Creation: Did God Lose Control of Time?

The Sanctuary Downtown / Relentless Love

Have you seen "The Lion King"? Convinced that he’s responsible for his father’s death — and, in a way, he is — Simba wanders in outer darkness. Rafiki, the crazy monkey, finds him and asks him, “Who are you?” Simba sighs and says, “I’m not so sure.” “I know who you are,” says Rafiki. “You are Mufasa’s boy.” “You knew my father?” asks Simba. “Correction. I know your father,” says Rafiki. He then leads Simba to a pool of water that works like a mirror and says, “He lives in you.” And at that, Simba sees his father, the Lion King, and hears his voice: “Simba, remember who you are. You are my beloved son and the One True King.” It's basically the same plot in every story that we read to our children. “Nice thought,” you may say, “but we don’t live in a fairy tale... Meet a real lion in the real world, and you’ll learn all about ‘The Survival of the Fittest.’ If God is good and God is the creator of all things and half of His creation ends up in Hell, then He has obviously lost control of time.” Calvinists and their kin will say, “God did not lose control of time. He has predestined some to endless hell and some to endless heaven; He writes both stories.” It solves one problem and creates another, for God our Father is no longer One but two, and not just any two. He’s two exact opposites -- Mufasa and Darth Vader: “Luke, Luke, I am your Father.” (James Earl Jones was the voice of each.) If you were a child and thought that your father might endlessly bless you or endlessly torture you due to no choice of your own, I bet you’d “act out.” Arminians and their kin will say, “God doesn’t write either story. And He did lose control of time... because He gave control to us; we call it ‘free-will’.” If a parent gives total control to a two-year-old, we call them “terrible parents.” And if they go on to say, “If you choose correctly, I will always love you, and if you choose incorrectly, I will always hate you,” we call them, “monsters.” And if you were their child, I bet you would “act out.” Imagine if Mufasa said, “Remember who you are: My beloved son. And the 50% of my children who remember the best, I will endlessly bless. And the 50% that remember the worst, I will endlessly torture. That would create 100% of his children pretending to love the best, simultaneously motivated by a desire to beat all the rest, which is actually hating the most.” Over and over again, Scripture indicates that the Calvinists are correct: God never lost control of time. And yet, over and over again, it also seems to indicate that the Arminians are correct, for God always seems to be demanding a choice. If God did lose control of time, He did it in the strangest way that anyone could possibly imagine. Who puts a naked man and woman in a garden with an evil talking snake and a tree with fruit that, if eaten, launches creation back into chaos? And then leaves them alone with that snake and just a Word — “The day you eat of it, dying you will die”? We say, “They knew better; God warned them.” But they didn’t know better; that’s the point. They had no “Knowledge of Good and evil.” They didn’t know better until they had eaten, heard the Lord in the wind, and began to hide from the Judgment of God. Understand? When they ate, they were like any two-year-old with very little knowledge of Good and evil. Their name was “the Man.” That’s “the Adam” in Hebrew. “In the image of God, He created him; male and female, He created them.” That’s Genesis 1:27. In Genesis 1:31 we read, “And God saw everything that he made, and behold it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day... he rested... and made it holy... These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth.” Notice that these days are not simply 24 hours, for all six days are in “the day” -- that’s six days in one day, this weird seventh day. And notice that this concludes a story with the best possible ending: “Everything is good,” and “It is finished.” So naturally we look around and think, “What the hell happened?” And the preacher says, “Adam sinned, and so you’re to blame. And so, I’ll give you some knowledge of good and evil with which you can rewrite your story.” We think that God wrote the perfect story, and we messed it up; but that’s not what the Bible says. Next verse: “When no bush... was yet in the earth…” -- that’s day three... “Then the Lord God formed the Adam.” That’s day six. So, when is Adam finished? When is God’s Rest? “My father works until now and I work,” said Jesus in John 5. In John 19 on a tree in a garden, Jesus — the Word of God by whom all things are created — cried, “It is finished” and delivered up His Spirit — His eternal Spirit, the Spirit of Life. That was the end of the sixth day and the beginning of the endless Seventh Day. “Christ appeared at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). We are those upon whom “the end of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). “Age” is the Greek noun “aion,” which means “age, eon,” or even “day.” English has no adjectival form of “age,” but Greek does: “aionios.” It cannot mean “forever without end,” for there is nothing without end except the End. “I am... the End,” said Jesus. “Aionios” must mean “of the age.” But what age? Well, how about the age beyond all ages, “after” and “before” and “over” and “under” the ages, the realm of the Uncaused Cause, where “Chronos (chronological time) is no more” (Revelation 10:6). Eternity is not the absence of all time, but all of time in a moment, and that moment in all of time — eternity. We’re still being made in time but with eternity in our hearts. In Scripture, space and time look like a line (temporality: a timeline of cause and effect) surrounded by eternity: the Uncaused Cause. And at the cross, eternity invades time. So, where is Hell? Hell #1 (hades) is on the timeline. Hell #2 (Heaven) is all around the timeline. Hell #3 (Judgment) happens at the cross... and at the end of the timeline... and at the beginning of the timeline... and at every point that eternity touches time: the moment we call “now,” when decisions are made, or to put it the other way around, when the Decision of God (His Judgment) makes us. “Now is the judgment of this world,” said Jesus — The Eschatos. End. Last. Adam. The Story of Adam is the story of you, me, and all of us, including Jesus. People say, “What difference does this make?” Well... picture a timeline surrounded by a lion on all sides, and at a tree in a garden at the edge of time and eternity, that Lion conquers all things. Perhaps you’ve never met a real lion in the real world. Perhaps, your resume is sheer illusion, every fairy tale is real, and the Voice of the Lion is the only way that people ever change. It’s not something you do but something that’s done to you when your Father speaks His Word. Mufasa speaks. Simba decides to go back. He says that he can’t change the past. And Rafiki says, “No, but you can learn from the past.” Whenever the End of a good story (the Plot, the Logos, the Gospel) is revealed in a moment in the past (the outer darkness, Good Friday), that moment in the past is transformed from lost into found, fear into Faith, shame into Glory, and Good Friday into Easter. And what we thought was evil was actually the revelation of the Good... and then, we know. There are two stories being written. God writes one, and it is eternal. We also write one, but it is a temporal illusion in space and time. And yet, our illusion becomes eternal reality when we surrender to the Judgment of God — God, who never ever lost control of time. We write ourselves out of the Story, and God our Father writes us back in with His Word, and that’s the Story: The Gospel. Salvation is Creation, and Creation is the Incarnation of Christ in you. And why would God arrange things in such a way? Well, what did Simba learn? He learned that he couldn’t write himself out of his father’s story, for his father had already written himself into Simba’s heart... and so he freely chose to be just who it is that he always was: His Father’s Son and the One True King. And so, just before we took his Life on the tree, the Son of God and One True King gave His life at supper, saying, “Take and eat... Take and drink... This is the Covenant in my blood.” It’s an eternal covenant, and the Life is in the blood — Eternal Life, and you are His Body, the One in whom “Our Father” is well pleased. Remember who you are. [Click here for a list of questions for reflection and/or discussion related to this sermon]