God’s Great Commissions

What do you think of when you hear the term, “The Great Commission”? Most Christians have been trained to think there is one “great” commission, to go and make disciples of all nations… But long before Matthew 28, there was another commission—a first commission.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Genesis 1: 28

As long as the world remained boundless, dangerous and often stingy with her bounty, I suppose many readers of this first commission saw it as carte blanche from God to treat nature anyway we wanted. Indeed, the word “subdue” can mean to violate, subjugate, conquer or tread down. But consider the context of this verse. Man has just been created in God’s image and honored as such to co-rule the earth with God. Like God, humans would then be expected to be devoted to the welfare and prosperity of our “subjects”: the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and the creatures of the land. And as godly rulers we would naturally be expected to lead in a way that leads to peace (shalom), not chaos.

Indeed, in Genesis 2: 15 we read:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it (abad) and take care of it (shamar).

This is important, as the Garden provides us with a picture of how God intended man to live in right relationship with creation. The Hebrew word abad means to cultivate, till and to serve, like the priests who served in the Tabernacle (Numbers 3: 7). And the word shamar means to protect or guard, as in “May the LORD bless you and keep you (shamar)” (Numbers 6: 24).

If we look around, we see the opposite of peace in much of the world: bulging landfills, plastic-filled oceans, wild weather and ravaging droughts, melting permafrost, and animal and plant extinctions all send a message. We appear to be failing in our commission to subdue chaos—our first commission.

In this new blog site, we on the BCC Creation Care team hope to educate, encourage and inform readers about how we can be better stewards of this world. In the process, it’s our hope that God will work also in our own hearts to choose to be better stewards of creation.

It’s a big task. We at Bellingham Covenant Church’s Creation Care team are committed to provide you with the most interesting and relevant information about the environment, especially as it affects the Pacific Northwest. We are also committed to sharing the many (still) good and beautiful things in creation. Will you join us by subscribing to this blog? Will you commit to the commission?