CHAPTER THREE

Once and Future Kings

We’ve had a brief introduction to God’s heavenly council—his unseen family and task force. There’s a lot more to all that—we need to look, especially, at how major players like Jesus and Satan fit into the picture. But before we return to what goes on in the unseen world, we need to think in a fresh way about ourselves. God’s rule in the unseen spiritual world through his council is a template for his rule on earth—what theologians call the kingdom of God. All of that began in Genesis, in the garden of Eden.

Eden—God’s Home Office

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear “garden of Eden”? Most people I’ve talked to think of Adam and Eve. Eden was their home. That’s where God put them (Gen. 2:15–25).

But Eden was also God’s home. Ezekiel refers to Eden as “the garden of God” (Ezek. 28:13; 31:8–9). No surprise, really. What might be surprising is that, right after calling Eden “the garden of God,” Ezekiel calls it “the holy mountain of God” (v. 28:14). In many ancient religions, luxurious gardens and inaccessible mountains were considered the home of the gods. The Bible uses both descriptions for Eden. Eden was God’s home and, therefore, where he conducted business. It was his headquarters, or home office.

And where God is, his council is with him.

God’s Imagers

One of the most important verses in the Bible tips us off that both God and his council were in Eden. In Genesis 1:26 God says, “Let us make humankind in our image” (LEB, emphasis added). God announces his intention to a group. Who’s he talking to? His heavenly host—his council. He’s not talking to the other members of the Trinity, because God can’t know something they don’t! And here the group he’s addressing learns what God has decided to do.

The announcement is easy to understand. It would be like me saying to some friends, “Let’s get pizza!” Let’s do this! Clear enough. But there’s something else we don’t want to miss. God actually doesn’t include the group in bringing about his decision.

Unlike other divine council sessions we’ve seen, the members of God’s council don’t participate in this decision. When humankind is created in the next verse (Gen. 1:27), God is the only one creating. The creation of humanity is something God handled himself. Going back to my pizza analogy, if I followed my announcement by driving everyone to the pizza place and insisted on paying, I would be the one doing all the work. That’s what we see going on here.

It makes sense that God would be the only one creating humans. The divine beings of his council don’t have that kind of power. But that produces another oddity. In Genesis 1:27, humans are created in God’s image (“God created humankind in his image,” LEB, emphasis added). What happened to “our image” from verse 26?

Actually, nothing. The exchange between “our image” and “his image” in Genesis 1:26–27 reveals something fascinating. God’s statement—“Let us make humankind in our image”—means that he and the ones he’s speaking to share something in common. Whatever that is, humans will also share it once God creates them. Not only are we like God in some way, but we are also like the divine beings of his council.

That “something” is communicated by the phrase “image of God.” A better translation of Genesis 1:26 would be that God created humans as his image. To be human is to be God’s imager. We are God’s representatives, so to speak.

The image of God isn’t an ability given to us by God, like intelligence. We can lose abilities, but we cannot lose the status of being God’s imager. That would require not being human! Every human, from conception to death, will always be human and always be God’s imager. This is why human life is sacred.

How do we represent God? We saw in the previous chapter that God shares his authority with the divine beings of his unseen task force. He does the same thing with humans on earth. God is the high king of all things visible and invisible. He rules. He shares that rule with his family in the spiritual world and the human world. We’re here to participate in God’s plan to make the world all he wants it to be and enjoy it with him.

Eventually God showed us how we should do that. Jesus is the ultimate example of representing God. He’s called the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) and the exact imprint of God (Heb. 1:3). We are to imitate Jesus for that reason (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18).

Two Councils, One Destiny

There’s a drift in all this I hope you’re catching. Humans are basically God’s administration—his council—on earth. We were made to live in God’s presence, with his heavenly family. We were made to enjoy him and serve him forever. Originally, that was meant to also happen on earth. Eden was where heaven and earth intersected. God and his council members occupied the same space as humanity.

But to what end?

God told Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion … over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). This was the task for God’s imagers. They would serve God as steward-kings over creation. Humanity’s job was to overspread the earth and extend Eden to the entire planet—to grow the kingdom of God. That job was too big for two people, so God wanted Adam and Eve to produce children.

As we know, Adam and Eve and their progeny failed. Humanity sinned. Had that not occurred, the earth would have been gradually transformed to a global Eden. We would have had everlasting life on a perfected planet, living with God and his spiritual family.

God loved humanity, so he forgave Adam and Eve. But the rest of humanity from that point on was destined to follow in Adam and Eve’s footsteps. We all sin and deserve death without God’s intervention (Rom. 6:23). We are mortal and, therefore, sinners. We need salvation.

The idea of God wanting us to join his divine family, to be part of his council and live in his presence, helps us understand some amazing things the Bible says.

It explains why the Bible refers to believers as “sons of God” or “children of God” (John 1:12; 11:52; Gal. 3:26; 1 John 3:1–3). It explains why believers are described as being “adopted” into God’s family (Gal. 4:5–6; Rom. 8:14–6). It explains why we are said to be “heirs” of God and his kingdom (Gal. 4:7; Titus 3:7; James 2:5) and “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4; see also 1 John 3:2). It explains why, after Jesus returns, he says he will grant believers “to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7). It explains why he’s promised to share the rule of the nations with us (Rev. 2:26–28), even his own throne (Rev. 3:21). We move forward through this life back to Eden. Heaven will return to earth.

That is what we’ll be doing in the afterlife—ruling in the new global Eden. We’ll be enjoying what Adam and Eve were originally intended to help produce. Everlasting life is not about playing harps and singing 24/7. It’s about discovering and relishing the unblemished creation in all its unimaginable fullness alongside God himself, the risen Jesus, and our fellow imagers, human and supernatural.

Why This Matters

It may not seem like it, but a lot of life-changing ideas extend from all this. Living consciously as though our lives represent God and further his plans—even if we don’t yet see that plan—would change the way we approach each day.

God’s original plan was to make the whole earth like Eden. God wanted humans to participate in expanding his good rule over all the earth, as it was in Eden. He told Adam and Eve to have children and become lords and stewards of creation (Gen. 1:26–28). That command wasn’t forgotten after the fall. In fact, it was repeated after the awful events of the flood (Gen. 8:17; 9:1). Though Eden was lost, God intends that it be restored. Ultimately, his rule—his kingdom—will return in its full scope when Jesus comes back and God creates a new heaven and earth (one that, in Revelation 21 and 22, looks a lot like Eden). In the meantime, we can spread the truth of God and the gospel of Jesus everywhere. We can also represent God to everyone we meet and in every place. We are God’s agents to restore Eden in the here and now, looking forward to the day when Jesus brings that plan to a climax.

Consciously thinking of ourselves as God’s agents—his imagers—means the decisions we make matter. Christians, no longer lost in sin, can fulfill God’s plan with the help of the Holy Spirit. We are here to spread the goodness of life with God and tell people who need the gospel how they can enjoy that too. Our lives intersect with many people. Their memory of those encounters ripples through their lives and through all the people whose lives they touch. We are a glimpse either of life with God or of a life without God. There’s no middle ground.

The knowledge that all humans are God’s imagers should also prompt us to see human life for the sacred thing that it is. This extends beyond momentous ethical decisions that deal with life and death. What we’ve learned has an impact on so much of how we see each other and relate to each other. Racism has no place in God’s world. Injustice is incompatible with representing God. The abuse of power—at home, at work, or in government​—​is ungodly. It is not how God dealt with his children in Eden, so it has no place in how we deal with fellow imagers.

Last, representing God means every job that honors him is a spiritual calling. Every legitimate task can be part of moving our world toward Eden and blessing fellow imagers—or not. God doesn’t view people in ministry as more holy or special because of their job descriptions. God cares about how each of us represents him where we are. We either stand against the darkness, sharing the life God wants everyone to ultimately experience, or we don’t. The opportunity doesn’t need to be spectacular; it just needs to be taken.

As spectacular as God’s intention in Eden was, the vision died with equal speed. Only God is perfect. Freedom in the hands of imperfect beings—even divine ones—can have disastrous results.

CHAPTER FOUR

Divine Rebellions

I ended the previous chapter with the thought that free will in the hands of imperfect beings, whether divine or human, can have disastrous results. That’s an understatement. Some catastrophes in the early chapters of the Bible, all of them involving both humans and supernatural beings, illustrate the point.

Recall that God decided to share his authority with both divine beings in the supernatural realm and human beings on earth. That was the backdrop to God’s statement, “Let us make humankind in our image” (Gen. 1:26, emphasis added) and the fact that God then created humans in his image. Spiritual beings and humans are imagers of God. We share his authority and represent him as co-rulers.

On one hand, that was a wonderful decision. Free will is part of being like God. We couldn’t be like him if we didn’t have it. Without free will, concepts like love and self-sacrifice die. If you are merely programmed to “love,” there is no decision in it. It isn’t real. Scripted words and acts aren’t genuine. Thinking about this takes me back to the last of the original Star Wars movies, The Return of the Jedi. The spirit of Obiwan Kenobi tells Luke his father, Darth Vader, “is more machine now than man.” And yet, in the end, we find that isn’t true. Vader saves Luke from the emperor at the cost of his own life. He wasn’t just a programmed machine. His decision came from the heart, his humanity—his own free will.

But there’s a dark side to God’s decision. Granting intelligent beings freedom means they can and will make wrong choices or intentionally rebel. And that’s basically guaranteed to happen, since the only truly perfect being is God. He’s the only one he can really trust. This is why things could, and did, go wrong in Eden.

Trouble in Paradise

Think about the setting in Eden. Adam and Eve aren’t alone. God is there with his council. Eden is the divine/human headquarters for “subduing” the rest of the earth (Gen. 1:26–28)—spreading the life of Eden to the rest of the planet. But one member of the council isn’t happy with God’s plans.

Just as we saw in Genesis 1, there are hints in Genesis 3 that Eden is home to other divine beings. In verse 22, after Adam and Eve have sinned, God says: “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil” (emphasis added). That phrase is the same sort of signpost we saw in Genesis 1:26 (“our image”).

We know the main character of Genesis 3, the Serpent, was not really a snake. He wasn’t actually an animal. No effort to put him behind glass in a zoo would have been effective, and he would not have been amused. He was a divine being. Revelation 12:9 identifies him as the Devil, Satan.

Some Christians presume, based on Revelation 12:7–12, that there was an angelic rebellion shortly after creation:

And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. And they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them any longer in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Rev. 12:7–9 LEB)

But the war in heaven described there is associated with the birth of the messiah (Rev. 12:4–5, 10 LEB):

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, in order that whenever she gave birth to her child he could devour it. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is going to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod, and her child was snatched away to God and to his throne.…

And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying,

“Now the salvation and the power

and the kingdom of our God

and the authority of his Christ have come,

because the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down,

the one who accuses them before our God day and night.

The Bible gives no indication that, before the events in Eden, any of his imagers—human or divine—were opposed to God’s will or were in rebellion. Circumstances changed dramatically in Genesis 3.

The Serpent’s crime was that he freely chose to reject God’s authority. God had determined that Adam and Eve would join the family business, so to speak. They would extend Eden on earth. But the enemy didn’t want them there. He put himself in the place of God. He said in his heart, “I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods” (Isa. 14:13 NLT).

He got a rude awakening. Since the Serpent’s deception led to Adam and Eve’s sin, he was expelled from God’s home (Ezek. 28:14–16) and banished to earth—“cut [or cast] down to the ground” in biblical language (Isa. 14:12)—the place where death reigns, where life is not everlasting. Instead of being lord of life, he became lord of the dead, which meant that the great enemy now had claim over all humans since the events in Eden meant the loss of earthly immortality. Humanity would now need to be redeemed to have eternal life with God in a new Eden.

The fallout (pun intended) was a series of curses. The curse upon the Serpent included a bit of prophecy. God said Eve’s offspring and that of the Serpent would be at odds: “Then Yahweh God said to the serpent … I will put hostility between you and between the woman, and between your offspring and between her offspring” (Gen. 3:14–15 LEB). Who are Eve’s offspring? Humanity. And who are the Serpent’s offspring? Well, that’s more abstract. The apostle John gives us examples—like the Jewish leaders who hated Jesus. “You are of your father the devil,” Jesus told them (John 8:44). Jesus called his betrayer, Judas, a devil (John 6:70). The Serpent’s offspring is anyone who stands against God’s plan, just as he did.

The Bad Seed

It didn’t take long for more trouble to arise. One of Adam and Eve’s children became a murderer. Cain killed Abel, showing that he was “of the evil one” (1 John 3:12). As the human population grew in the biblical story, so did evil (Gen. 6:5).

Now comes another supernatural transgression that, although it may not be much discussed in Sunday morning sermons, had great impact on the expansion of wickedness on earth. This time there was more than one rebel. The evil contagion spreading through humanity in Genesis 6:5 is linked to the story in Genesis 6:1–4 about the sons of God fathering their own earthly children known as Nephilim.

The Bible doesn’t say much else in Genesis about what happened, but pieces of the story show up elsewhere in the Bible, and in Jewish traditions outside the Bible the New Testament authors knew well and quoted in their writings.

For example, Peter and Jude write about the angels who sinned before the flood (2 Pet. 2:4–6 GNT; see also Jude 5–6). Some of what they say comes from Jewish sources outside the Bible. Peter and Jude say that the sons of God who committed this transgression were imprisoned under the earth—in other words, they’re doing time in hell—until the last days. They’ll be part of God’s final judgment, something the Bible calls the “Day of the Lord.”

Peter and Jude’s sources are well-known to Bible scholars. One of them was a book called 1 Enoch. It was popular with Jews of Jesus’ day and with Christians in the early church, even though it wasn’t considered sacred and inspired. But Peter and Jude thought some of that content was important enough to include in the letters they wrote.

These sources speculate that the sons of God either wanted to “help” humanity by giving them divine knowledge, and then got sidetracked, or that they wanted to imitate God by creating their own imagers. They also include an explanation for where demons come from. Demons are the departed spirits of dead Nephilim killed before and during the flood. They roam the earth harassing humans and seeking re-embodiment. In books of the Bible that follow Genesis, descendants of the Nephilim of Genesis 6:1–4 are called Anakim and Rephaim (Num. 13:32–33; Deut. 2:10–11). Some of these Rephaim show up in the underworld realm of the dead (Isa. 14:9–11) where the Serpent was cast down. New Testament writers would later call that place hell.

These ideas show us that early Jewish writers understood the threat of Genesis 6:1–4. The sons of God were trying to reformulate Eden, where the divine and the human coexisted, in their own way. They presumed to know better than God what should be happening on earth, just like the original enemy had. Alteration of God’s plan to restore his rule ends up making a bad situation worse.

Not only was the episode of Genesis 6:1–4 a terrible echo of the seed of the Serpent—deliberate opposition to God—it was a prelude to worse things to come. During the days of Moses and Joshua, some of the opponents they run into when trying to claim the Promised Land were scattered giant clans (Deut. 2–3). These giants went by various names. In Numbers 13:32–33 they are called the Anakim. They are specifically said to be living descendants of the Nephilim—the offspring of the sons of God back in Genesis 6:1–4. The Old Testament tells us Israelites were fighting these oversized enemies until David’s time. He took out Goliath (1 Sam. 17), and some of his men killed Goliath’s brothers to finally end the threat (2 Sam. 21:15–22).

Why This Matters

The prophetic curse on the Serpent and the divine transgression that followed are the early stages of what theologians call spiritual warfare—the battle between good and evil, the long war against God and his people. It’s a war fought on battlegrounds in two realms: the seen and the unseen.

As strange as these stories are, they teach an important lesson: God had divine competition when it came to human destiny. He still does. Opposition to God’s will for earth and humanity is alive and well, in both the spiritual realm and within humankind. But God has his own plans for how heaven and earth will be reunified. Hostile interference won’t go unpunished. Humanity is too valuable. God’s own plan for his human family won’t be altered or overturned.

These passages also teach positive lessons. While the long war against God can be traced back to God’s decision to create imagers, human and divine, who would share his attribute of freedom, God is not the cause of evil.

There is no hint in the Bible that God prodded his imagers to disobey, or that their disobedience was predestined. The fact that God knows the future doesn’t mean it’s predestinated. We know that for certain from passages like 1 Samuel 23:1–14, which tells us about the time David saved the walled city of Keilah from the Philistines. After the battle, Saul learned that David was in the city. Saul had been trying to kill David for some time out of paranoid fear that David was going to take his throne. Saul sent an army to Keilah, hoping to trap David within the city walls. When David heard about Saul’s plan, he asked God:

“Will the leaders of Keilah betray me to him? And will Saul actually come as I have heard? O LORD, God of Israel, please tell me.”

And the LORD said, “He will come … Yes, they will betray you.” (1 Sam. 23:11–12 NLT)

David then did what any of us would do—he got out of the city as fast as he could. And that tells us why God’s foreknowledge of events doesn’t mean they are predestined. 1 Samuel 23 has God foreknowing two events that never actually took place. That God foreknew there would be divine rebellion and human failure doesn’t mean he made those things happen. Foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination.

We need to view the events of the fall in this light. God knew Adam and Eve would fail. He wasn’t surprised. He knows all things, real and possible. But the fact that God could foresee the entrance of evil and rebellion into his world, on the part of both humans and the divine rebel who seduced humanity to rebel, doesn’t mean he caused it.

We can and should view the evil we experience in our own lives and times in the same way. God foresaw the fall and was ready with a plan to rectify it. He also knew we would be born sinners and fail (a lot—let’s be honest). But he didn’t predestine those failures. When we sin, we need to own our sin. We sin because we choose to. We can’t say God willed it, or that we had no choice because it was predestined.

But God loved us in that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6–8). He loved us despite knowing what we would do. He not only gave us the freedom to sin, he gave us the freedom to believe the gospel and live for Jesus.

God also knows—and we know, by experience—that bad things happen to people, even to Christians. Evil is in the world because people (and divine beings) have the freedom to do evil. Our God isn’t a twisted deity who predestines awful things or who needs horrible crimes and sins to happen so some greater plan works out well. God doesn’t need evil, period. His plans will move forward despite it—overcoming it and ultimately judging it.

We might ask why God doesn’t just eliminate evil right now. There’s a reason: For God to eliminate evil he’d have to eliminate his imagers, human and divine, who are not perfect like he is. That would solve the problem of evil, but it would mean that God’s original idea, to create other divine agents and human beings to live and rule with him, was a huge mistake. God doesn’t make mistakes.

We might also wish that God had never given humans freedom, but where would we be then? In choosing to give us freedom, God also chose not to make us mindless slaves or robots. That’s the alternative to having free will. But since freedom is an attribute we share with God, without it we couldn’t actually be imagers of God. God is no robot. He made us like himself. That wasn’t a mistake either. God loved the idea of humanity too much to make the alternative decision. And so he devised a means to, after evil entered the world, redeem humanity, renew Eden, and wipe away every tear (Rev. 7:17; 21:4).

Our look at the long war against God is underway. God has a battle strategy. But the situation is going to get worse before he makes his first move.