Christian worldview overview underview sideview...

God is a person (1) who has been in relationship and conversation with us since the beginning of His creation spree. In one of these discussions which has been jotted down, God reveals His name to Moses, calling himself "The I AM”. (2) Short words, huge meaning. God is Trinity; Father, Spirit and Son, and through these three “personalities” has engaged with the creation He created after himself. He has engaged as the Creator of all, the King of all and the Saviour of all. (3)

Human beings are God’s image bearers, made in the image of God, for doing the works of God. Paul calls us “citizens of heaven”. (4) We are the extenders of His Kingdom, even though we are fully human here on earth, we live a parallel life as citizens of Heaven, extending and increasing the dominion of God’s rule on this earth. We are invited to take our story and live it within God’s greater story, with Him as the director and us as the actors.

Human beings screwed things up though. The cute Sunday-school-learned Bible story of Adam and Eve is actually one of the hardest lessons to learn as a human being. This is where we took our image-bearing life and trampled it into the ground in an effort to become the one who is greater than bearing image to. Sin entered the world, but God puts a rescue plan into action.

“So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us.” (5) The Son came on a rescue mission, (6) and while He was here, he modelled what a normal Christian lifestyle was to be; one of miracles, signs and wonders, one that was counter-culutural and radical. He restored to us what we had ruined, by dying a criminals death on the cross and over-coming the grave after three days. Jesus became the lamb to end all sacrifices, and became the keys for us to access the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is exactly what the word means; the “King’s” “domain”. It is the places where God’s ruler-ship as King is restored. (7) God has acted as Saviour by sending Jesus as the keys to the kingdom, where sin can be forgotten and a life which is eternal can be begun. But the point of that life is not to just get to heaven when we die, but to live this life taking on the model set by Christ and living as a citizen of heaven now, living as a new creation in Christ (8) and carrying on the extension of the Kingdom revolution.

In regards to how this will all finish up? I will leave this to Mr N.T. Wright... “The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, and he will one day put this world to rights. That solid belief is the bedrock of al Christian faith. god is not going to abloish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it and to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it.” (9)

Until then, I’m just going to do my part by living as a new creation, loving Jesus and extending the Kingdom.

(1) Williams and Brown, Who is this God we worship?
(2) Exodus 3:14
(3) Wilt, The nature of a human being
(4) Philippians 2:27 and 3:20
(5) John 1:14
(6) Wright, Simply Christian 
(7) Johnson, When Heaven invades earth
(8) and (9) Wright, The road to new creation