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CHAPTER 4

CONDITIONS FOR LIFE AND LIVING

IN A CURSED WORLD

Marrings, Misconceptions and Marvels

In the Preface to this Volume,  attention was given to human reaction or response to the cursed condition of this world. In this Chapter, irrespective of response, we consider the state of the case. Thus this prelude was put.

 

Recently, a radio announcer speaking of floods or rains or some natural disaster, said that it seemed that Someone up there, had a grudge against us.

Little could be more monumentally mistaken. It is rather saying that the butterfly shows that the Lord has no sense of the minute! or that an elephant shows that He is limited to little works.

In fact, there is love and compassion, showered upon creation, discipline and directness, pre-announced for the fruits of seductive autonomy as in Genesis 3, and a judgment settling on the earth the way the fog does on the open seas, its fingers probing the nearby valleys, and its hidings making ships like forlorn sea monsters. In rebelling against His working instructions (manualled in the Bible), how to use the glorious gift of being created a member of the human race, man is like a dissident student who, being told that to be found smoking would require 'six from the lawyer'  (as one Headmaster put it), then complained when showing his pipe freely and openly to a supervising teacher! It would  vex the imagination even to consider how such a vaporous verbal glitch could be made as to call this a grudge!  In fact, this student did not complain; but the point remains. What, in any case, came to the student  ? He was expelled. The Headmaster was determined that the lung abuse would not mar the school. 

A trudge certainly (though the student concerned left in a taxi), is implied, but justice for man from the Lord, as announced, so far from being grudge, even when apparently profound (though the recent Australian case of massive inundations is not near the flood, which had a long prelude - Genesis 6), is the precise opposite. This cavalier criticism ignores

	the Creator's knowledge for the way to treat His creation, man, singly and jointly, duly imparted in the Bible.
	His action to provide free redemption and the soaring cost to Him of doing so.
	the goodwill incorporated in this pinnacle of sacrifice and the continuing provocation in a world often moving back to the hideous sins of self-will, even when as in this land, superabundantly blessed in the time of at least some measure of worship of the living God, giving glory to His name for His redemption in Christ Jesus; and
	the maintenance of the offer of free redemption despite  all, to each one, including any who falsely suggest grudge, in the very midst of mercy, that the race can continue at all amidst such condign disloyalty, unthankfulness and spiritual inertia.

While it is possible to  err in attributing any one disaster to one specially chosen cause, yet some steady aggravation of cause may precipitate a decisive result:  as in the destruction of Sennacherib's  army (an immediate cause was the pompous pretension of the monarch, seeking to compare the living God to the idols of the nations, and to exalt himself as if a god) as seen in Isaiah 36ff..

God is not offering wisdom for general living, at the crux, but how to BE ALIVE. It is no mere phrasing, for the alternative is eternal condemnation (II Thessalonians 1). He is not suggesting more sanctification but demanding justification, so that the STATUS of the SOUL may be one that is acceptable to God, since it is only His OWN righteousness which can be satisfactory, and man's sins know almost no depth control, the pit being likewise bottomless. This we find in Romans 5:1-21 the reconditioning required, yes far more, the regeneration wrought on the basis of faith in the salvation of Jesus Christ, long prepared and on its due date, granted (cf. Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2).

Comparative religions are comparative revolt; and all are utterly in revolt, since NONE but the offering of Christ get ANYWHERE with God (Acts 4:11-12), since none other is appointed (Acts 13:26-46,17:31, John 14:6) and His saving work  was done ONCE (Hebrews 9) and for all!  Since He redeems, pays for what is repentant, purified and purged, rescued and covered in cost for the restitution to the status of a child of God: therefore it is simple. It is one. It is clear. It is revolt or it is redemption.

Such is the status of our race. Such is the fate of the furious, the spurious, the seduced and the seductive, except they repent. Such is the provision. God is no octopus: He hands down His one solution for our one problem, taking its heart and core as one and its cure and consequence as one, and making in one act, in one Person, for one motivation, that of love, the necessary provision (Hebrews 8-10).

There are results of the curse of Genesis 3:8-19, as seen in perspective in Romans 8:17ff., and traced in historical overview in Romans 5. Thus just as there is a necessary provision for deliverance from the total tenure of this curse, as noted in the Preface, so also, as it continues:

This simplicity moves like an express train throughout so many so sophisticatedly spectacular problems, and so many subtly deep ones, so that, to get on board the express, and relax the contentious cavils and anxious swivels, is delight: view from the window is both varied and comprehensible. On the other side, away from this survey, this transformation from treading to triumph: there is only confusion. Whatever the number and placement of the worms in an apple, the core is the place of depth for it all.

But as for the sublime, divine intervention: in this the case is this, that God in Christ has "delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love." He calls and man must come (cf. Proverbs 1). That is the call for the callow and the 'wise' alike, to the male and female, rich and the poor, revolutionary and establishment personnel, to the clown and the morbid, to the wounded and the arrogant: that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not only is their one Lord, one Saviour and one faith (cf. Ephesians 4:4, Acts 4:11-12), but ONLY one (John 14:6, 17:31, 5:19ff.).

Working as a creation,  for man, in a creation, this world, there are conditions which

	storm into some lives, which are ignorant of their situation;
	challenge others, all too aware of them;
	touch off the ire of some recalcitrants, whose only desire is to teach God or dispense with Him altogether in a fit of pique,  as if to hurt the feelings or rule of the One in whom they so glibly profess not to believe;
	and bring deep thought and contribute to repentance to life, in others (Acts 11:17-18).

WHAT IS THE CURSE ?

and WHAT IS ITS CURE ?

It is a resistance to the insistence on the part of man,  to keep evil  and unwise thoughts concerning God (whether it is direct or in some indirect spiritual slum of philosophy which pokes out the debased tongue amid logical chaos cf.  SMR Ch.   3,   10), as Satan  suggested to Eve (Genesis 3:5), and in terms of which she appeared  to act. The desire is to supplant the superiority of God and to at least share in His greatness, or what may be grabbed of it. Satan was to act like a pagan University, of which the world has its massive  store to this day and hour.

For woman, it involved pangs and anguish in child-birth, which was incomparably more challenging as a result. For man it meant that instead of the provisions for cultivation and development in this world being a thing of holy beauty, there would be positive agencies of hindrance, laboriousness and difficulties not inherently charming, but specifically constituting the outworking of the divine curse on the divinely formulated and created being, mankind. In particular, man's body would have an inherent gravity, returning to the ground,  like some of his own designs and creations, which last but for a time!

This was a prodigious humbling, that this being seeking some kind of parity with God could have the very platform and design wonder given for the body, in this world, reducible to a mere part of it. The world itself, man's environment, would of necessity, being made a matter of intensive labour and obstruction in measure, be marred. Indeed, not only thorns and thistles, but as the apostle Paul declares in Romans 8:17ff., a whole universal material vanity, futility, uselessness of mode, would come like a disease on this world, on the entire creation. Much made for super-felicitous favour for man-made-in-God's-image, was thus contorted or aborted, subverted or compromised, qualified or transmuted. In some ways, it was rather like a bomb in its effects: things beautiful became marred, things self-sustaining became liable to invasion, things superb in function became open to misdirection, mischief and folly.

In short, man could now find out for himself what was this 'equality', and discern the true meaning of thanklessness, the full import of arrogance, and of slander against his Maker.

He has been doing so for some thousands of years. In this state of heart, mirrored in his environment deliberately by his Creator, man teems with terms like 'survival' as if the big event now was to overcome the Almighty by an insolent self-sufficiency, as if he could NEVER learn, WOULD never humble himself, and would make a god of 'nature'^*1 as nurture centre, instead of learning to repent and seek the Lord who made both it and him, as Enoch did (Genesis 5:24). Of  him it is noted that he 'walked with God,' (Genesis 5:24). Then "God took him."

There is of course nothing better than to be taken by God as one who walks with Him (Philippians 1:3), since with Him is no curse on His own people, this being met in Christ who became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13) who believe, who are saved by the work of atonement of Jesus Christ, and so kept; for as Paul again remonstrates with the  Galatians:

"Are you so foolish ? Having begun in the Spirit are you now being made perfect in the flesh ? Have you suffered so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain ?
Therefore he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you,
does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith ?
just as Abraham 'believed God and it sas accounted to him for righteousness.' "

To be lifted from the curse which embroils not only the OUTSIDE creation, but that INSIDE, in the very heart of man, into the 'heavenly places' (Ephesians 2:6) of walking with God, it is necessary to face the facts of the curse and apply for redemption by faith, as in Ephesians 2:4-10:

"For God who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ
(by grace you have been saved),
and raised up up together, and made us sit together
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace
in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,
not of works, lest anyone should boast, 
for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works ..."

Even the 'that' after 'by grace you have been saved through faith' is grammatically linked to the entirety of the program, by grace saved through faith, and not just to the term 'faith' which has another gender in the Greek text.

This changes revolt to redemption, a cursed condition in its implacability, since it is written in our very bodies, to one of atonement, reconciliation. Thus,  even if we are yet in an accursed world, we who believe in Jesus Christ by grace through faith are not spiritual atoms in a boiling cauldron, chaff in a windy desert, particles in a meaningless profundity, for "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints" (Psalm 116:15), and "the  Lord knows the way of the righteous," (Psalm 1:6), who know that it is HIS righteousness which alone is to be praised, and as to ourselves, this of His, is a gift through faith (Romans 5:17, Psalm 71:16).

No more is there an emphasis on survival (like a corrupt chef in a corrupt restaurant, wondering how to continue to be chef, through various devices, instead of concentrating on good food), or on strife as the means to life. As Romans 13:13 declares: "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying." Again, as Paul declares in I Timothy 6, of anyone who teaches contrary to Christ, and do not heed His sound words:  "He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, from which comes envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings." Evil thoughts, attribution of evil motives, carnal concepts, wrongful wriggling, testy attestations, underlying self-assertion and failure to find the meaning of God for life in Christ: these things become the mere lice of living. Few come to realise it.

Instead of survival in 'nature' in a vile and violent misattribution of discipline for sin to the very mode of creation, the ultimate in slander of the Lord, man is called to taking up his cross and following the Lord, in a life for which counter-claim is made in the blood of Christ for the guilt of sin, and blessing and benignity are like flowers in the garden of life.

For it IS a garden, if cursed in many modes; and it IS a thing of beauty, though conditioned in many defeats, falls and failings; and the curse does not control the cure, but vice versa, even though every effort of man to CIRCUMVENT the curse gives grounds for the septic cynicism of the surreal, those whose scepticism is merely a practical form of revolt, as if all were revolting because some insist on pursuing revolution (cf. SMR pp. 292 - 307). Thus every idea to pursue some ideal, as in the United Nations, becomes at the last, sickeningly smug, uncontrite, unrealistic and even surrealistic, vague words without foundation, shouting in the dark, and those who trust in such vacuity, vanity as Romans 8 calls it all, are merely applicants for heart-break, or pride which leads to fall, or frustration, or cynicism or disillusion. IF you are wide awake, that is the best result: disillusion with illusion.

However, for many, that is the end, and instead of returning to God from the sod, that is, to reality from the worship of the curse and its conditions, or from mirages to escape, they merely bathe in the foam of misled fervour, empty as air, bubbles that burst. Socialism  will be the answer! some chant. How ? since it merely brings in a mutuality in illusion. Christian Socialism is it! some intimate. In what way, since to be Christian involves a heart-searching, a repentance, a ransom, a reconciliation with God through His own appointed means, Jesus Christ, the Just One, and a whole nation is not composed exclusively or even nominally of Christians, let alone those who know the meaning of walking with God by receiving His pardon in Christ!

It is the curse (which after all, formalises the subversion of spirit in man, and does not create it, though it rebukes it) which is inescapable EXCEPT by the breach of its finality in death, by Christ who died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God (I Peter 3:18). Efforts to escape or imagine that 'nature' is like that and is the mother in some personification pollution which would make a phrase our origin, and a craze our basis, merely underline the spiritual mania. It is merely an attributing of self-creative powers to what both demonstrably and empirically is NEVER found to do anything to make itself, being wholly occupied with being what it is. And what would it have in any case have made itself from ? if not nothing, which as such CAN have NO future!

Nature ? That ? It is partly a creation and partly a cursed condition superimposed. Failure to realise this merely extends into the mind, the desolation of the soul, into the realms of fancifulness, the fracture of truth, into intellectual subversion, the sickness of the spirit.

It is only when in heaven, redeemed, that people will be able to find the curse altogether inapplicable and absent (Revelation 22:3);

"And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve Him ..."

On this earth in its present state, there are but two steps which figure basically in the condition of curse^*2: one evacuates from it in the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, or one remains in it, not only as an external environment, but as an internal one likewise. In this, man is spared its grounds in guilt, being pardoned; but for the case of not obeying the Gospel of grace, receiving Him who came for this very purpose ? this leaves man consolidated in the condition of curse. From this, neither politician nor lawyer, artful premiss nor wilful thought can evacuate. It is like those children who were sent to Australia from Britain in World War II, from London... if you did not choose to go, then you were exposed to the bombing. In this case, however, the bomb is within also.

NOTES

*1

See The gods of naturalism have no go! On its irrationality, see further in
Deity and Design .....  8    

*2

See Beyond the Curse and Aspects of the Glory of the God of All Grace Ch. 7.