God the infinite, personal, powerful, center of all things. He is the three-in-one Person. He declares His name to be YHWH, meaning "I Am that I Am"1. That is, neither His name nor His Person are defined upon anything else2, but all things that do exist come from Him and for His pleasure they were created3. YHWH was complete in His glory, love and community as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, before creation began.
Out of His love, he spoke creation into existence and brought life to the earth. He created man in His own image and breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life4. As image bearers, we reflected God's character and qualities to the earth, bringing and bearing in our lives the goodness and love of our father to the rest of creation. As members of creation, we expressed back to God the praise of all things and articulated the responsive love of all creation back to its Creator5. But soon, prompted by Satan's lies, we broke relationship with God and tore at the very love that tethered us to our creative destiny as God's image bearers on earth. In the breach of that relationship, sin, death, pain and sickness flooded the creation God had intended us to steward.
Though we had caused the breach, we would not (and could not) mend it. Where God is, there is no breach. His realm that breaths and expands is not defined in time or space, or even dimensions. His realm is called "kingdom of God". The kingdom burst into the earth through God Himself, the Son. Just as sin had once brought death flooding into creation at the garden, now the Son (Jesus) healed the breach and brought the kingdom flooding into the earth. Jesus sacrificed his life, dieing for us to repair the breach. His death and resurrection was the first "kingdom of God" act. He also showed us the right way of life, leading us by example to live tethered in love to the Father, through the Holy Spirit. Some, however, loved the breach and Satan's lies, more than the Rescuer and His kingdom story.
But those who believed found new life and became His "salvific storytellers"6- telling Jesus "death and resurrection" rescue story (represented by the Cross) and living as agents of this new kingdom. He sends us now to our families, churches, communities and countries. The same "resurrection" power that brought Jesus to life now works through us to expand the breathing Kingdom and bring healing into every stark, broken, sickened realm of our earth (and every person in it). We do this first by loving God, then each other, then taking our storytelling to every person (and all creation) who has yet to hear.
We continue to be storytellers, until Jesus returns in bodily form to claim His kingship over all things. At that time the kingdom of God will be fully expressed. We are to be restored to the place of image bearers in an unstained world. A world where humanity will dwell with God, and He will dwell with us.
(1)Bible, New International Version (International Bible Society, 1973, 1978, 1984), Exodus 3:14
(2) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian:Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 67.
(3)Bible, New International Version (International Bible Society, 1973, 1978, 1984), Revelation 4:11
(4)Ibid, Genesis 2:7
(5) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian:Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 145.
(6)Dan Wilt, essentials blue:Online Studies in Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview (New Brunswick, Canada: Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephens University, 2008), 32.
"for: WorshipTraining.com, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt"