Stuff Means Jesus

“All things with which we deal, preach to us.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a profound reason why a sunrise is beautiful, why water satisfies, why a roller coaster ride is exhilarating, why a marriage which thrives on purity and integrity is an awesome thing.

The reason is that Jesus Christ is beautiful, satisfying, and exhilarating. And "all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made," and "all things were created through him and for him."

Everything is about everything else. Have you noticed this? Driving a nail into a board with a hammer is so much like singing a note well that we can say, "she nailed it," and speak truly. This is why illustrations are so powerful. Everything can be used as a metaphor for everything else. Pressing through a hard week of school is like running a marathon. And running a marathon is like enduring the Christian life in the midst of temptation, suffering, and persecution.

Everything is about everything else, and everything else is about Jesus. What I mean is that everything is a metaphor for everything else, but Jesus is not a metaphor for anything. Metaphors end at Jesus Christ; they find their meaning in him.

This is precisely the reason Paul says that humanity stands guilty before God: "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made."

It is worth considering the depth of Paul's statement. The invisible attributes of God - his faithfulness, righteousness, justice, love, etc. - are seen in the created things. Because your car is one of "the things that have been made" - a physical thing that is a result of Yahweh creating the heavens and earth - it proclaims the attributes of God.

Jonathan Edwards says, "Creation is as full of images of divine things as a language is full of words."

Karl Barth says, "The ground and goal of the entire cosmos means Jesus Christ."

They are right. So is Paul.

This is a great presupposition of the biblical text. The Bible teaches us that food is good because it satisfies us and sustains us like Jesus does, the living Word. When we believe that food is good in and of itself apart from Jesus, then we commit idolatry; we "worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator."

It is bizarre the way we categorize things as good, bad, and neutral. Looking at porn is bad, feeding the homeless is good, but playing halo is neutral.

No, nothing is neutral. "All things" are created by Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus. "All things" actual means all things. That includes halo.

No, halo is not a way to escape Yahweh's world. "The earth is Yahweh's and the fullness thereof."

"For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving." The question is not whether a thing is inherently bad or good. The question is do you receive it with thanksgiving? Is your heart filled up with the joy of Jesus when you play Halo? If so, then keep playing it. If not, you should stop because you are committing idolatry. You are worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. He is blessed forever, unlike Halo.

The capacity for playing halo to be sinful is not in that it is inherently bad; rather, it is in that you might forget that halo is about Jesus and must be received with thanksgiving. Deciding whether something is inherently sinful or not - deciding how much halo you can play without sinning - is precisely the mindset that gives birth to sin. The root of sin is taking the knowledge of good and evil into our own hands, playing God's role, rather than letting him work for our "good" and receiving it with thanksgiving, trusting and obeying.

Stuff means Jesus. Sin amounts to forgetting this truth.

Abraham Kuyper says, “Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!’”

Not only is the entire Old Testament Messianic - a story searching for the coming seed, namely, Jesus Christ - the entire universe and every second of history is Messianic. "The ground and goal of the entire cosmos means Jesus Christ."

Amen, Karl Barth.