Marcion became the first major heresy which the early Church had to address and debate and squelch, which it did in the adoption of the Apostles’ Creed. We can hear the refutation of the Marcion’s teaching, as we will throughout our study, in the opening line of the creed, “I believe in the God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”.
The creed takes it form and structure from Scripture itself as we read in the opening line of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is the foundational truth of what Scripture teaches, “In the beginning God”, everything else we know and believe about God flows out of this premise, and “In the beginning God created.” Look carefully at the opening verses of Genesis. The writer doesn’t explain and define, he pronounces and declares as he invites us to enter in to the majesty and mystery of the creation. Let your mind wander as we listen to the poetry which describes the indescribable: the earth as a “formless void” and how “darkness covers the deep”: how the wind, the “ruach” or Spirit of God, “sweeps mysteriously over the face of the waters”; and God speaks bringing order out of chaos, light into the darkness, and the heavens and the earth in to being. The writer of Genesis invites us to stand in wonder and in awe, both of the creation and of the Creator, and with this bold theological statement the story of Scripture begins to unfold.
Imagine two buckets. In one bucket put everything that is “made” and in the other bucket everything that is “not made.” In the first bucket is everything that ever was or is or will be, that which is “created”, and in the second bucket is that which is “not created”, God alone! This is the teaching of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning (before there was anything else, there was) God…and God created”, ex nihilo, out of nothing He created the heavens and the earth, and then we read just a few verses further that God looked at all He created and called it “good” because God is good. Marcion got it wrong.
Rather than attempting to answer the “how” question of creation, the writer of Genesis answers the far more important “Who” question, and then goes on to answer the “why” question. This good God creates out of love and on the 6th day when He comes to create us, the first man and woman, He doesn’t just say, “This is good”, He says, “This is very good!” We were created out of love to live in love and in right relationship with the created world around us and with the One who made it all. That was God’s original design and intent, and it was “very good.”
In Psalm 8 the Psalmist David pens a reflection we have often had ourselves whether we are walking in an open field on a starry night or standing at the edge of the ocean, those times when we find ourselves filled with wonder and awe at the majesty and magnitude of the universe. Abraham Lincoln once reflected, “I never behold the heavens filled with stars that I do not feel I am looking at the face of God. I can see how it might be possible for a person to look down on the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how anyone could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” Little more than a century later, reflecting from a very different perspective, astronaut Gene Cernan wrote essentially the same when he said “What I saw was almost too beautiful to grasp. There was too much logic, too much purpose. It was just too beautiful to have happened by accident. It doesn’t matter how you choose to worship God, or by whatever name you call Him, but God has to exist to have created what I was privileged to see.” Admittedly, with Calvin, we would agree that the world is “the theater of God’s glory.” The creation itself reflects the beauty and wisdom and power and majesty and order of the One who made it. The character of God is woven in to the very fabric of the creation and God has left His fingerprints all over it.
But at the same time the Psalmist is struck by a different kind of question, again a question we have asked ourselves. In light of the magnitude and majesty of God revealed in the creation he also has an overwhelming feeling of personal insignificance. “When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that You have established; what are humans that You are mindful of them; mortals that You care for them?”
I was watching a PBS special on the Grand Canyon a couple of years ago and the park ranger being interviewed said, “I spend every day around the beauty and majesty of this place and mostly just feel insignificant.” We know how he feels. Given the size and scope of the universe and pin-prick of a particle we call earth, we can’t help but ask the question, “What am I? And why does God care for us?”
But then the Psalmist answers that question from God’s perspective. “Yet You have made us little lower than God and crowned us with glory and honor. You have given us dominion over the works of Your hands and put all things under our feet.” Imagine that! Rather than being of utter insignificance, we are the high point, the crowning glory, the most significant part, of God’s creation, “little lower than the angels” as some translations read. When God made us He didn’t just say this is “good” or “this is good enough”, but that this is “very good.” God takes delight in us because He loves us; we are Children of the Heavenly Father. Again, Marcion got it wrong.
But, lest we get a little full of ourselves, we can’t understand the nature of our own existence without first understanding the nature of God, and this is where we started getting off track, starting in Genesis 2. We are not great and valuable because of who we are. We are great and valuable because of who God is and who God has made us to be. Lest we forget it, Scripture is clear to remind us of the order of this relationship: God is Creator and we are creatures, albeit creatures created in God’s image and likeness, and that which is created is never greater than the One who created it.
Our understanding of who we are is inextricably woven together with who God is. In this, the “finite” US is confronted with the “infinite” GOD, the transient with the eternal, the created with the Creator. The starting point of our own self-understanding then is our awe and reverence of God. This is why worship is so important to us, why it is essential not optional. Take God out of the equation and we are insignificant little nothings, if anything at all. Put God into the equation and we are God’s finest work of art, God’s chosen representatives called to do His bidding on earth. Bear in mind, not because of who we are or anything we have done, but because of who God is and in recognition of all that God has done for us. Once we acknowledge the Creator’s goodness and greatness and our human insignificance we start to get a measure of God’s incomprehensible, immeasurable grace, a grace shown to us fully and finally in Jesus Christ. Nature itself points to what Scripture, and ultimately Jesus, confirms, the loving care of the One who made us and loves us and continues to sustain us. In this we come to understand that the creation is the theater, not only of God’s glory, but also of the story of our redemption and salvation. So, at one and the same time, we can stand in awe and majesty of God as we consider the beauty and magnitude of His handiwork in creation AND we can celebrate in joyful thanks and praise the fact that He knows us and loves us and cares for us.
So, with Augustine we can say, “Behold what He has made and love Him who made it.” With the Psalmist we can say, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth.” And together with believers through the ages we can say, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”
In this way, let us stand and confess our faith together.
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.