Religion and Spirituality

…and God created man – why and how?

by Bob McCluskey on March 10, 2010

I was recently involved in a discussion about why God created man and why He created us with the ability to sin.  These are questions that arise frequently among those who believe in God as creator, and is one that never fails to stimulate my thinking.  As usual, I expressed some opinions that elicited some good responses and which gave rise to the thoughts below.

Basically I said that God created man (better: mankind) because He wanted someone to love and someone to love Him back.  Further, I stated that the capacity to love entails the capacity to “not love” or to do whatever is the opposite of loving.  One of the responses was, “What is your Biblical evidence for those statements?” and “Couldn’t God have created us with the ability to love him without giving us the ability to ‘not love’ Him?”  These are good questions and deserve some thoughtful reflection.

Here are some things we know:

  • “…God is love.”  (1 John 4:7-13, 16)  I interpret this statement to mean that the essence of God is love.  Everything about God is loving and there is nothing about God that is not loving.  Whatever love is, that is God.  Whatever God does is an expression of love.  He has an unlimited supply of love.
  • God is creative by nature.  We know this because God does create.  Since He is also loving by nature we know that His creation is an act of love.
  • God is complete in Himself.  He doesn’t need anything.  Because of this characteristic we know that God did not create humans because he was lonely, or needed to be praised and worshiped, or needed power over something or someone.
  • God loves humans.  (John 3:16)
  • Humans have always disobeyed God, even when they clearly understood what He wanted them to do.  (Genesis 2:15-3:19, Romans 3:9-12)
  • Jesus understood His mission to be, in part, to regenerate the love of God and one another that humans had lost through their disobedience.  (John 17:20-24,26)

In view of these things that we know, let’s reconsider the questions with which we began:

Why did God create humans?  As far as I know there is no direct answer to this question in the Bible.  However, we do know that God’s reasons for creating humans had something to do with love, and had nothing to do with anything that is “anti-love,” because God’s essence is love.  We know that God’s love does not stem from His needs, because He has no needs.

This doesn’t mean that God is indifferent about his creation.  Revelation 4:11 tells us that God created the universe and its inhabitants for His pleasure.  Again, this is not the kind of pleasure that a needy person gets from possessions, relationships or power.  This is a pleasure that can only arise out of the perfect love of God.  It is a good kind of pleasure with no admixture of evil or self-serving.  It is the rare kind of pleasure that humans glimpse when they share their lives with someone who unconditionally values, cares for and trusts them.

To say that God does not need someone to share His love is not to say that He cannot want to share His love with someone.  In fact, sharing love without needs is to share perfect, unadulterated love.  It must be noted that any attempt to understand the nature of God’s perfect love and its perfect pleasure is impossible for humans in this life; we cannot experience it as long as we live in a world and a body that are preoccupied with human needs.  Nevertheless, sharing perfect love is so important to God that it is the entire focus of His creative nature. Therefore, I conclude that God created man because He has love to share, and He is aware of the incredible pleasure that comes from sharing it.  In fact, I believe that He could do nothing else, given His loving and creative nature.

Why, then, did God create humans such that they could refuse His love?  Before we can arrive at the answer to this question we have to understand a simple logical proposition:

  • God knew that if humans were given the ability to disobey Him, they might do so.
  • God knew that the consequences of disobeying Him were of utmost seriousness (Genesis 2:16-17).
  • God does not want any human to suffer those consequences.  (II Peter 3:9)  Thus, He did not want anyone to disobey Him.
  • Nonetheless, God did, in fact, created humans with the ability to disobey Him.

These observations lead me to conclude that God had some loving intent related to mankind that prevented Him from creating them with the precondition of obedience.  To put it in a more direct way; God could not have created mankind to be completely obedient without violating His own nature or the nature that He wants humans to have.

What might that nature be?  I believe that it is love.  We concluded above that one of God’s primary objectives in the creation of mankind was to be able to relate to someone in love.  God understood that, in order to be able to love, we must be able to refuse to love.

Can we force someone to love us?  I think not.  A powerful person may be able to force others to act like they love him, or to say that they love him.  These acts and words may appear to be love, and may even be interpreted as love but… could a rational person actually feel loved if the acts and words were coerced?  Perhaps God could have created us such that we always obeyed Him, always said we loved Him and always behaved consistently with the words.  Maybe He could even have created humans such that they always felt loving toward Him.  Could a God honest enough to be called “God” really believe that their words, actions and feelings were really love?

If you think that the answer to that question might be “yes,” consider an analogy that I paraphrase from author Gregory A. Boyd*:  Imagine that you could implant a computer chip in your spouse, without his knowledge, that would make him feel, act and speak to you in a perfectly loving fashion, according to your personal understanding of what loving is like.  He would even believe that he had chosen to love you, although, in truth, he could not do otherwise.

Would you find this fulfilling, or would you eventually realize that the loving words were really your own words, the words you had programmed into the computer chip?  Likewise the actions and feelings would really have originated in your mind, not in the mind of your spouse.  You would be living with a sophisticated puppet and no level of sophistication will replace love freely given.  In order to accept love as genuine, we must know that we are dealing with a free agent, one who gives love by choice.  Likewise, God made us truly free so that we could truly love Him.  The ability to reject His love is a necessary counterpart of the ability to love Him.

The good news is that God’s love for us is so perfect, so unconditional and so powerful that He continues to pursue us even when we reject Him.  Our small human ideas about pleasure often pull us away from His love, but He understands the pleasures of real love so profoundly that He gives everything He possesses to bring us back to it, time after time.  The day is coming when Christians will have no flesh left to pull them away from God and their experience of Him will be complete.  Then the significance of His grace will be fully understood, our questions will all be answered and we will enjoy Him forever.

*Satan and the Problem of Evil.  Intervarsity Press, 2001, p. 55

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A biblical definition of sanctification

by Bob McCluskey on January 28, 2010

Bob McCluskey Self-portrait

Bob McCluskey

The English word “sanctification” is derived from from the Latin noun sanctificio.  Its most generic Latin meaning is “to separate and set aside.”  Since the early days of the Roman church its Latin usage has been primarily related to Christian theology, which uses it in a religious sense, “to separate and set aside for holiness,” or “to make holy.”   However, The Latin word from which we derive the English word sanctification is, itself, a translation from the original New Testament language, which is Greek. Some English Bible translations preserve but slightly modified the Latin word. The King James version is an example, and is used in the quotes in the following paragraphs.

The original Greek word is usually translated into English as “wash” or “cleanse.” You will find these words in many English Bible translations instead of the word sanctification because many translators relied more on the original Greek than on the subsequent  Latin translation. The traditional use of the transliterated Latin word “sanctification” is in some ways unfortunate because it implies that there is something mysterious about it.  English speakers have no context for the Latin word sanctification aside from its use in religious language. The word tends to take on whatever meaning it is given by the religious context within which it is learned. As a consequence, if a church or religious authority teaches its adherents that sanctification is something mysterious that can be imparted only by some equally mysterious process or person, those adherents are deprived of the simple understanding that sanctification is the natural result of a relationship with God.

On the other hand, I deliberately chose to use the word “sanctification” in the subtitle of this column because I want to attract the attention of people who are looking for answers about the concept. Thousands of people type the word “sanctification” into internet search boxes every day!

The term “sanctification” is used in two ways in scripture (when speaking of people in their earthly life):

1.  In position believers are eternally set apart for God by redemption and are positionally, therefore, holy and righteous from the moment of believing.

Hebrews 10:14 “For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”

2.  In experience the believer is being sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit and scripture.

Ephesians 5:25-27 “… as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; That He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.“

People sometimes ask me whether sanctification is an event or a process. It is both, as you can see from the above usage examples. In one sense, it is an event that happens when God redeems us. At that moment, he sets us aside, apart from those who are not redeemed, to be with Him for eternity and to serve Him on Earth. He cleanses that part of us that is eternal and declares that eternal part to be holy, or righteous. That moment also begins the process of sanctification in the second sense. He begins to change our attitudes and behaviors to the extent that we are willing to be changed. He uses the Holy Spirit and the holy Scriptures as instruments to accomplish this. Because our bodily nature has been corrupted through its presence in the sinful world, this is a process that never ends as long as we are in the body and in the world. Nevertheless, when we leave the body and come into his eternal presence, we will be both holy and “without blemish.” The process of sanctification will be complete.

It is not uncommon in human language to use one word in several ways. There is nothing spiritually or linguistically wrong about understanding that sanctification is such a word when used in Scripture. In fact, this understanding will clear up many of the disputes that occur over the meaning and usage of the word. It is not necessary to believe that sanctification is either an event or a process. It can be, and is, both.Please let me know if you have any comments or questions about this definition, by using the form below.

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You are God and I am not….

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